SRN 


SER 
= 
SSN 


aa 
oe ~~ 


SS 
st ot 
See 


nx 


3 


oO 


~ 


A 


a 
“a 


oe 


Ys 


SS SN 


‘ 


SS SS 


\ 
. 


\ 
SS 


SS 


A 
see, 
tis 
eae Yes 


Sh sas 


Ze 
ee 


\ 


Lie 
ee, 


RAV 
x RAV 
SQV 
SOS 





Jah 


4 
ie 
4 Bae y 
a a 
ne! 
* 





S38ld¥l GNV SHOOLS AG ‘VINYOSITVD 4O SNVIGNI 























> is >= Lae 





NVIWVYALA 


NVANOHSOHS |__| 


NWOSWd WHY 


NVIMNOSTY | 


i@] N39 a1 


S3IIIWY4 


{JHL GNV 


YINYOSINVO 4O SdnOHy9 DILSINONIT 


ADOTONHLS NYOINSWY JO nvauns 










5 
ar i 





Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
_ Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


httos://archive.org/details/handbookofindianO0Okroe_O 


2 
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 










7 
clara_feiver 
5 ganktem7" 

aunao” 


San Gabriel 


Siba 
Akura 
Hout 
Apachia 
R | 
N 
& 
ibaha 
Ahau 
Pubu 
Shua 
ong Baach 


Toibi 
oPomona 















NATIVE SITES IN PART OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 


oS 
\ 


i 
+ 
“N 
el 
a) 3 
%\ Wahinu-t 
yOucamonga Pk ao ~ 
x 


\\Mulbku- pia-bit 


} BULLETIN 78 PLATE 57 


aa - 
o.0Y? 


a 


Sm ee 


/ 
( 

i} 
/ 


v4 242 










Atan-pa-t 
















































Tat 
a 3: B di Gai Bernardino 
\ an bBpernaraino ,. Ve RTOS ipui 
Yo sKhetaipac? Nilen®ii Ieihigcc * 
Fn an ase %* San Gorgonio Mt ra 
Colton Cha-vak % \ 
Arhangk oRedlands . %, \ 
Hikavand-t a2 { 
9 Yukai-pa-t arbnga / 
ojo! ka- bi poe 8 ‘ 
Pasino : ; Opn a 
ORiverside = Pa { 
ue \Ka-va-t Malki & . 
\ 
oy . pee io P. Ss ) 
S Banning (o7 \. San Gorgonio Pass os 
\ DP ni | 
oe sok’ nae, 
re) DS 
Corona’ m~, \ 
o ‘ 0 Pe, \ 
5. \ yy ~&> miwu 
° \ ol ir # San Jacinto Pk 
/ 
\ Ser * 
NS = ss ‘.. - 
% Pahav Hers San Jacintog  _ _ Sechi 
\ got NSovovo #Tahquitz Pk 
ga 
es 
Santiago Pk { 
( 
! 
. ( - 
7) sree 
eX Pal >; che 
L U l Ss ee 
or 
ju Palasakeuna ra ye, Gghuilla Pk 
veg aki 
3” Bawi Lookout Mt 
~~ 
\\Temecula LY ¥ ee 
fi ; ~s pre od naan tea 
ae emeku a 
py” Tule Pk U SS, 
ae ~~ —~ Beauty Mt / a * 
tale é pie H y ges 
Panh ) pro’. SBS ONO ay : Sug % 
\Hechmai 5 Malamai? , < 
vy e Tay 
5% i] : *Palomar Mt 
o ‘ 
yo/ % I +8 stom umo Takwish-po-shapila 2 4 
= J 7 tomkav : 
% y pur t Springs 
SF x apontal om : “A ae 
Katukto ((Kwalam . 
Ushmat rs 
a -Walhau mai 
sé iasamai 
aN San Luis Rey San Ysidro Br 
Wiawo Keish ct” Met-hwai 
ne Vise ae = 
put Aa Mesa Grande 
falamai yeaiondas J Shakishmai ‘ukumak 
59 ae are Panakar Setmunumin \ 
C= itlt 
7 Shikaps ehel-om-pom-pauvo } fens chy ipa . 
zo Y Escondido re Atikwan@n \ 
SanVas, yer -- . ie es 
-- RY =" Sinyau-tehwir & 
Ahmukat!l kat! 
Hakutl ito 
we Sinyau-pichkara Pamo 
4. osmit 
Kulauma sof Hapai wo th- Pk 
okwi 
#Middle Pk 
Pauwai ! 
Gyvamacd Px 
Ekwianfak 
* 
Elcajon Mf 
D I = 
pieg?——- 
se 
/ A 
Ex Wilesion. im motaretuwe 
<P °65 4 Sinyeweche a 
--7~ Nipawai 2 
Kosoi te - 
p t a7~/ Hamacha 
A SAN DINGO 0° m 
af Pu-shuy: o_o . - 
Totakamala ¢ — 87 ~ San Miguel Mg / 
‘Px vorgnado =} {| Hamul c 
Pt Loma Ane Lor Ne 
fp De 
aoe 
car ea tai 
ee tee Otay Mt oTec nee 
o——_ e®@ 
oom oo eo? 
oll oe — 7 


[ENGRAVED ANO PE NTEO OF THE © ROEOLOOICAL SURVEY 


Wy PIA ney 


tak 


és A : soe 
ne ij ety 
SE le swt 

iy Moe ADP 

hey » ft 


4) % 
a 





* SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION  ! Sct 161925 


1S, Pe Or 
BULLETIN 78 ~OL 96) 






~s 
& 
GAL SEMANS 





HANDBOOK 


OF THE 


INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 


BY 


A. L.. KROEBER 


























































































































































































































































































































WASHINGTON 
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
1925 


J abeee reals 
! | c¥aMe 


soo 





LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL. 


SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 
Bureau or AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY, 
Washington, D. C., February 18, 1919. 
Str: I have the honor to transmit the accompanying manuscript, 
entitled “ Handbook of the Indians of California,” by A. L. Kroeber, 
and to recommend its publication, subject to your approval, as a 
bulletin of this bureau. 


Very respectfully, 
J. Watrer Frwkes, 
Chief. 
Dr. CHarues D. Watccort, 
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 
TI 


ig AYE =e we ie 


POHARE lis eh ta 


1 ea 
rhe yase'\: Pic Dees “ais ve 





PREFACE. 


This book is the outcome of 17 years of acquaintance and occu- 
pation with the Indians of California; intermittent, it is true, but 
with these people remaining throughout the first subject of the 
writer’s study. Although it may seem otherwise, it attempts to 
be a history. 

It is not a history in the usual sense of a record of events. The 
vast bulk of even the significant happenings in the lives of un- 
civilized tribes are irrecoverable. For the past century our knowl- 
edge is slight; previous to that there is complete obscurity. Nor 
do the careers of savages afford many incidents of sufficient in- 
trinsic importance to make their chronicling worth while. 

The book is a history in that it tries to reconstruct and present 
the scheme within which these people in ancient and more recent 
times lived their lives. It is concerned with their civilization—at 
all events the appearance they presented on discovery, and when- 
ever possible an unraveling, from such indications as analysis and 
comparison now and then afford, of the changes and growth of 
their culture. There being no written documents, the element of 
time enters infinitely less than in works which it is customary to 
designate historical. In the stead of time, the geographical factor 
looms large. It is not that this dimension is necessarily more im- 
portant in savage life than that of chronology; but it is a hundred 
times more readily operated in, and is on the whole the most avail- 
able means through which some glimpses of time perspective are 
attainable. 

It is for this reason that after long deliberation I have constituted 
the bulk of the book a series of tribal descriptions. A broader typical 
treatment of phases of native culture seems theoretically more de- 
sirable, especially in the case of a remote and unimportant people. 
But such a treatment would have led to an unfortunate dilemma. 
The local variations are so numerous that their consideration would 
have smothered, the systematic presentation of general points of view. 
On the other hand, the elimination of this detail would have left the 
presentation as an abstraction, too largely dependent upon the sub- 
jective attitudes of the author, and sterile in the sense of lacking the 
color and life in which, after all, the characteristics of civilizations 
are manifest. 


VI PREFACE 


I have, therefore, proceeded on the plan of picturing as concretely 
as I might the customs of each of some 50 little nations, adding dis- 
cussions and comparisons of broader scope wherever the knowledge 
in hand made such procedure seem profitable. This brings it about 
that the more general conclusions appear strewn at random through 
the course of several hundred pages, and to some this will seem un- 
fortunate. I have attempted to meet the difficulty in two ways— 
first, by a few chapters which are wholly summary and comparative, 
and which will be found at the end of the work; second, by a care- 
fully prepared subject index, which not only brings together all the 
references to each phase of culture but often enumerates its principal 
aspects or elements. 

After some hesitation I have omitted all directly historical treat- 
ment in the ordinary sense; that is, accounts of the relations of the 
natives with the whites and of the events befalling them after 
such contact was established. It is not that this subject is unim- 
portant or uninteresting, but that I am not in position to treat. it 
adequately. It is also a matter that has comparatively slight rela- 
tion to the aboriginal civilization. It presupposes, indeed, some 
understanding of that civilization; but it requires also a thorough 
knowledge of the local history as well as of the institutions of the 
superior race. It involves prolonged study and acquaintance with 
Spanish and mission archives, with Government. documents, with 
early California events and pioneer conditions. In all these things 
many others are more proficient than I can hope to become; and 
it has seemed that I might better contribute to the future writing 
of such a history by concentrating effort in the field to which train- 
ing and predilection have led me, and endeavoring to render the 
California Indian, as such, a more familiar object to the future 
historian of his political and economic relations with ourselves. I 
have, therefore, considered the effect of contacts only in special 
cases; as when necessary to form an estimate of an ancient vanished 
culture through the medium of its modern and modified represen- 
tative. 

In the matter of population, too, the effect of Caucasian contact 
can not wholly be slighted, since all statistics date from a late 
period. The disintegration of native numbers and native culture 
have proceeded hand in hand, but in very different ratios according 
to locality. The determination of populational strength before the 
arrival of the whites is, on the other hand, of considerable sig- 
nificance toward the understanding of Indian culture, on account. of — 
the close relations which are manifest between type of culture and 
density of population. 

It has also appeared most profitable to attempt as little formal 
separation as possible of the data acquired by ethnological and 


PREFACE VII 


archeological investigations. I have indeed added a chapter on pre- 
history, in the nature of a summary and compilation of miscellanea. 
In the main, however, a detailed survey of the prehistory of Cali- 
fornia on the basis of its archeology would be a catalogue of sites 
known to have been inhabited, a list of excavations performed, and 
a description of objects found. As yet there is little sequence of 
development traceable in these ancient remains. The objects discov- 
ered in any region are very similar to those used by recent Indians. 
A strictly archeological treatment leaves the greater part of the 
culture with which it is concerned entirely untouched, and is likely 
to have undue recourse to pure speculation in its interpretations. 
In an area of such unusual stability, ethnological data must accord- 
ingly be made use of constantly. This being true, a single treat- 
ment seems called for. Data from the recent and surviving Indians 
being on the whole very much fuller, the only practical procedure 
has been to incorporate the specifically archeological material in 
accounts that are prevailingly of an ethnological character. 

The physical type of the natives is another topic that has been 
slighted. In this case the reason is its essential aloofness from the 
main thread of the work. It is a truism that physical type and cul- 
ture have only the slightest, if any, relation in human history; and one 
of the earliest maxims impressed on the student of anthropology, al- 
though still one of the most frequently violated, is the fallacy of in- 
ferring from one to the other. A compact review and analysis of 
all that is known on the physical anthropology of the natives of Cali- 
fornia would be exceedingly useful in itself, but would add little to 
the serviceability of this book. Moreover, it can be better executed 
by other hands. 

As regards the province of speech, I feel no such hesitation of 
competence, but here again the subject matter is an essentially dis- 
tinct one, besides being of a nature which generally impresses as 
technical. The relation of language to civilization is undoubtedly 
closer than that of head form or skin color, but it is far from in- 
timate. I have therefore considered speech only in so far as the 
accumulating knowledge of the languages of California has led to their 
classification on a genetic or historical basis and thus contributes to 
the insight of the origin, movements, and relationship of the several 
nations. 

One cultural activity of the profoundest emotional import I have 
regretfully felt compelled to refrain from considering—music. There 
is no question that any attempt at a well-rounded description of the 
culture of a people which omits music from its consideration is imper- 
fect. But in the present case the difficulties were enormous. Prim- 
itive music is so thoroughly different from our own as to be practi- 


VIII PREFACE 


cally unintelligible except on long acquaintance. It has been an- 
alyzed only imperfectly and usually is even transcribed but inad- 
equately. There is no work which seriously attacks the music of the 
California Indians. A chapter on this fascinating subject would 
therefore have had to be either so superficial as to be worthless or 
so long and detailed as to become disproportionate. 

A considerable part of the information gathered in this book has 
never been printed before. Some of this is my own. The remainder 
has been unhesitatingly put at my disposal by the present and former 
members of the department of anthropology of the University of Cal- 
ifornia: Dr. P. E..Goddard, Dr..E. Sapir, Dr. S. A. Barrett, Mr. 
N. C. Nelson, Dr. T. T. Waterman, Mr. E. W. Gifford, Mr, I 
Loud, Prof. R. B. Dixon, Dr. J. Alden Mason, and the late Dr. Philip 
Mills Jones. In fact, the present work would have been impossible 
without the research which has been conducted for the university 
since 1901, as a result of the foundation of the department of anthro- 
pology by the late Mrs. Phoebe Apperson Hearst. In a large sense, 
therefore, this book expresses the results of the work of the University 
of California far more than the labors of one individual. It has 
merely fallen to my lot to combine and present the knowledge which 
has accumulated through the efforts of the group of whom I am one. 

Mr. F. W. Hodge, ethnologist in charge of the Bureau of American 
Ethnology, and Mr. J. P. Harrington, now also of the Bureau, have 
put further data at my disposal. Personally I wish to express es Mr. 
Hodge my genuine sense of obligation for the opportunity to carry 
through the undertaking. Without his encouragement and constant 
readiness to cooperate it is likely that a work of the scope of the 
present book would not have been undertaken by any one for many 
years to come. 

TI am at the more pains to make these acknowledgments because 
this is my only opportunity. It has appeared necessary to omit 
references to the sources and authorities for my statements. This 
is an unusual procedure in a work that pretends to scholarship, but 
there were many reasons urging its adoption. Had authorities been 
cited at all, it would have been desirable to cite them at every oppor- 
tunity. To the nonprofessional reader such an accumulation of ref- 
erences to sources would have been unserviceable and generally dis- . 
tracting. The anthropologist or historian has an offhand acquaint- 
ance with the bulk of the published literature and its detailed cita- 
tion would in most cases aid him but little. Moreover, the abundant > 
use made of manuscript data would leave serious vacancies in any 
list of references to particular passages. Intending students are the 
only ones, it has seemed, who may now and then be seriously inclined 


PREFACE Ix 


to deplore the lack of citations to the original sources; but their 
needs, I am convinced, will on the whole be better served by the 
bibhography which has been appended. This bibliography makes 
less pretense to completeness than to being an aid to discrimination. 
With this feature in mind, I have ventured to add brief appraisals 
to the titles of many of the works there listed. 

If it is remembered that at least nine-tenths of the printed infor- 
mation on the Indians of California, certainly in quantity of facts, 
perhaps also in number of pages, is contained in three sets of peri- 
odical publications—those of the University of California in Ameri- 
can Archaeology and Ethnology, the Bulletin of the American 
Museum of Natural History, and the publications of the Federal 
Government, particularly those of the Bureau of American Eth- 
nology and the National Museum under the auspices of the Smith- 
sonian Institution—together with a small group of books not 
exceeding 8 or 10 in number, it becomes apparent that the problem 
of authorities and bibliography for the subject dealt with in this 
work is in the main a simple one. 

I should not close without. expressing my sincere appreciation of 
my one predecessor in this field, the late Stephen Powers, well known 
for his classic “ Tribes of California,” one of the most remarkable 
reports ever printed by any government. Powers was a journalist 
by profession and it is true that his ethnology is often of the crudest. 
Probably the majority of his statements are inaccurate, many are 
misleading, and a very fair proportion are without any foundation 
or positively erroneous. He possessed, however, an astoundingly 
quick and vivid sympathy, a power of observation as keen as it was 
untrained, and an invariably spirited gift of portrayal that rises at 
times into the realm of the sheerly fascinating. Anthropologically 
his great service lies in the fact that with all the looseness of his 
data and method he was able to a greater degree than anyone be- 
fore or after him to seize and fix the salient qualities of the mentality 
of the people he described. The ethnologist may therefore by turns 
writhe and smile as he fingers Powers’s pages, but for the broad out- 
lines of the culture of the California Indian, for its values with all 
their high lights and shadows, he can still do no better than consult 
the book. With all its flimsy texture and slovenly edges, it will always 
remain the best introduction to the subject. It is a gratification to 
remember that there was once a time when an unendowed periodical 
published in California felt able to command the support of its pub- 
lic by including among its offerings almost the whole of a work of 
this merit. The “Tribes of California” was first issued in the Over- 
land Monthly of San Francisco. 


x PREFACE 


POSTSCRIPT. 


New information on the Indians of California has of course 
become available during the five years since this manuscript was 
written. To incorporate even a summary of this would have meant 
the alteration as well as the addition of numerous passages—an 
unfeasible procedure. I have therefore only corrected errors, and 
here and there added footnotes indicating the range or significance 
of the recent acquisitions to knowledge, and their sources. These 
notes will serve to guide the reader to the literature that is 
gradually filling the gaps in the world’s knowledge of the tribes 
in question. Only the bibliography has been brought as fully as 
possible up to date. 

The chapters on the Yurok, Yuki, Yokuts, and Mohave consist 
almost wholly of previously unpublished data collected by myself. 
The chapters on the Karok, Wiyot, Kato, Huchnom, Coast Yuki, 
Pomo, Yahi, Wintun, Maidu, Costanoans, and Serrano combine 
similar data in greater or less amount with materials from pub- 
lished sources. The chapter on the Miwok embodies a considerable 
block of unpublished data put at my disposal by E. W. Gifford. 
The section of the chapter on Prehistory dealing with cultural 
stratification in the San Francisco Bay shell mounds is based on 
unpublished preliminary computations by N. C. Nelson. 

Certain parts of the present volume have been utilized, with the 
approval of the Bureau and with changes of greater or less moment, 
in other publications. Chapter 53 forms the basis of an article, 
“Yuman Tribes on the Lower Colorado,’ in volume 16 of the 
University of California Publications in American Archaeology 
and Ethnology; chapters 54-56, of “ Elements of Culture in Native 
California,” in volume 13; and chapter 59, “California Culture 
Provinces,” in volume 17 of the same series. 

A. L. Krorper. 

BerKe ey, Cauir., Pebruary 1, 1923. 


Chapter. 


. The 
. The 
. The 
. The 
. The 
. The 
(EAE WATTS ger VSB ol aT CAE) FAS, aaah Ga Oe Ee Oe, een nee ce EC 
. Athabascans: the Hupa, Chilula, and Whilkut________________ rates 
. Athabascans: southern groups 
. The 
. The 
. The 
13. 
. The 
;» ahe 


The 


The 


~ che 
. The 
. The 
. The 
. The 
. The 
. The 
. The 
. The 
. The 
27; 


The 
The 


. The 
30. 
. The 
. The 
. The 
. The 
. The 
. The 
. The 
. The 
. The 
. The 
. The 
PL Le 


The 


COINCE ENGL 


Yurok: land and civilization 
Yurok: law and custom 
Yurok: religion 
RY Gere wee ee ee © Ree ee Oe Ren A eS eee 4 
CEE) Be Ee BET se eh BOIS SER se ee al See eee ee 
POETS Lee OT OBR C) Ries SESS S Le SRE ee ae eee ee pe es 





Oe LIC er COr aD Gates ce rer ee Oe ad Ne Se yc Lee 
SEER TIS 2D gee 2 be Re oe Fie PE Pe ey Se ey SOE ae es BS peep! 
VUES” SSN Ea Cel een OAD OL See Ty aps Be ee RN Bae ee Seen oe oe err ae ee 
Beit Om OOS tae CURD a eee ee ae ee ee 2 
SUC W AYR e ie, oo 2 SOT ees so de, Pe ae fh Se Sage ea Mee eo 
Tere Oot A Vertu DOLILICN = 5 eo ee th ees eS a is 
POD OLV LIZ UL Ole eee oes ese Gere Pa ee feted 7 igd Ue be 
POCO LLO LOD) ieee nk cia 4 ir ee gee ee Bh rag = ah oat ea he 
ie iat see eV WOKEE. tear fee. See Soe ie ee oe 
peer COTU EU) mieten heh ee eee ee me ere dhe wo EE ee 
ph (it oN ie eae eect de ea eg Ba eek a on ON ere! SS ge eS. A 
Wena WL anieAtsugewiow Ge fo ee) ie 

Oy laf eee ae Se ae POE ee rr eee Fo ka 
ert EHe silane Latent ee ee ee ee ee SIS Oe 
IZOTAE CIT inetd LULL Ye eee eee een ed, Seesaw SANT RT 8 St ee 
Wintun: geography and culture 
SURED UE TI Tics FSCULICH PRC) UL) Capstone EOS Meet By) SE TER SY Wn! I wie FS) 
Malu: wand, ANC sSOCICE Va foe te emer tees eee EE) Ele 
Nei Ar iseanUs i piculeni see sse seme eterna wet ee a, eh Aes 
Mia Tene iors ANGCKNOWLEd@eRe spate ee ae ei ee 
Nps) ara. 2a ae a ad eas Oe eds! eg ke on A ee 








URLS. s SOO CTH vies sete Sor Sareea oe reer teh. OA ets 
Yokuts: social institutions 
EN ate CRD LS her eos RO Re Te, ee pe A NES 
Yokuts: the concrete basis of life 
Esselen and Salinans 


Paiute, Mono, and Koso 
CRT eee TAY Lane ek en ae et Seed, oe. Sa en 
PR 29 a baal BSW LE 1, bet dioed UN Re lees ee eae. Se ae 





XII CONTENTS 














Chapter. 

a3) Serrano divisions... 4425-25 Sse ee ee ga pene ee i ae 
44 ‘The Gabrielino 22220 i2 UL 2 ae a 
AB The  Juanefnioa st wk a ee ee 
46. The Luisefio: elements of civilization._--_-__._-___-_--_-------------- 
47. The Luisefio: organization of civilization_______-_------------------ 
48. The Cupefio and Cahuilla__-:.____+4---._-___—-_-- = + 5 
49. The Dieguefio and Kamia___-___-____------------------------------ 
50. The Mohave: concrete life_____- ee ie ee he bs 2 ot i eee 
Fi The Mohave: dream»life: 2... 2s so a ee eee 
BD EDT ies VIDLENYEL et Fs hoe a ele ee nanan pene ene 5 enn 
mor Other Yume. trives. << ee a i ee 
BA. ATit OL iieseeet athe ss te Samet oh ATE Pare REE ee, See ee ee 
BD. Society ae ee a 
nO. Religion and Rnowledgesés-s=.°3*s-saeseSsest se ee 
Di evOpilatons: ees ee eee rays Rebates Sep eye eee Ltn Roe & 
Dh PLAC ond Nes Critnn oe mit pee ents ee eee 
Bor Culture  provilic@s:2-se-so. 2 22C2 52.2 ee re re ea 
Boh Prehistory cca 008 scr a te ea a ee 
Appendix: Pronunciation of Natiye words. —— 2-2 2S ee 
Bipliograpny 222255 21 hos 2 SSeS a ee eee 
Classification of titles by: subjeetsa2ese>s sree eee oe oe eee ee 
Classified subject index. =>. 252s eee ee ee eee ee 
APBTIGT EH) ANCOR se en eh ag le 


LIST OF TABLES. 


1. Principal dances and ceremonies of the Kuksu system of the cen- 
tral “tribesu ss 2 et ee ee ee ee 
. Principal spirit impersonations in the Kuksu system of the cen- 
tral tribes22. BEG Sen eee See 
. Maidu spirit impersonations 


bo 





3 

4. Sequence of Maidu dances and ceremonies___—_-_____________-_____ 
ow Northern Maidusealendars 2224 52 ee a ee 
6 

v6 

8 


. California shell bead money measures 
: Sens of es in southern California 





11, Indian population of California, 1770. and: 1910s _ure = Sie t7 ieee 
12. Source of some California place names of Indian origin_-___-_.._____ 
18. Coast cultures of northern California, Oregon, and Washington 
14. Percentage composition of California shell mounds_____-~__________* 
15. Molluskan proportions (by weight) in shell mounds________________ 
16. Percentages of total artifacts constituted by certain implements 

according -to depth jin shell monnds-04. 0 2 = eee eee 
17%. Percentages of classes of artifacts according to locality of shell 

mounds | 


932 


bh) bo bo eee ee a ee ee ee 
or ee. SWTMHADMABRWNH SHOWA AAARWNHH 


. Yurok house fronts and interior 
. Karok house; Yurok sweat house interior 
. Yurok town and graves; Hupa measuring money__ 
. Karok sacred houses; Yurok carved door___—__-- de 
. Chilula sweat house; Yurok canoe 
. Hupa woman leaching acorns; Karok sweat house___- 
Ps vom purse. box,-and~poatvornament 22 2 oe else 
. Yurok pestle, arrow straightener, knife, grease dish 
. Yurok acorn gruel stirrers 
. Karok in armor and shooting__- 
. Yurok stool, adzes, and mauls____-___- 
. Yurok carved spoons of elk antler 
Peer eA CATs ee wh ee SABA e 
. The Karok center of the world 
wAyinobbaskers Dele ae 
. Lassik basketry 
. North central Californian types: Pomo, Wintun, Modoc, Huchnom__-_ 
. Map: Yukian divisions f 
. Map: Settlements of the ashe and Lake Miwok_ 
Rey Ue iy es el 


. Central and northern California ty nea alma Yana, Rone 
. Sierra Nevada types: Miwok, Yokuts, Mono, Washo_______~_ 
Pee iolt Le apis ae es es 


. Cradles__ eS 
. Map: The Pond: ane their subdivisions_______ te SES eee 
7. Map: Territory and villages of the Maidu and Miwok___~_ 

. Miwok acorn granary 
CBT g CE Oi pF eel) Mle ae Se a 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PLATES. 





Hupa Deerskin dance; Yurok making boat______ 





Yurok fishing for salmon in Klamath River_____~ Pease. 





Mouth of the Klamath; canoe shooting rapids______- 





Fishing at fall of Klamath; altar 





Karok fishing from scaffold 





Karok deer head decoy 
























































SOG eho 0 a Oe eo ee 





weyooden ‘smoking “pipes...2..2... — ook a 








. Map: Southern part of the territory of the Wintun__ 

















Page. 


Eg ha an oe ok Meh In pocket. 
. Yurok treasures: ee sass ee BOL ee ee a 


26 


beth skeet 
=e 
bo DO bo 


J) 
Cl 
us 


> 


co 
Or Ol 
jen 


XIV ILLUSTRATIONS 


40. 
41, 
42. 
43. 
44, 
45. 
46. 


YoOaAPwWNHH 























Page. 

Cradles tent eS ae ea ee ee eer 446 
Cord-wrappedvleg remains. 2222-812 Sao eee 508 
Heathers dance -skilts.-- eo ee ee ee 508 
Wrhutes: 6 2 ohn ee ee ee ee ee 508 
Mortar hopper; acorn gruel stirrers; bull roarers_________--------- 508 
Miwok mortars in bedrock; Yokuts mortar of oak_-______--2____ 524 
Cahuilla house; Yokuts booth for snaring pigeons______-______-____- 524 

; Map: The- southern, and? centralsYokulss22 23". 22 526 
. Map: Habitat of the: Chumash and Alliklik = 22 2_2 2) 2222 == 526 
WEATTOW SLA SO LONG S ae. eee ee ee a 2 5380 
MY OKUtSDaSK Obi yuew ee te ee eee eee a rae ete Dt 530 
 Yokuts: pottery) 225 5 hee ee ee ree 530 
~ GOhumash basketry 2.202 22032. 2 ee ee eee 560 
. Chumash cap and asphalted water baskets_________-_______---- tee OOO 
. Chumash burden and storage baskets; Mohave beadwork____-~-~--- 560 
_ Head net; baskets from various ‘tribes 2-2-2 2) ee eee 560 
. Mohave house interior; Koso sweat house__--------- Lo) bee eee 590 
. Map: Native sites in part of southern California________________ In pocket. 
Quill headbands . 22622 Sl 2 ee ee ee eee 590 
. Patwin headband; Mohave fish scoop; Chemehuevi Bee M325, 596 
. Hupa pounding acorns; Cahuilla granary; Serrano sweat house____— 596 
. Dieguefio dancer; Pomo woman parching caterpillars______-__-_____- 664 
> -Cahuilla sandal and painted. jaTins S52 es ee ee + ¢ (664 
; PHable bag, Buena: Vista “Lake. 25. 2 ee ee eee 728 
pivlohave ty peso) 2s a a ee eee sees cht he end ae ee ‘728 
> Mohave ty peS2. 2s. 245.522) oe ee ee eee eis 
. Metates and grinding slabs —~2- 2. 22 ee eee eee 728 
. Mohave farm tools; Pomo rattles; Yurok, Pomo, Modoc paddles__-. 740 
» Mohave’ pottery  DOWIS_222.__ 2-2 ee ee eee 740 
“Mohave cremation —_ 22-22) a ee eee eee 740 
. Yurok woman and old *menu2 2 2 ose ee ee eee 740 
; Hupa woman-and ment lo a eee eee 808 
« Head net and rolled hair; cotton blanketl__—--2 = =) ae 808 
, Baskets and caps from various. tribes 420-- = 3 eee S808 
» Map: Ritual cults-of California 2229-2 ee 808 
SEY URL baskets 2222 eo a ee ee 822 
.Miwok. colled-baskets_2—~ 2) 2" he ee eee 822 
» Karok using fire drill; Patwin Hesi dancers_ eee 822 
Yahi’ shooting and drilling fires 22) ee ee ee ee eee 822 
..Hupa -double-ball shinny =~ = "se ee ee eee 848 
Se MIW OK CA CHOY ICA DGS nee eee ee eee ee 2.3 ee 848 
>; Skull from Buena Vista Lake region. —_ eee See ee 934 
. Petroglyphs fromthe Sierra, Nevada 2. 232 525 ee eee 934 
. Lhe Painted Rockrofr Carrizo Plains 42-2 eee yee gee eee 938 

TEXT FIGURES. 

oe UrOkstowns «and sterritony 2a ee ee 9 
. Yurok town of Weitspus and associated settlements__________-______ 12 
. Blanket<of:two deerskins, painted] Hupa st) sce oe ee ee 77 
Y urok-house+ladder ee ee ee 79 
. End plank of Yurok sweat house, with exit hole___________________ 80 
. Plan-of-sleeping’ places’ In°Yurok "Sweat Houses 222 ee 82 
. Yurokenet twelchtst. 22s ee Se ee ee ee eee 86 


38. 
Me eo enUaTiCeror -ossemp|VeNOuseGss = ao es es 
. The Miwok village of Up 
Mer LODS GL OTiO. ONE VL Ly O hee. ee UN 2 ee Oe 
. Costancan dialect areas and approximate sites of some settlements__ 
. Yokuts topography, distribution, and neighbors________ 
. Yokuts dance headdress of magpie and crow feathers 
geyv omens . tattoos... 22 


or OT OT 
No oe 


OO 


Plan of Shasta house__.. 


. Cross section of Shasta ho 
mACHOMNaWiinree houses skeleton, plan 22 ea eins 


Atpurewi cradle. 258] 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


RENT We ES Cra RS aga tame Walt Coe 112) 69 6811) ip: ee Sa ye ae 
. Wiyot and Yurok in relation to the Algonkin family________________ 
. Wiyot towns and territory 
. Wiyot shaman’s outfit ___ 
BIT reie ML EA Tit LOW Te Uh ek KE LO a ela erage oe epee 
. Chilula land and towns__ 
. Sinkyone ring-and-pin game of salmon vertebrez_______________---- 
MmACOIIMHUZZEN: LOS: sinkyone, Promo, Miwoks.hs wce24. eee et 
ByVeUARL CDariNn. oo 
. Distribution of the Hokan 
Bett vetree Or POMOC, Uta lecten. oe. see ea ee oe eke ee Leh 
= Pomordance house 2.2 
. Sections of headbands of 
. Central Californian dance 
. Coast Miwok territory and 


TAD a Ni On LL LOvu hc 82 sae oo er ae bo ceeds 


Vellow-UAImIMer QUIS 2. 2 take 2 oe 
Head GkESses” ooh Fe eae Ts po OSE, eg Be 
SeTrlenentSt tc). 28 ea Sete ale 


USC =e ee er Ae eae oe eye ee 





mc lamato-Modoc. two-homed. muller = i) lies ‘oy hal Bs 
. Klamath-Modoc fishhooks_ 
Bee itis lLOnOCe DlPCemOM, See eee. c oe Sa 
Me Amrerriorme. NOPLNern Pariowen 2 oe eet ae ee Se 
. Yahi deer decoy, stuffed_— 
. Map sketched and explained by Ishi, the last Yahi_-___-______________ 
. Penutian languages and degree and direction of dialectic variation__ 
. Penutian dialects in relati 
. Patwin dance house_____- 
Sevier eecuements: in-American: Valleys pate. os 2 
. Central Californian cocoon 


se eee ee es Smee me re ee mee seme es cn ee ee ee es eee me ee ee we a ee ee 


OMnsto- drainage: Ssystemicu. a te 


Tattles. ~~. Cie. Ce ee bole ae * 





Yokuts loop stirrer and Miwok paddle______________ hee eats a hae) 


. Yokuts basket designs__-_- 
. Cradle types of central and southern California 
. Salinan and Esselen territory and settlements__.____________________ 
. Uto-Aztecan family__---_~- 
. Shoshonean branches, divisions, and dialect groups in California 
. Clustering of Shoshonean divisions in California 
miarrvane- De. -1.0So 0: Death Valleyse- eee Sar ek 
. Chemehuevi dice of filled 
. “ Boomerang” rabbit kille 
. Southern California ground paintings________ at 
EUS UW RIS Cot sTere gE | RYc)2 ORE) th bas aaa es Sele pn ee el ae 
SEITEMULINITMR ECE echien ce ees Te Pe eS 
. Cahuilla carrying net____ 
. Face paints: Mohave men 





listini 











ShGlis se eee tear ys fe el 
rs of southern California 











XVI ILLUSTRATIONS 














Page. 
Gr Vece-paints Mohave women =o. a ee ee ee eee page iaY f 
62. Face paints: Mohave women Sif spa LE Pes ciel Slaerten uh a Bbc oa Se. pape ha A 733 
63. Plan of Mohave earth house____~— = ES ele es ee ee eed 734 
Ge Mohave bowl and ladlé2e- -erch erg see ee ee eee 738 
65. Mohave pottery bowl__________ Ba acre i La, Seed thi (SECS pebenytioe AS.» 739 
ee) VEGI Vie IP GPE Taco nero et ee ee eee eee 739 
Gt. boner awis: Pomo;,Matdd. YORU. YURI; OLIWOK- 2.0 ooo eee 806 
GoruL ne Caltoriian (Si0 WSHOCt I os sean Seren) eee ee ee oa ee ee 807 
Ge: Wxogamy and: totemism in’ Oaltrornias ne ee ne ee eee 835 
(Uy. Cremation and earth -buriae 10 Og iiornia ee ee 842 
Cle Ghost danéemovements in. Calilorntare 9 os. es ee ee 871 
ize Decrease of native population trom 1 cr0 tOlolO.. ee ee ee 887 
73. Subculture areas on the Pacific coast of the United States__________ 903 
74. Major culture areas and centers of development within California____ 916 
io. Prehistoric: sites “about? San) Diego "Sayles ee ee ee ee 920 
1G; Prehistoric sites on Santa Rosa Island- <2 2 eee 921 
tt. Prehistoric sites: on ‘Santa Cruz” lslend?#as ee eee ee bau 922 
io. Distribution,of petrographs..-. 4s ee eee eee 937 


MUSEUM NUMBERS OF OBJECTS ILLUSTRATED. 


Unless otherwise. mentioned, objects shown in the plates and text 
figures are in the University of California Museum of Anthropology 


and their numbers bear the prefix “ l-.’ 


’ Tf there is no designation 


of specimens by letters on plate or figure, the numbers refer to speci- 
mens as shown in order from left to right, or top to bottom, or both. 


PLATES. 


Bt 042, 13827. 
3: armor, in Daggett collection. 
15: 2259, 1952, 1866. 
16: 1682, 2181, 1588, 1084. 
17: 1647, 1618, 2198, 1563, 1679, 1892. 
19, a—e: 2841, 1078, 987. (Hupa), 1629, 
1195. 
20s 2000, (1943, 1236, 1099, 2219, 1239, 
1240, 1237. 
238, a—c: 9415, 93894, 11626. 
24, a—d: 2541, 2530, 2547, 25384. 
29: 10529, 19441, 4102, 401. 
30, a-g: 2760, 2766, 9169, 10800 and 
3960, 10358, 2673, 3902. 
33, a—C: 2581, 2587, 2603. 
35: 9461, 16573, 2307. 
388: 10500. 
39-40, a—o: 10259, 18841, 10057, 10235, 
10216, 10055, 10731, 10830, 10780, 
10817, 2327, 10944, 10730, 3087, 
17336. 
Sire 121752: 
42, a—c: 1899, 9165, 9579. 
48, a, 9247, 9240; b, 104385, 10484; e, 
et 2t10,. 103, 2671, 18977, 
2714; e, 1779. 


44, af: 20978, 14475, 16555, 4035, 
9208, 2679. 

45: 10715. 

49, a-f: 19677, 19742, 14057, 11043, 


14477, 4367. 


3625°—25 





) 
ya, 


10832, 
10899. 


10910, 8951, 4011, 103890, 


: 14077, 10823, 10889, 14075, 14074, 


14076, 


2: American Museum of Natural His- 


tory 50.1-2150, 50-539 (Chumash 
attribution probable). 


: 14497, 14508, 14502, 14998, 14999. 
: 14495, 14496. 
; @, 14524; b, 4344, 18828; c, 10972; 


d, 20964; e, 20926; 
maker collection, 3, 49. 


f, Shoe- 


: 14565, 9580, 10039, 10040. 
> 14540, 4877, 43857. 

: 11067, 11095. 

: 14570. 

: 4301, 14071, 12971. 


a-i: 1754, 1720, 18866, 158, 1413, 
17038, 12401, 11235, 1704. 


: 1718, 18788, 18775, 18774, 43821. 
e 14577, 14595. 
;, a, 10956; 


emul ieee C. AAGor 5 |; 
11130, 11111; e, 1600, 1509, 1601 ; 
f, 1663. 


: 11960, 12008, 11968. 
: 9920, 10120, 10351, 
: 10038. 

: 12-1734. 


XVII 


XVIII MUSEUM NUMBERS 
ee Lat pee 
4: 9572. 
5: 9380. 
7: 1688r, 1908, 1933, 1923, 1688¢. 


As 
14: 
15: 
16: 
20% 
PL 
26: 
hs 
BSe 
29: 


DL 


OF OBJECTS ILLUSTRATED 


TEXT FIGURES. 


11622a, 11620, 9416, 11621. 
2266. 

2267, 10600, 10137. 

4385. 

2803, 525, 645, 2948. 

772, 18466, 17, 10043, 10047. 
2311. 

4540, 

12763. 

12382, 12580, 14187. 

19564, 


ole 


10747, 2324, 15b, 509, 2818, 10004, 
2835. 


: 10126, 10466. 

= LOGUS,. LOTS: 

; 1898. 

: 14567. 

: 10971. 

: 14498, 9215, 1753. 
OUT eel Ute 

Sk Bi Gl yc 

: 10997. 

aye 

ALSO L 

>: 2773, 7457, 10489, 10802, 14087, 


12017, 10125, 10228. 


HANDBOOK OF THE INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA. 


By A. L. Krorser. 


CuHapter 1. 
THE YUROK: LAND AND CIVILIZATION. 


Quality of civilization, 1; radius and focus of the civilization, 5; towns, 8; 
town names, 10; orgnaization of towns, 11; political and national sense, 13; 
directions, 15; population, 16. 


This history begins with an account of the Yurok, a nation resident 
on the lower Klamath River, near and along the Pacific Ocean, in ex- 
treme northern California (Pl. 1), surrounded by peoples speaking 
diverse languages but following the same remarkable civilization. 
The complete aspect of this civilization is un-Californian. It is at 
bottom the southernmost manifestation of that great and distinctive 
culture the main elements of which are common to all the peoples of 
the Pacific coast from Oregon to Alaska; is heavily tinctured with 
locally developed concepts and institutions; and further altered by 
some absorption of ideas from those tribes to the south and east who 
constitute the true California of the ethnologist. 

This civilization, which will hereafter be designated as that of 
northwestern California, attains on the whole to a higher level, as 
it is customary to estimate such averaged values, than any other 
that flourished in what is now the State of California. But it is 
better described as an unusually specialized culture, for the things in 
which it is deficient it lacks totally; and these are numerous and 
notable, 


QUALITY OF CIVILIZATION. 


In inventions there was no marked superiority to the remainder of 
aboriginal California; but most arts were carried to a distinctive 
pitch. Manufactured articles were better finished. Many objects 
which the central and southern Californians fashioned only as bare 
utility demanded were regularly decorated with carvings in the 
northwest. Often the identical object was made of wood in one re- 


1 


2 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


gion and of antler or stone in the other. A new technical process 
is scarcely superadded by such a substitution. As regards the mere 
list of knowledges or faculties, the two cultures remain at par. But 
the northwestern preference for the more laborious material evi- 
dences a different attitude, an appreciation of values which in the 
ruder central and southern tracts is disregarded. That this differ- 
ence is deep seated, and that it is manifest at almost every point, 
is evident when the slab house of the Miwok or Yuki, the canoe or 
maul of the Modoc, the pipe or acorn stirrer of the Pomo, the netting 
shuttle and spoon of the Maidu, or the obsidian blade of the Wintun, 
are set by the side of the corresponding utensils of the Yurok or their 
northwestern neighbors. It is only among the far-away Chumash 
that technological activities were granted a similar interest and love; 
and this localized southern culture has long since perished so com- 
pletely as to make a comparative evaluation difficult. 

The implements that are made only in the northwest—the stool, 
pillow, box, purse, and the like—are not very numerous. They are 
at least partly balanced by central and southern devices which the 
northwesterners lack; and they do not in any instance involve a 
process or mechanical faculty of which the more typical Californians 
are wholly ignorant. 

Much the same holds of wealth. Money is prized and establishes 
influence everywhere in California. It certainly counts for more in 
private and public life among the average Californian people than 
among the tribes of the plains or the settled and unsettled tribes of 
the southwestern United States. But whatever its influence in south- 
ern or middle California, that influence is multiplied among the 
Yurok. Blood money, bride purchase, compensation to the year’s 
mourners before a dance can be held, are institutions known to al- 
most every group described in the present work. ‘The northwestern- 
ers alone have measured the precise value of every man’s life or wife 
or grief. Every injury, each privilege or wrong or trespass, is cal- 
culated and compensated. Without exactly adjusted payment, ces- 
sation of a feud is impossible except through utter extirpation of one 
party, marriage is not marriage but a public disgrace for generations, 
the ceremony necessary to the preservation of the order of the 
world is not held. The consequence is that the Yurok concerns his 
life above all else with property. When he has leisure, he thinks of 
money; if in need, he calls upon it. He schemes constantly for op- 
portunity to lodge a claim or to evade an obligation. No resource 
is too mean or devious for him to essay in this pursuit. 

If such endeavors are to be realized, there are needed an accu- 
rately computable scheme of economic valuation, and an elaborate and 
precise code of rights. The northwesterner has both. His law is of 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK. OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 3 


the utmost refinement. A few simple and basic principles are pro- 
jected into the most intricate subtleties; and there is no contingency 
which they do not cover. The central Californian has his law also. 
But it is neither rigid nor ramified. Margin is left for modification 
according to personality or circumstance or public opinion. There 
are phases of life in central California into which neither money nor 
legality enter. 

With all this savoring so strongly of Kwakiut] and Haida custom, 
the Yurok is wholly Californian in his lack of any visible symbolism 
to give emotional expression to the economic values which are so 
fundamental with him. He is without crests or carvings or totems; 
there are no separately designated social classes, no seats in order of 
rank, no titles of precedence, no named and fixed privileges of prior- 
ity. His society follows the aims of the societies of the North Pa- 
cific coast with the mechanism of the societies of middle California. 

Property and rights pertain to the realm of the individual, and 
the Yurok recognizes no public claim and the existence of no com- 
munity. His world is wholly an aggregation of individuals. There 
being no society as such, there is no social organization. Clans, 
exogamic groups, chiefs or governors, political units, are unrepre- 
sented even by traces in northwestern California. The germinal, 
nameless political community that can be traced among the Indians 
of the greater part of the State is absent. Government. being want- 
ing, there is no authority, and without authority there can be no 
chief. ‘The men so called are individuals whose wealth, and their 
ability to retain and employ it, have clustered about them an 
ageregation of kinsmen, followers, and semidependents to whom 
they dispense assistance and protection. If a man usually marries 
outside the village in which he lives, the reason is that many of his 
coinhabitants normally happen to be blood relatives, not because 
custom or law or morality recognize the village as a unit concerned 
with marriage. The actual outcome among the Yurok may, in the 
majority of cases, be the same as among nations consciously or- 
ganized on an exogamic plan. The point of view, the guiding 
principles both of the individual’s action and of the shaping of the 
civilization, are wholly nonexogamic. Such familiar terms as 
“tribe,” “village community,” “chief,” “ government,” “clan,” can 
therefore be used with reference to the Yurok only after extreme 
care in previous definition—in their current senses they are wholly 
inapplicable. 

Shamanism takes on a peculiar aspect in northwestern California 
in that the almost universal American Indian idea of an association 
between the shaman and certain spirits personally attached to him 
is very weakly and indirectly developed. Shamanistic power re- 
sides in control of “pains,” small animate objects, nonanimal and 


4. BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


nonhuman in shape, which on the one hand cause illness by enter- 
ing the bodies of men, and on the other endow the shaman with 
power when he brings them to reside within himself, or rather her- 
self, for practically all shamans are women. The witch or poisoner 
is usually a man and operates by magic rather than shamanistic 
faculty. In the remainder of California the distinction between 
the maker and the curer of disease is almost effaced, the shaman being 
considered indifferently malevolent or beneficent according to cir- 
cumstances, but operating by the exercise of the same powers. 

Concepts relating to magic are as abundantly developed among the 
Yurok and their neighbors as shamanism is narrowed. Imitative 
magic is particularly favored and is often of the most crudely direct 
kind, such as performing a simple action or saying the desired thing 
over and over again. The thousand and one occasions on which magic 
of this rather bare volitional type is employed reveal a tensity that 
usually seems brought on consciously. This emotional tautness, 
which contrasts glaringly with the slack passivity and apathetic slug- 
gishness of the average California Indian, is manifest in other 
matters. Thus, restraint and self-control in manner and in rela- 
tions with other men are constantly advocated and practiced by the 
Yurok. 

Northwestern religion is colored by the cultural factors already 
enumerated. ‘The idea of organization being absent, there are no 
cult societies or initiations. Symbolism is an almost unknown at- 
titude of mind except in matters of outright magic: therefore masks, 
impersonations, altars, and sacred apparatus, as such, are not em- 
ployed. The tangible paraphernalia of public ceremony are objects 
that possess a high property value—wealth that impresses, but never- 
theless profane and negotiable wealth. The dances are displays 
of this wealth as much as they are song and step. All life being in- 
dividualized instead of socialized, the ceremonies attach to specified 
localities, much as a fishing place and an individual’s right to fish 
are connected. In the remainder of California, where stronger com- 
munal sense exists, the precise location of the spot of the dance be- 
comes of little moment in comparison with the circumstances of the 
ceremony. 

The esoteric element in northwestern dances and rites of public 
import has as its central feature the recitation of a formula. This 
is not a prayer to divinities, but a narrative, mostly in dialogue, re- 
counting the effect of an act or a series of acts, similar to those about 
to be performed, by a member of an ancient, prehuman, half-spirit 
race. The recital of this former action and its effect is believed to 
produce the identical effect now. The point of view is distinctly 
magical. Similar formulas are used for the most personal purposes: 
luck in the hunt, curing of sickness, success in love, the accumulation 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 5 


of wealth. These formulas are private property; those spoken at 
public ceremonials are no exception: their possessor must be paid, 
though he operates for the good of all. 

Yurok mythology is woven in equally strange colors. Stirring 
plot is slighted; so are the suspense of narrative, the tension of a 
dramatic situation—all the directly human elements which, however 
rude their development, are vividly present in the traditions of most 
of the Californians and many other divisions of American Indians. 
A lyric, almost elegiac emotion suffuses the northwestern myths and 
tales. Affection, homesickness, pity, love of one’s natal spot, in- 
satiable longing for wealth, grief of the prehuman people at their 
departure before the impending arrival of mankind, are sentiments 
expressed frequently and often with skill. Events and incidents 
are more baldly depicted, except where the effect of the action re- 
counted is the establishment of an existing practice or institution; 
and in these cases the myth is often nearly indistinguishable from a 
magical formula. Tales that will interest a child or please a naive 
stranger of another civilization do not appeal to the Yurok, who have 
developed refinedly special tastes in nearly everything with which 
they concern themselves, 





RADIUS AND FOCUS OF THE CIVILIZATION. 


The Yurok shared this civilization in identical form with their 
neighbors, the Hupa and Karok. The adjacent Tolowa, Wiyot, and 
Chilula adhere to the same culture in every essential trait, but begin 
to evince minor departures in the direction of less intensive speciali- 
zation. A peripheral series of tribes—the Shasta, Konomihu, Chi- 
mariko, Whilkut, and Nongatl—show the loss of a number of char- 
acteristic northwestern features as well as some elements of culture 
that are clearly due to the example of exterior peoples. To the 
south the diminution of the northwestern cultural forces can be 
traced step by step through the Sinkyone and Lassik until the last 
diluted remnants are encountered among the Wailaki. The next 
group, the Kato, belong wholly within the civilization of central 
California. The progressive change from Hupa to Kato is particu- 
larly impressive in view of the fact that all members of the chain are 
of common Athabascan speech. 

To the north a similar transition into another civilization could 
presumably have once been followed. But the societies of south- 
western Oregon have long since perished, and the information about 
them is only sufficient to show the close similarity of the Takelma 
and Athabascans of Rogue River to the Yurok, and their civiliza- 
tional inferiority. Southwestern Oregon was culturally dependent 
on northwestern California. 


6 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


Eastward, similarities to the northwestern culture appear for con- 
siderable distances—almost across the breadth of the State and into 
the northernmost Sierra Nevada. These are, however, highland 
tracts of rather thin populations, to whom the typical culture of 
central California could not easily penetrate in full form, so that 
they were left open to random influences from all sides. 

Furthermore, it is doubtful whether the institutions of north- 
western type among the Yana, Achomawi, and mountain Maidu can 
be ascribed to specific northwestern influences. Most of the cultural 
characteristics common to northwestern and northeastern California 
appear to have been found also in Oregon for some distance north. 
To ascribe to the Yurok or Karok any definite share in the formation 
of modern Achomawi civilization would therefore be a one-sided 
view. The whole of the tract embracing northernmost California 
and western, or at least southwestern, Oregon is in some respects a 
larger but ultimate cultural unit. Within this unit, groups of periph- 
eral position like the Achomawi have acquired only the more rudi- 
mentary elements and generic institutions, which they have further 
mingled with elements derived in perhaps larger proportion from 
central California and in some measure even from plateau or plains 
sources, not to mention minor institutions of local origin. Centrally 
situated nations like the Yurok, on the other hand, have kept the 
original cultural supply in less adulterated form, and in building 
upon it have exerted an expansive influence on their neighbors and 
through them on peoples beyond. 

Useful as the recognition of culture areas is as a scaffolding or pre- 
liminary plan for the student, the conditions in this region cor- 
roborate wholly the realization which has been gradually arrived at 
through investigations of civilization in many other parts of Amer- 
ica, namely, that the exact delineation of such ethnographic provinces 
is almost invariably an artificial and unprofitable endeavor. It is the 
foci that can be tolerably determined, not the limits; the influences 
that are of significance, rather than the range of the influences. 

Such a focus, in some measure for all northernmost California and 
southwestern Oregon, and absolutely for northwestern California, is 
constituted by the Yurok, the Hupa, and the Karok. 

Even as between these three little peoples of such close inter- 
relations, some precedence of civilizational intensity, a slight nucle- 
olus within the nucleus, can be detected; and the priority must be 
accorded to the Yurok. 

Geographical and populational considerations would lead to such 
an anticipation. The Yurok live on the united Klamath, the Hupa 
and Karok on its two arms, the Trinity and the unaugmented Kla- 
math above the Trinity. ‘The numbers of the Yurok were as great 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 7 


as those of the two other groups combined. Of the tribes of the 
second order or degree of participation in the civilization, the Tolowa, 
Wiyot, and Chilula, all three were adjacent to the Yurok, one only 
to the Hupa, none to the Karok. The canoe can be made, in its 
perfected type, only of the redwood, a tree that grows, within the 
habitat of the three focal peoples, only in Yurok territory; and in 
fact the Hupa and Karok buy their boats from the Yurok. The 
same tree also furnishes the best material for the lumber of which 
the houses of the region are built. 

Actual cultural evidences are slight but confirmatory. Through- 
out Califonia it appears that adolescence ceremonies having direct 
reference to physiological functions are not only relatively but abso- 
lutely more elaborated among tribes of a ruder and more basic 
civilization. Groups that have developed other ceremonial insti- 
tutions to a considerable pitch actually curtail or dwarf this rite. 
The Yurok make distinctly less of it than either Karok or Hupa. 
The great ceremonies so characteristic of the region are, however, 
most numerous among them. The Hupa perform these rituals in 
two or three towns, the Karok in four, and the Yurok in seven. The 
elimination of animals as characters in traditional tales is distinctive 
of the pure northwestern culture. The Yurok are more extreme in 
this respect than are the Karok. Both Karok and Hupa agree with 
the larger nation in placing the birth of their culture hero at the 
Yurok village of Kenek. 

Slender as are these indications, they all point the same way. They 
justify the conclusion that the innermost core of northwestern civ- 
ilization is more nearly represented by the Yurok than by any other 
group. Even in a wider view, the center of dispersal—or concentra- 
tion—of this civilization might be described as situated at the con- 
fluence of the Trinity and Klamath, from which the three tribes 
stretch out like the arms of a huge Y. This spot is Yurok terri- 
tory. It is occupied by the village of Weitspus, now called Weitch- 
pec, and its suburbs. Either here or at some point in the populous 
20 miles of river below must the precise middle of the cultural focus 
be set, if we are to attempt to draw our perspective to its finest 
angle. 

Of course it can not be contended that the whole of the north- 
western civilization, or even all its topmost crests, flowed out from 
this sole spot. Even an Athenian or a Roman metropolis at its 
height never formulated, much less originated, all of the culture 
of which it was the representative; and the California Indians were 
far from knowing any metropoles. It might well be better, in a 
search such as has occupied us a moment ago, to think of the finally 
determined location as a point of civilizational gathering rather 
than radiation. But where most is accumulated, most must also be 


8 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


given out. The difference in cultural potence between upper and 
lower Yurok, between Yurok and Karok, must have been slight. 
For every ten ideas or colorings of ideas that emanated from the 
exact center at least nine must have filtered into it; and even toward 
remoter regions, the disproportion can hardly have been excessive. 
As regards any given single item of culture, it would be nearly im- 
possible to assert with confidence where its specific development 
had taken place. The thing of moment, after all, is not the award- 
ing of precedence to this or that group of men or little tract of 
land, but the determination of the civilization in its most exquisite 
form, with an understanding, so far as may be, of its coming into 
being. It is this purpose that has been followed, it may seem devi- 
ously, through the balancings of the preceding pages; and the end 
having been attained so far as seems possible in the present state 
of knowledge, it remains to picture the civilization as accurately as 
it can be pictured through the medium of the institutions, the 
thoughts, and the practices of the Yurok. 

It may be added, as a circumstance not without a touch of the 
climactic in the wider vista of native American history, and as an 
illustration of principles well recognized in ethnology, that three 
of the great families of the continent are represented at the point 
of assemblage of this civilization. The Yurok are Algonkins, the 
Karok Hokans, the Hupa Athabascans. 


TOWNS. 


The territory of the Yurok, small as is its extent, is very unrepre- 
sentative of their actual life, since all of their habitations stood either 
on the Klamath River or on the shore of the ocean. All land back 
in the hills away from the houses served only for hunting deer, pick- 
ing up acorns, beating in seeds, and gathering firewood or sweat- 
house kindlings, according to its vegetation. The most productive 
tracts were owned privately. They were occasionally camped on, 
though never for long periods. All true settlements formed only a 
long winding lane; and along this waterway Yurok life was lived. 

The towns—hamlets is an exacter term according to civilized 
standards—numbered about 54 and are shown in Figure 1. A few of 
these, such as Kenekpul, Tsetskwi, Himetl, Keihkem, Nagetl, Tlemek- 
wetl, and some on the coast, may have been inhabited only from time 
to time, during the lifetime of a single man or a group of relatives. 
The Klamath villages mostly le on ancient river terraces, which 
eradually decrease in height toward the mouth of the widen 
stream. Wahsekw is 200 feet up, Kenek 100, Kepel 75, Ko’otep 35, 
Turip 25, Wohkel 20. The coast towns are awa eae ci: 
ona heaon or at the mouth of a stream. ‘Tsurau alone overlooks a 
cove well sheltered behind Trinidad Head. Like the more wholly 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 9 


ocean-situated Wiyot and Tolowa, the Yurok did not hesitate to 
paddle out into open salt water for miles, if there was occasion; 
but their habits were formed on the river or still water. The canoe 









aSAAIT! 


at 
\ 





PMERIP 


e TSETSKWI } 
ENEK I 
e@ WAHSEKW 














WEITCHPEG 
ERTLERGER 


Fig. 1.—Yurok towns and territory. Solid squares indicate sites occupied only during 
certain periods. Dotted line, redwood timber belt. 


was designed for stream use rather than launching through the surf; 
and the coast itself was designated as downstream and upstream 
according as it extended north or south. Fishing was done at mouths 
of running fresh water, or by men standing at the edge of the surf, 
much more than on the abounding ocean. 


10 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 78 


The important villages come in groups. The uppermost of these groups is at 
the mouth of the Trinity: Weitspus, Pekwututl, and Ertlerger. These must 
have had, a century ago, a combined population of nearly 200. Wahsekw, 
next below, was isolated and not very large, but wealthy. Those that followed 
next were of litthe moment. Kenek, which lies at the best fishing rapids in 
the Klamath, except possibly the fall near the mouth of the Salmon River in 
Karok territory, is the. town most frequently mentioned in Yurok mythology, 
and is celebrated even in the traditions of their neighbors, but was always a 
small settlement in historical times. Kepel, Sa’a, Murekw, and Himetl formed 
another considerable group of about the populousness of that at Weitspus. 
Murekw seems to have been the largest of the group, Sa’a its religious center. 
Several smaller settlements followed at short intervals, among which Sregon 
enjoyed a reputation for belligerence and wealth. Pekwan Creek brought — 
Pekwan, Ko’otep, Wohtek, and Wohkero. This was perhaps the most popu- 
lous cluster of Yurok villages. For the next 20 miles the towns were strung 
apart and mostly quite small: Turip and Sa’aitl, also called Turip-opposite, 
formed the only larger group. Then, at the mouth, on opposite sides of the 
tidal lagoon, came Rekwoi and Wetlkwau, with Tsekwetl, Pegwolau, and 
Keskitsa as quarters or suburbs, and Tmeri and Otwego somewhat doubtful 
as separate villages. Here also the population must have approximated 200. 

On the coast, Tsurau at Trinidad, several miles from its neighbors, was esti- 
mated the largest town; Opyuweg on Big Lagoon—also called simply Oketo, 
“lake ’’—was next; and Tsahpekw on Stone Lagoon third. Four smaller 
townlets stood with Opyuweg on Big Lagoon, and Il'sahpekw had Hergwer as a 
minor mate. Of the other coast towns, Orekw at the mouth of Redwood Creek 
was the leading one, with Espau probably next. 

Otsepor was really two settlements: Otsepor, and Aikoo downstream. 
Ehkwiyer below Tsetskwi, Tekta below Wohkero, Enipeu below Serper, Stowin 
below Tlemekwetl have been occupied recently, but do not seem to be old sites. 
Tlemekwetl is also known as Erlikenpets, Hergwer as Plepei, Metskwo as 
Srepor. ‘Terwer was an important summer camp site on the north bank be-- 
tween Sa’aitl and Wohkel, but appears to have had no permanent houses. 
O’menhipur included houses on both sides of the mouth of Wilson Creek. 
Neryitmurm and Pinpa are sometimes spoken of as towns, but may be only 
parts of Opyuweg. 


4 


The great fixed ceremonies were all held at the populous clusters: 
Weitspus, Kepel-Sa’a, Pekwan, Rekwoi, Wetlkwau, Orekw, Opyu- 
wee. Each of these had a sacred sweat house; and at each of them, 
and at them only, a White Deerskin or Jumping dance was made 
or begun. Sa’a alone replaced the dance with a ritually built fish 
weir at adjacent Kepel. It will be seen that ceremony followed 
population, as myth did not. Besides Kenek, little Merip, Tlemek- 
wetl, Turip, and Shumig—the uninhabited bluff behind Patricks 
Point—enter prominently into tradition. 


TOWN NAMES. 


It is clear from the appended list that in spite of abundant inter- 
course between the Yurok and Hupa, place names were not adopted 
into a foreign language, but were made over by these tribes. Some- 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA ial 


times they were translated. Thus the Yurok and Hupa names for 
Weitspus both refer to confluence, for Nohtskum to a nose of rock, 
for Serper to a prairie, for Wohkel to pepperwoods. Other places 
seem to have been descriptively named by the Hupa, without ref- 
erence to the significance of their Yurok names. Thus they call four 
villages after the pepperwood, tunchwin, the Yurok only one. 
































YUROK TOWNS. HUPA NAMES. 

pS al Te Nae a wnt elec atten Stee eng i ool Hotinunding. 

4 Sv ghiah le ea eee RES ese ORY Mae y Hotuwaihot. 

Ertlerger__..__ ae _.___.Tunchwinta’ching. 

Vr einernis 2 a eC Flensiding,’ (Karok:, Ansafriki). 
Ve TNO Wite ae k ? Hotenanding (IKarok: Hohira). 
phere toe. "___._,-____.Choholchweding (Karok: Shwufum). 
SS 1 Be te a FIR. Hongha’ding. 

ee ROT fe os A ee Tunchwingkis-hunding, 

eS Sie sds Pee Ta’tesading (Karok: A’avunai). 
TRON io eh ee Tunchwingkut. 

PRU ORY Tihs ha es __.Senongading. 
retire gS Ninamelding. 

Sa des (37 OSE pepe go ee a Se Kyuwitleding. 

a A bse aS a Kaikisdeke (Karok: Firipama). 
Ko’otep ee ee ee ee FON OCIICINS. 

DET Fee NIN Ssariing, 

Pere ee ee eee Tlokuchitding. 

Sb it” (ee Oa Ane ae Ria Ninuwaikyanding. 

Sa’aitl__ oe ee __Kitlweding. 

Terwer camp__ _______.Kauhwkyokis-hunding. 

VUTEC A Se. Ee an Tunchwingkyoding. 

Pi pel yo - ___-Chahalding. 

RC We oF ee oe Ber no se Mukanaduwulading (Karok: Sufip). 
VT Ce TA cree Sg ob Tseticheding. 

COBDS LAS 2 We ee ee Mingkekyoding. 

bls 5 9 pen i, SE AE: OS he Aa a Chewillinding. 

Ree EC ae es eo ee Chwaltaike. 

PELE SA). ou etd Ol se Muwunnuhwonding. 


ORGANIZATION OF TOWNS. 


Yurok houses, or their sites, had names descriptive of their posi- 
tion, topography, size, frontage, or ceremonial function. Many of 
the designations reappear in village after village. The names of 
abandoned houses were remembered for at least a hfetime, perhaps 
nearly as long as the pit remained visible. If a family grew anda 
son or married-in son-in-law erected a new dwelling adjacent to the 
old, the original name applied to both houses. Sweat houses were 
usually but not always called by the same name as the house to 
whose master they belonged, and seem normally to have been built 
close by. 

The habit of naming house sites appears to have been restricted 
to northwestern California. It is but one instance of many of the 


lips BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY - iTBouun. 78 


intensive localization of life in this region, of its deep rooting in 
the soil. The origin of the custom is scarcely discernible, but the 
Yurok made frequent use of it to designate persons without naming 
them. <A person referred to as “the old man of Trail Descends” 
would be absolutely defined to his village mates, and even in distant 
villages might be better known by that description than by his per- 
sonal appellation. 
The following are the houses of Weitspus, as shown in Figure 2. 


Grirgre «. )-> 





Fic. 2.—Yurok town of Weitspus and associated settlements. Squares, houses; solid 
Squares, Standing in 1909; small rectangles, sweat houses. (After Waterman.) 


HOUSES. 
ie (C Watles 18. Otsepor (“ steep’’). 
2. Wonitl or Wonoyertl (“up”). ~ 14. Kome’r (“last’’), 
38. (With 4). 15. Ple’l (“large”). 
4. Ra’ak (‘tin the creek”’). IG GW ith at). 
). Sohtsu (‘fon top”). 17. Nikerwerk (‘close to dance”). 
6. Ketsketl. 18. Erkigeri (‘“ tie hair” for dance). 
ia 19. Wogwu (“in middle”’). 
8. 20. Opyuweg (‘“ dance’’). 
9. Oslokw (“trail descends”’). 21. Ta’amo (‘“ elderberries’”’). 
1Om CWithy Ll 22. Higwop (‘in the water’’), 
11. Tsekwetl (“flat”). 23. Petsku (“upstream”). 


= 
Se 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 13 


SWEAT HOUSES, 


(Named after houses which they adjoin and to which they belong.) 


A with 2. D with 11. 
B with 6. E with 19. 
C with 9. F with 22. 


These are the houses of Rekwoi: Oregok (‘“ where rolls down,’ a game), 
Ketsketl, Oslokw, Layekw (“trail”) or Erkigeri (where they prepared for 
dancing), Ple’l (“large,”’ in which the Jumping dance was begun), Hokome’r 
(“end”), Knau, Ma’a, Te’wira, Ma’a-wono (‘ up-hill from Ma’a’’), Sepora 
(“open place, flat”), Perkweri (‘behind the door’), Kekomeroi (“ end, 
last”), Kiwogi (“in middle”), Ernerkw (‘‘ narrow’), Kinekau (‘on the 
brink”), Tewolek-repau (“facing the ocean”), Howeyiro’i, Olige’l] Ma’a-hito 
(“this side of Ma’a”), Nekerai. Of these, Ketsketl, Oslokw, Layekw, Knau, 
Ma’a, Te’wira, Sepora, Kiwogi and Howiyero’i had sweat houses at one time 
or another; besides which there were sweat houses known as Tetl, Tsa’at’orka’i, 
and Ki’mo’le’n (‘“ ugly, old’), the last being the sweat house used in the Jump- 
ing dance. 

Pekwan contained Ereu, Tekor, Ketsketl, Opyuweg (‘‘ dance,’ in which the 
Jumping dance was made), an unnamed house adjacent to the last and prob- 
ably belonging to the same family, Etlkero, Wogi, Erkigeri-tserwo (in which 
the dance was prepared for), Hiwon (“uphill”), Lekusa (‘‘sweat house 
exit’), Tetl wo’lometl (‘the tetl live in it,” they being the men who dur- 
ing the Jumping dance frequent the sacred sweat house), Hetlkak, Tso’oleu 
(“down hill’), Olohkwetoip, Ta’amo (‘“ elderberries”’), Hitsao, Ska’awelotl 
(‘buckeye hangs”). The sweat houses were Ereu, Ketsketl, Wogi, Lekusa, 
Hesier, and Opegoiole, the last used in the Jumping dance. The cemetery filled 
the center of the village, from Ketsketl to Lekusa, and between Wogi and 
Erkigeri on the upper side and Etlkero and Hitsao on the other.’ 


POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SENSE. 


The national horizon of the Yurok was as confined as that of most 
northern Californians. Adjacent tribes were visited at ceremonies 
and to some extent wives were purchased from them. Of those next 
beyond, there was only the dimmest knowledge; and farther, neither 
rumor nor legend nor interest. At that distance, there was only the 
end of the world, or a strange unsighted ocean, and perhaps things 
that no one wanted to see. The Yurok did not venture into the un- 
known and felt no desire to. Nor did they welcome strangers. If 
any came, it must be for a bad purpose; and they were put out of the 
way at the first opportunity. A man of substance, wealth, or char- 
acter did not stray or nose about. He remained at home in dignity, 
or traveled where relatives of old or hereditary friends welcomed 
him. If ever he went farther, it was with their introduction. An 
old man of Pekwan, born there of a Tolowa mother from Kohpei, a 
man of property and many formulas, had traveled in his lifetime as 
far as Tolowa Eshpeu; Karok Kumawer, not quite as far as sacred 


1 Waterman, Yurok Geography, 1920 (see Bibliography), lists the houses of Rekwoi and 
Pekwan with slight variations from the above, adds town plats, and gives detailed maps 
of Yurok settlements and habitat generally. 


14 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Inam, below Happy Camp; and in Wiyot territory to Eureka. The 
county seat and its fairs drew him to the latter. Before the white 
man came he would probably not have passed beyond the mouth of 
Mad River. 

It is essential to bear in mind that since there was no definite com- 
munity sense within a village, there was no opportunity for a larger _ 
or political community to develop out of a group of adjacent vil- 
lages. One settlement in such a group—a “suburb ”—was sometimes 
involved in a feud while another directly across the river looked on. 
Of course, wherever kinship existed, it formed a definite bond be- 
tween towns as within them; but however instrumental blood rela- 
tionship may sometimes become as a means of political organization, 
it is not in itself productive of a political sense; and the replacement 
of the latter by a feeling of kinship or personal] relation among peo- 
ple like the Yurok is precisely what makes it necessary to distinguish 
the two if this peculiar society is to be understood. 

It is true that Wahsekw danced against Weitspus, and played 
against it at shinny, and that under threat of attack from a remote 
and consolidated alien foe, village might adhere to village in joint 
war, just as, in lesser feuds, town mates, impelled by bonds of asso- 
ciation or imperiled by their common residence, would sometimes 
unite with the group of individuals with whom the feud originated. 
But these are occasions such as draw neighbors together the world 
over, be they individuals, districts, or nations. While they are capa- 
ble of being utilized in the formation of civic units, they do not in 
themselves constitute the associated bodies into political societies. 

There is one recorded instance of larger community rights. If a whale came 
ashore anywhere between Atlau, south of Osegen, and Tsotskwi-hipau, south 
of Dry Lagoon, it belonged to Espau, Orekw, and Tsahpekw jointly, each man 
taking a cut a half-fathom wide, the rich men a full fathom. This is anal- 
ogous to a recognition, probably prospective rather than ever actual, that 
Little River (or perhaps a certain other stream in the vicinity) marked the 
point beyond which a stranded whale was wholly in Wiyot ownership; to the 
north thereof the property of the Yurok of Tsurau (including Metskwo) ; 
whereas if it drifted to shore across the mouth of the stream, it was shared by 
the two groups. The Big Lagoon villages probably held corresponding rights 
for the intervening stretch of coast, and Rekwoi-Wetlkwau the privilege on 
another stretch of beach to the north. But a whale was an infrequent and un- 
controllable event, a half winter’s provisions, and yet not so wholly sporadie 
that definite custom was unable to crystallize about it. There is no instance of 
a similar law as regards fishing rights on the river, hunting territories, and 
acorn and seed tracts; all of which were individual or family property and 
not community rights. Fish dams, intercommunally erected for brief periods 
at Kepel, at Lo’olego above Weitspus, and on Redwood Creek at Orau at the 


mouth of Prairie Creek, are perhaps somewhat comparable to the whale claims 
of the coast. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 15 


Yurok speech was uniform along the river. On the coast a dif- 
ference of dialect became perceptible, according to some accounts, at 
Espau, a more marked one at Orekw, and a third, most divergent 
variety. at Tsurau. Actually these differences must have been very 
slight, since recorded vocabularies and texts show an appreciable 
difference only for the region of Big Lagoon and Trinidad; and 
even this dialect was intelligible on the river. 

The term “ Coast Yurok,’ in the present account, is used not with reference 
to this rather slight speech cleavage, but geographically—for the people south 
of the mouth of the Klamath. These the other Yurok call Nererner. Thus, 
ner-nererner, I speak Coast Yurok; ne-shagero, I speak Yurok. Similarly, 
ne-kerermerner, I speak the language of the Karok, the Petsik-la; ne-we’yohtene, 
I speak Wiyot (We’yot) ; ne-tolowo, I speak Tolowa; ne-mimohsigo, I speak 
the Athabascan dialect of the Hupa (Hupo-la) and Chilula (Tsulu-la). 


DIRECTIONS. 


The Yurok, and with them their neighbors, know no cardinal 
directions, but think in terms of the flow of water. Thus pud is the 
radical meaning downstream; pets, upstream; Aiko, across the 
stream; won, up hill, that is, away from the stream on one’s own 
side; wohpe, across the ocean, and so on. Such terms are also com- 
bined with one another. If a Yurok says “east” he regards this 
as an English word for upstream, or whatever may be the run of the 
water where he is. The name Yurok itself—which in its origin 
is anything but an ethnic designation—means “downstream” in 
the adjacent Karok language. The degree to which native speech 
is affected by this manner of thought is remarkable. A house has 
its door not at its “western” but its “downstream” corner. A 
man is told to pick up a thing that lies “upstream” from him, not 
on his “left.” The basis of this reckoning is so intensely local, 
hike everything Yurok, that it may become ambiguous or contradic- 
tory in the usage of our broader outlook. A Yurok coming from 
O’men to Rekwoi has two “upstreams” before him: south along 
the coast, and south-southeast, though with many turns, along the 
Klamath. When he arrives at Weitspus, the Trinity stretches ahead 
in the same direction in the same system of valley and ridges; but 
being a tributary, its direction is “up a side stream,” and the direc- 
tion “upstream” along the Klamath suddenly turns north, or a. 
little east of north, for many miles. Beyond their Karok neighbors 
the Yurok seem to have a sense that the stream comes from the 
east. At least they point in that direction when they refer to the 
end of the world at the head of the Klamath. 

This plan of orientation is characteristic of all the northwestern 
tribes, and is followed in some degree in central California. The 

3625°—25——3 


16 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Yokuts terms of direction, in the far-away San Joaquin Valley, are 
at least shifted from the cardinal points in accord with the flow of 
water, if indeed they do not refer to it. The cognate Maidu words 
are said to have the same meaning as our own. But it is possible that 
the Maidu have given a sun-determined meaning to original drain- 
age terms under the ritualizing influence of their Kuksu cult. This 
may also be what has happened among southern Wintun, Pomo, and 
Yuki, who constantly use words hke “north,” while the central 
Wintun think in terms of waterflow. It has been customary among 
inquirers to assume that Pomo yo means “south ” because a group 
consistently uses it for that direction; which, of course, is no proof. 
In any event it is likely that exact south, when they knew a south, 
was determined for most California tribes by the prevailing direc- 
- tion of their streams as much as by the meridian of the sun. The 
rectangular and parallel disposition of the drainage in the greater 
part of the State must have contributed to this attitude. Only 
in southern California, where water runs far apart and intermit- 
tently, and the ceremonializing symbolism of the southwestern tribes 
is a near influence, is it certain that we encounter true terms of solar 
orientation. 
POPULATION. 


Yurok population can be more accurately determined than the 
strength of most other Californian groups, so that a detailed analysis 
seems worth while. 

The most valuable source of information is a census made in 1852 
by a trader who spent the most of his life at Klamath. It covers 
the towns from the mouth of the river to the salmon dam at 
Kepel. Only 17 are enumerated, but some of the smaller ones 
may have been counted as suburbs of the more important settle- 
ments. Thus Wetlkwau was perhaps reckoned as part of mere 
or perhaps overlooked. 'The figures are: 














Inhab- Inhab- 
Houses. itants. Houses. itants. 
RekwOlepee te ee ape 116.) SY ohter: = 2 eo ee 3 13 
LO at se ee ee 6 (20) STCCOD tee ee ¢ 66 
Wohkel? sy 3a 2 LO) Meta eee ee ee 6 39 
Seca itl 5 2 ee eae 2 34° | Nohtski’mise oe >t eee 4 15 
Turin 2 eee See 14 “947; Miurekw loi gee 14 105 
SOTDG ic acti etree ee 4 Be i Boke ct cbed ee ag eee eee ! i 3 
Wohkero a eee Ds) GOOD GL to cern eaae eee eee 3 10 
Wohtek ____ yy ele 4 5D —- 
Kieren. 2. ae ee ee 165 141 1.052 
PekWanlleta 228s ee 20 137 


The total of 1,052 comprises 354 men, 381 women, 160 boys, 157 
girls. The 7 per cent deficiency in adult males is about what might 
be expected as a consequence of feuds. 


— 


KROEBER } HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA iby 


The house averages per village fluctuate from 3 to 17. This seems 
excessive; but there is no reason to doubt the grand average of 
nearly 74 souls per dwelling. The five largest towns yield 617 per- 
sons in 94 houses, or somewhat over 64. 

In the stretch of river covered by the 17 towns of the list, Figure 1 
shows 20 standard settlements and 6 others that were inhabited dis- 
continuously or are otherwise doubtful. According as the 141 houses 
and 1,052 souls are attributed respectively to 17, 20, or 26 settle- 
ments, the house average per village is 84, 7, and 54, the population 
62, 53, or 40. The most likely averages for settlements of all sizes 
and Randa would seem to be: 

Persons per house, 7 
Houses per town, 6. 
Persons per town, 45. 


7 
2. 


Outside of the Kepel-Rekwoi stretch, Baie 1 designates 21 stand- 
ard and 7 more doubtful towns. Than allow of calculations of the 
whole Yurok population being undertaken : 


1,052 (=26X 40) +1,133 (=28 x 40) =2,185. 
1,052 (=20 X53) +1,105 (=21 X53) =2,155. 
1,052 (=17 X62) +1,300 (=21 X62) = 2,352. 


The conclusion is that the aggregate Yurok population can not 
have been much below and was certainly not above 2,500. 

This figure is precisely the estimate arrived at from acquaintance 
with the settlements and sites of recent years, their house pits, and 
discussion with the older Indians of the number of inhabited houses 
they remember from their youth. 


A count of the upper Yurok villages, also made about 1852 by an early resi- 
dent on the river, is less itemized than the preceding, but yields 544 persons 
in 68 houses from Wahsekw to Otsepor, and an average house population of 
eight. The map has only six villages in this reach. 

Five hundred and forty-four added to 1,052 makes 1,596. There is a gap of 
nearly 10 miles, which the first authority estimates to have had 310 inhabitants. 
This seems a high figure, since there were only five settlements, and two of 
these not admitted as old or permanent by the modern Yurok. Perhaps Kepel 
and Wahsekw have been counted twice. A reduction to 200 still leaves the 
total for the River Yurok at 1,800 in 37 settlements. Seventeen coast villages, 
exclusive of Rekwoi and Wetlkwau, would have 800 inhabitants at the same 
ratio. But as the coast towns make the impression of having been somewhat 
smaller than those on the river, and not more than one or two were distinctly 
populous, this figure can be reduced to 600 or 700; which, added to the 1,800 
on the river, brings us again to barely 2,500. This number seems almost cer- 
tain to be true within not to exceed 100 or 200 at the time of first American 
eontact. 


These data, so far as they relate to house and village population, 


probably hold with little change for all the specifically northwestern 
groups; that is, the Karok, Hupa, Tolowa, Yurok, and with some re- 


18 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


duction for the Chilula. The populousness per riparian mile fluc- 
tuated according to local conditions, as is set forth in connection with 
the Wiyot; while any computation based on area of land held would 
be worthless. Prohibitive caution would also have to be exercised 
in applying any of these figures to other parts of California. Not 
only the topography and natural resources but customs vary enor- 
mously. 

The Government expedition sent through the Klamath region in 1851 to 
negotiate with the Indians did not follow the river below Wahsekw, but 32 
Yurok villages were mentioned by the Indians as lying between Bluff Creek 
and the mouth. This tallies closely with the present map. At the ratio then 
estimated of 10 persons to the house and 9 houses per village, the population 
on the river would have been nearly 3,000; but this figure seeming excessive, 


it was cut in half by the recorder as still liberal. Recent counts of houses and 
house pits recollected as inhabited, total over 170 for the Rekwoi-Kepel stretch. 


Modern Modern 
memo- 1852 memo- 1852 
ries. count. ries. count. 

Rekwoi-Wetlkwau______ 23+ Oo ES recon eo Ma aie ee oe 6 Z 
HG; GG eee ee 9 Gaja Meth = ae eee ER ese 7 6 
Wioh Kel 521s ees 2 ot Nontskal in het 22 ee Se 4 4 
eta he: | 6 Seer SM! SS 5 2 | Murekw-Himetl ________ pa | 14 
TUG) 2 oe 2 eee 8+ 14° }° Sa "a: Keele eee 14 6 
SOlper a oben eset woe 3 4 —_ | —»———— 
Wohkero-Wohtek_______ 13 ic 154+ 141 
Ke’ otep 23 320 eee 18 24 | Other settlements ______ 19 
PEK Wall 28 £00 mete eae elites 20 ae 
Wish ter ii) | Ser Voy ees 4 3 1734+" 


The Yurok recognize that a village normally contained more 
named house sites than inhabited houses. Families died out, con- 
solidated, or moved away. The pit of their dwelling remained and 
its name would also survive for a generation or two. If allowance 
is made for parts of villages washed out by floods and possibly by 
mining, or dwellings already abandoned when the American came 
and totally forgotten 60 years later, the number of house sites on 
these 80 miles of river may be set at 200 or more in place of 173. 
In other words, there were two houses to each three recognized house 
sites among the Yurok in native times. 


2Waterman, Yurok Geography, 1920, p. 206, gives a somewhat different distribution of 
the number of houses in the towns between Rekwoi and Kepel, but an almost indentical 
total of 171 plus a few in small settlements. For the Yurok as a whole he tabulates 324 
houses in 47 recognized towns, besides which there were 16 minor settlements in which 
there remained only house pits during native memory or for which recollection failed. 
The total of 524 multiplied by 74 yields 2,430 as the Yurok population. Unoccupied 
houses in the larger towns would probably more than make up for inhabited but un- 
counted houses in the smaller settlements. On page 209 he lists 107 different names 
borne by 219 different houses. Of these, 23 names of 111 houses refer to position in the 
town, 17 names of 24 houses describe the structure, and 6 names of 12 houses have 
religious reference, 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 19 


A count of the same 17 villages on the lower Klamath in 1895 revealed a total 
of 151 houses, or 10 more than in 1852, But instead of 1,052 Indians only 
384 were living, and these partly of mixed blood. There were 141 men, 136 
women, 55 boys, and 52 girls, or only about 24 souls per house—a third of the 
ratio in native times. ‘ 

The majority of these 151 dwellings were built in American fashion. It was 

customary, by this time, for a family to have two or three houses, or a native 
and an American house. The principal change in relative size of villages was 
between Ko’otep and Wohtek-Wohkero. The former was overwhelmed with 
mud in the great floods of 1861-62, and most of the inhabitants moved to the 
atter site. In 1852 Ko’otep had 24 of the 31 houses in the group, in 1895 
only 6 out of 37. Turip also suffered from flood and declined from 14 houses 
to 5 in the interval, while Rekwoi, favored with a trading post like Wohtekw- 
Wohkero, rose from 22 to 80 in 1895. 

On the basis of 382 people in these 17 settlements, the Yurok population in 
1895 may be set at 900, or perhaps a little less on account of a more rapid 
decrease along the coast than on the river. 


The Federal census of 1910 reported 668 Yurok. This figure 
probably includes substantially all full and half bloods, and part of 
the quarter breeds. 


CHAPTER 2. 
THE YUROK: LAW AND CUSTOM. 


Principles of Yurok law, 20; money, 22; treasure, 26; valuations, 27; blood 
money, 28; marriage laws, 28; debt slavery, 32; fishing privileges, 33; 
ownership of land, 34; law of ferriage, 35; legal status of the shaman, 35; 
mourners’ rights, 87; inheritance, 39; rich and poor, 39; pursuit of wealth, 
40; marriage and the town, 42; the crises of life, 44; names, 47; war, 49. 


PRINCIPLES OF YUROK LAW. 


These are the standards by which the Yurok regulate their con- 
duct toward one another: 


1. All rights, claims, possessions, and privileges are individual and personal, 
and all wrongs are against individuals. There is no offense against the com- 
munity, no duty owing it, no right or power of any sort inhering in it. 

2. There is no punishment, because a political state or social unit that might 
punish does not exist, and because punishment by an individual would constitute 
a new offense which might be morally justified but would expose to a new and 
unweakened liability. An act of revenge therefore causes two liabilities to lie 
where one lay before. 

3. Every possession and privilege, and every injury and offense, can be exactly 
valued in terms of property. ; 

4. There is no distinction between material and nonmaterial ownership, right, 
or damage, nor between property rights in persons and in things. 

5. Every invasion of privilege or property must be exactly compensated. 

6. Intent or ignorance, malice or negligence, are never a factor. The fact and 
amount of damage are alone considered. The psychological attitude is as if 
intent were always involved. : 

7. Directness or indirectness of cause of damage is not considered, except in 
so far as a direct cause has precedence over an indirect one. If the agent who 
is directly responsible can not satisfactorily be made amenable, liability auto- 
matically attaches to the next agent or instrument in the chain of causality, and 
So on indefinitely. 

8. Settlement of compensation due is arrived at by negotiation of the parties 
interested or their representatives, and by them alone. 

9. When compensation has been agreed upon and accepted for a claim, this 
claim is irrevocably and totally extinguished. Even the harboring of a sen- 
timent of injury is thereafter improper, and if such sentiment can be in- 
directly connected with the commission of an injury, it establishes a valid 
counter-liability. The known cherishing of resentment will even be alleged 
as prima facie evidence of responsibility in case an injury of undeterminable 
personal agency is suffered. — 

10. Sex, age, nationality, or record of previouS wrongs or damage in- 
flicted or suffered do not in any measure modify or diminish liability. 


20 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 21 


11. Property e:ther possesses a value fixed by custom, or can be valued 
by consideration of payments made for it in previous changes of ownership. 
Persons possess valuations that differ, and the valuation of the same nonmate- 
rial property or privilege varies, according to the rating of the person owning 
it. The rating of persons depends partly upon the amount of property which 
they possess, partly upon the values which have previously passed in transfers 
or compensations concerning themselves or their ancestors. 

One doubtful qualification must be admitted to the principle that 
‘the Yurok world of humanity recognizes only individuals: the claims 
of kinship. These are undoubtedly strong, not only as sentiments 
but in their influence on legal operations. Yet a group of kinsmen is 
not a circumscribed group, as a clan or village community or tribe 
would be. It shades out in all directions, and integrates into in- 
numerable others. It is true that when descent is reckoned unilater- 
ally, a body of kinsmen in the lineage of the proper sex tends to 
maintain identity for long periods and can easily become treated 
aSa group. It is also conceivable that such patrilinear kin units exist 
in the consciousness of Yurok society, and have merely passed un- 
noticed because they bear no formal designations. Yet this seems 
unlikely. A rich man is always spoken of as the prominent person of 
a town, not of a body of people. In the case of a full and dignified 
marriage, the bond between brothers-in-law seems to be active as well 
as close. Women certainly identify themselves with their husbands’ 
interests as heartily as with those of their parents and brothers on 
most occasions. These facts indicate that relationship through fe- 
males is also regarded by the Yurok; and such being the case, it is 
impossible for a kin group not to have been sufficiently connected 
with other kin groups to prevent either being marked off as an in- 
tegral unit. Then, a “ half-married ”* man must have acted in common 
with the father-in-law in whose house he lived; and his children in 
turn would be linked, socially and probably legally, to the grand- 
father with whom they grew up as well as with their paternal 
grandfather and his descendant. So, too, it is clear that a married 
woman’s kin as weil as her husband retained an interest in her. If 
the latter beat her, her father had a claim against him. Were she 
killed, the father as well as the husband would therefore be injured; 
and there can be little doubt that something of this community of 
interest and claim would descend to her children. Kinship, accord- 
ingly, operated in at least some measure bilaterally and consequently 
diffusively ; so that a definite unit of kinsmen acting as a group ca- 
pable of constituted social action did not exist. 

This attitude can also be justified juridically, if we construe every 
Yurok as having a reciprocal legal and property interest in every one 
of his kin, proportionate, of course, to the proximity of the re- 
lationship. A has an interest in his kinsmen X, Y, and Z similar to 


eps BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


his interest in his own person, and they in him. If A is injured, 
the claim is his. If he is killed, his interest in himself passes to 
X, Y, Z—first, or most largely, to his sons, next to his brothers; 
in their default to his brothers’ sons—much as his property interests 
pass, on his natural death, to the same individuals. The only dif- 
ference is that the claim of blood is reciprocal, possession of goods 
or privilege absolute or nearly so. 

It may be added that this interpretation of Yurok law fits very 
nicely the practices prevailing in regard to wife purchase. Here 
the interest in a person is at least largely ceded by her kinsmen 
for compensation received. 

It is men that hold and press claims and receive damages for 
women and minors, but only as their natural guardians. The rights 
of a woman are in no sense curtailed by her sex, nor those of a 
child by its years; but both are in the hands of adult male trustees. 
Old women whose nearer male kin have died often have considerable 
property in their possession. The weakness of their status is merely 
that they are unable to press their just claims by the threat of force, 
not that their claim is less than that of a man. 

It may be asked how the Yurok executed their law without po- 
litical authority being in existence. The question is legitimate; but 
a profounder one is why we insist on thinking of law only as a 
function of the state when the example of the Yurok, and of many 
other nations, proves that there is no inherent connection between 
legal and political institutions. The Yurok procedure is simplic- 
ity itself. Each side to an issue presses and resists vigorously, 
exacts all it can, yields when it has to, continues the controversy 
when continuance promises to be profitable or settlement is clearly 
suicidal, and usually ends in compromising more or less. Power. 
resolution, and wealth give great advantages; justice is not always 
done; but what people can say otherwise of its practices? The 
Yurok, like all of us, accept the conditions of their world, physical 
and social; the individual lives along as best he may; and the 
institutions go on. 


MONEY. 


The money of the Yurok was dentalium shells. Dentalia occur in 
California, the species ). hexagonum inhabiting the southern coast, 
and 1). indianorum perhaps the northern. Both species, however, 
live in the sand in comparatively deep water, and seem not to have 
been taken alive by any of the California Indians. The Yurok cer- 
tainly were not aware of the presence of the mollusk along their 
ocean shore, and received their supply of the “ tusk ” shells from the 
north. They knew of them as coming both along the coast and 
down the Klamath River. Since the direction of the first of these 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 23 


sources is “downstream” to them, they speak in their traditions 
of the shells living at the downstream and upstream ends of the 
world, where strange but enviable peoples live who suck the flesh of 
the univalves. 

Dentalia are known to have been fished by the Indians of Van- 
couver Island, and were perhaps taken by some tribes farther south ; 
but it is certain that every piece in Yurok possession had traveled 
many miles, probably hundreds, and passed through a series of 
mutually unknown nations. 

The Yurok grade their shells very exactly according to length, 
on which alone the value depends. They are kept in strings that 
reach from the end of an average man’s thumb to the point of his 
shoulder. Successive shells have the butt end in opposite direction so 
as not to slip into one another. The pieces on one string are as nearly 
as possible of one size. So far as they vary, they are arranged in 
order of their length. But shells of sufficiently different size to be 
designated by distinct names are never strung together, since this 
would make value reckoning as difficult as 1f we broke coins into 
pieces. The length of “strings” was not far from 274 inches, but 
of course never exactly the same, since a string contained only an 
integral number of shells and these, like all organisms, varied. The 
cord itself measured a yard or more. This allowed the shells to be 
slid along it and separated for individual measurement without the 
necessity of unstringing. The sizes and names of the shells are as 
follows: 














Length o , , : 

sh alin a ey Hae ee of Bre Dene of Y uit: of , ee of siting of 
dS ee Kergerpitl..... Dingket......| Kohtepis...... Moanatla...... 11 
oy aera ORO LO ge tie ccs. Kiketukut-hoi | Na’apis......- Moananah.... . 12 
2 ee NVOERR sx ce aayke Chwolahit.....| Nahksepitl....) Moanatak..... 13 
2—.......| Hewiyem..... Hostanhit ....| Ta’anepitl..... Moanadingk... 14 
1f—...... BERS UAL 2 be cy oh eee oie wee A ieeaythe #5 RALSS oe aed YW See 15 

















The Yurok further distinguish tsewosteu, which is a little shorter than mero- 
stan, though still money. Possibly tsewostew was the name of the 15-to-the- 
string shells, and merostan—sometimes called “ young man’s money ’’-—de- 
noted a size of which 143 measured a string. The Yurok further specify the 
length, both of pieces and of strings, by adding a number of qualifying terms, 
especially oweyemek and wohpekemek, which denote various degrees of short- 
ness from standard. 

Dentalia which go more than 15 or 154 shells to the string are necklace beads. 
These come in three sizes, fterkutem, skayuperwern, and wetskaku, the latter 
being the shortest. The value of all these was infinitely less than that of 
money, and they were strung in fathoms or half-fathoms, the grade being esti- 


24 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 


mated by eye, not measured. Ten half-fathom strings of terkutem were equal 
to about one 13-string of money; making a rate of an American dollar or less 
per yard. 

The Karok call dentalia ishpuk, the broken bead lengths apmananich. The 
largest size of money shells is pisiwraiwa, the next pisiwawa afishni, the third 
shisharetiropaop. 


All sizes of dentalia have depreciated since first contact with the 
whites, so that valuations given to-day in terms of American money 
fluctuate; but the following appear to have been the approximate 
early ratings, which in recent years have become reduced about one- 


half: 


Value of Value of 

To string. shell. string. 
11 $5. 00 $50. 00 

12 2. OO 20. 00 

13 1, 00 10. 00 

14 . 50 5. 00 

15 25 2. 50 


From this it is clear that an increase in length of shell sufficient 
to reduce by one the number of pieces required to fill a standard string 
about doubled its value. 

Dentalia of the largest size were exceedingly scarce. A string of 
them might now and then be paid for a wife by a man of great promi- 
nence; but never two strings. Possession of a pair of such strings was 
sufficient to make a man well known. 

Shells are often but not always incised with fine lines or angles, and fre- 
quently slipped into the skin of a minute black and red snake, or wound spirally 
with strips of this skin. The ends of the cord are usually knotted into a minute 
tuft of scarlet woodpecker down. All these little devices evince the loving at- 
tention with which this money was handled but do not in the least enhance its 
value, 

As might be expected, the value of dentalia was greater in Cali- 
fornia than among the northern tribes at the source of supply. In 
Washington or northern Oregon, as among the Yurok, a slave was 
rated at a string; but the northern string was a fathom long. Among 
the Nutka, money was still cheaper: it took 5 fathoms of it to buy a 
slave. 

The size of the shells used in the north has, however, not been ac- 
curately determined. For the Oregon-Washington region, 40 shells 
were reckoned to the fathom, which gives an individual length averag- 
ing at the lowest limit of what the Yurok accepted as money, or even a 
little less. In British Columbia it is stated that 25 pieces must stretch 
a fathom. This would yield an average of considerably over 24 
inches, or more than the very longest shells known to the Yurok. It 
may be added that the fathom measure was in constant use among 
the Yurok for almost everything but money. | 


KROPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 25 


The actual valuing of dentalia was individual or in groups of fives, the length 
of men’s arms being too variable and the size of shells too irregular to permit 
of exact appraisals by treating a string as a unit. The shells on a cord were 
therefore turned over and matched against each other, and then laid against the 
fingers from crease to crease of the joints. The largest size was gauged from 
the farther crease of the little finger to the fold in the palm below; according to 
some accounts, the measure was also taken on the index. Other sizes were 
matched against the middle finger. A shell from a full 18-piece string was 
supposed to extend precisely from the base of this finger to the last crease and 
was called wetlemek wega. A 12-to-the-string shell, of course, passed beyond. 

Measurement was also by fives, from the end of the thumbnail to a series of 
lines tattooed across the forearm. These indelible marks were made from fives 
of known value, and served as a standard not dependent on bodily peculiarities. 

The generic Yurok name for dentalium is ¢s#k. Since the coming 
of the whites it has also been known as o#/ we-tstk, “human beings 
their dentalium,” that is, “ Indian money,” in distinction from Amer1- 
can coins. The early settlers corrupted this to “ allicocheek,” used 
the term to the Indians, and then came to believe that it was a native 
designation common to all the diverse languages of the region. 

Dentalium is frequently personified by the Yurok. Pelin-tsieh, 
“Great Dentalium,” enters frequently into their myths as if he were 
a man, and in some versions is almost a creator. Z'ego’o is also a 
character in legend. 

All other shells were insignificant beside dentala in Yurok con- 
sideration. Olivellas were strung and used for ornament, but did 
not rate as currency. Haliotis, which seems to have been imported 
from the coast to the south of Cape Mendocino, was hberally used 
on the fringe of Yurok women’s dresses, on ear pendants, in the 
inlay of pipes, and the hike. But it also never became money and did 
not nearly attain the value of good dentalia. Now and then a short 
length of disk beads from central California penetrated to the Yurok, 
but as a prized variety rather than an article of recognized value. 

A myth, told, it may be noted, by a Coast Yurok of Hshpeu married at 
Orekw, narrates how the dentalia journeyed by the shore from the north. At 
the mouth of the Klamath the small shells went south along the coast, but 
Pelintsiek and Tego’o continued up the river. At Ho’opeu and Serper Tego’o 
wished to enter, at Turip his larger companion; but in each ease the other 
refused. At Ko’otep and Shreggon they went in. Pekwan they did not enter, 
but said that it would contain money. Nohtsku’m and Meta they passed by. 
At Murekw they entered, as at Sa’a and Wa/’asei, and left money. At Kenek, 
Pelintsiek wished to leave money, but apparently did not do so. At Wahsekw 
and again at Weitspus they went in and left three shells. At Pekwututl also 
they entered, and there the story ends with Pelintsiek’s saying that some money 
must continue upstream (to the Karok) and up the Trinity to the Hupa. The 
tale records the Yurok idea as to the situation of wealth; it illustrates their 
interest in money; and although a somewhat extreme example, is a character- 
istic representation of their peculiar mythology, with its minimum of plot 


interest, intense localization, and rationalizing accounting of particular human 
institutions. 


26 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 
TREASURE. 


Of articles other than shells, those that approach nearest to the 
character of money are woodpecker scalps. These are of two sizes, 
both of them scarlet and beautifully soft: those from the larger 
bird are slightly more brilliant. The two kinds of scalp are known 
as kokoneu (Karok: furah) and terker’it. The former are rated at 
$1 to $1.50 each, the latter variously at 10, 15, and 25 cents. The 
native ratio seems to have been 6 to 1. Woodpecker scalps differ 
from dentalia in that they have value as material, being worked into 
magnificent dance headdresses, and used as trimming on other re- 
galia. They represent the Yurok idea of the acme of splendor. Den- 
talium currency is never worn or exhibited in display, and being 
entirely without intrinsic utility or ornamental possibility, is wholly 
and purely money. 

Deerskins of rare colors and large blades of obsidian and flint 
possessed high values; in fact, all objects carried in dances repre- 
sented wealth. But these Adee varied so greatly according to 
color, size, fineness, or workmanship, that their civilized equivalents 
are jewels rather than money. At the same time, there was a strong 
tendency, as can be seen from the examples below, to make part of 

every payment of consequence in a variety of articles. When large 
sums changed ownership, as in the purchase of a high-class wife or 
settlement for the death of a rich man, not more thie about half 
the total seems to have been in iota In the same way strings 
paid over were of graduated sizes, not all of one value. These facts 
indicate that a proper variety and balance of wealth as well as quan- 
tity were considered desirable. 

Even a common deerskin represented value when prepared for 
dance use. Besides the hide, there was the labor of stuffing the 
head, and woodpecker scalps were needed for eyes, ears, throat, 
and tongue. An unusually light or dark skin was worth more, 
and those that the Yurok call “gray” and “black” and “red” 
are estimated at $50 to $100. A pure albino skin, with transparent 
hoofs, is rated at $250 to $500. But this is a theoretic valuation 
given for the sake of comparison. The Yurok state that fine white 
skins did not change ownership. Their possession was known far 
and wide and to part with one on any consideration would have 
been equivalent to a king selling his crown. (Pls. 2, 3.) 

Similarly with obsidians. The usual Hatenenk that these are 
worth $1 an inch of length is'true for blades of half a foot to a 
foot. A 20-inch piece, however, would be held at about $50, and the 
few renowned giants that reach 30 and even 33 inches are, from 
the native point of view, inestimable. The above applies to black 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 2 





YUROK TREASURES, EXHIBITED IN DANCES: 
OBSIDIAN BLADES, THE SMALLER RED, THE 
LARGER BLACK AND 133 INCHES LONG 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN, 78 PEATEs 





HUPA WHITE DEERSKIN DANCE; THE PERFORMERS IN FRONT 
OF THE LINE DISPLAYING OBSIDIANS 





YUROK MAKING A BOAT 


KROPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA Oh | 


obsidian. The red, which is rarer and does not come in as large 
pieces, is worth considerably more. Most valuable of all are the 
blades of white flint, which can not be chipped quite as evenly as 
the obsidian, but can be worked broader and somewhat thinner. 
The largest of these run to about a foot and a half long. 


VALUATIONS. 


The following are some Yurok valuations, apparently on the 
modern basis of a 12-dentalium string being worth 10 American 
dollars : 


A large boat, that is, a capacious one—the length is uniform—was worth 
two 12-strings, one full and one short; or 10 large or 60 small woodpecker 
sealps. 

A small boat: One 18-string or 3 large woodpecker heads. 

A very small boat carrying two men: Five shells from a 18-string. 

The Karok put a boat at two strings of small shells. 

A blanket of two deerskins sewn together and painted is said to have been 
worth a small boat. This seems a high valuation; but the Karok say, 4 to 
10 medium or short dentalia or a whole string of small ones, if the skins are 
ample. 

A quiver of otter or fisher fur, with bow and 40 arrows, was the equivalent 
of a good-sized boat. The Karok reckon an otter skin worth 4 to 7 dentalia. 

An entire eagle skin—the birds were shot with the bow at a bait of deer 
meat on mountain tops—was worth only one shell of smallest size. 

A woman’s capful of tobacco, one small shell. 

A house, 3 strings. 

A well-conditioned house of redwood planks, 5 strings. 

A fishing place, 1 to 3 strings. Two instances are known of Karok fishing 
rights having been sold for $5. The value must have been very variable. 

A tract bearing acorns, 1 to 5 strings. 

The meat from a ‘‘ small” section—perheps a half fathom—of a whale, 1 
string, presumably of short shells. 

A “black,” “red,” or mottled deer skin, dressed for dance use, 5 strings. 

A light gray skin, 6 strings. 

A white skin, 10 strings. 

Obsidian or flint blades, 2 to 10 strings. 

A headband, sraisplegok, of 50 large woodpecker scalps, 10 strings. This 
seems too high a rating in comparison with the others. Small shells must be 
meant. 

Doctors’ fees were high: $10 to $20—that is, 1 to 2 strings of good money-——are 
specified as the cost of a treatment. 

A slave was rated at only 1 or 2 strings. Evidently the Yurok did not know 
how to exact full value from the labor of their bondsmen, not because the latter 
could not be held to work, but because industry was too little organized. 

For a wife from a wealthy family 10 strings seem to have been expected, made 
up, perhaps, of one of 11 shells, one of 12, two of 12 short, and so on, with per- 
haps a headband of 50 woodpecker scalps, an obsidian, a boat, ete. One Yurok 
boasted of having paid 14 strings for his wife, plus as much more in other prop- 


28 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


erty, including two headbands, the whole representing $800 American at the 
lower valuation here followed. 

For a poorer girl 8 strings and a boat might be given. 

The Karok say that a wife was worth 5 to 10 strings. Among both tribes, 
therefore, a man’s life came somewhat higher than what he would pay for a 
bride of his own rank; which rating, seeing that her relatives did not have to 
mourn her, is rather favorable to the woman, 

For “ half-marriage”’ the price actually paid seems to have been rather less 
than half. 

For the killing of a man.of standing the cost was 15 strings, plus, perhaps, a 
red obsidian, a woodpecker scalp headband, and other property, besides a 
daughter. The Karok also quote a man’s price at 15 strings. 

A common man Was worth 10 strings, probably of somewhat shorter dentalia, 
plus, perhaps, 20 large scalps and a good boat. 

For a bastard 5 to 6 strings, presumably of small shells, and a few loose 
woodpecker scalps, are mentioned as usual blood money. 

Seduction and pregnancy were rated as calling for 5 strings, or perhaps 20 
woodpecker scalps. For a second child the compensation would be less, about 
3 strings. The Karok say 2 to 3 strings for seduction, but 4 to 7 if the father 
took his illegitimate child. 

Adultery came at about the same figure. 

Uttering the name of a dead man called for the payment of about 2 strings 
of 18 shells. For a rich man 8 strings of somewhat better money might be 
demanded. 

For breaking a mourning necklace, whether by accident or in play, three or 
four pieces of money were given. 


BLOOD MONEY 


The principles of weregild are sufficiently clear from what has been 
said; an instance or two may be worth adding. 


An American at Rekwoi engaged a number of Indians to transport stores 
from Crescent City. In the surf and rocks at the dangerous entrance to the 
Klamath a canoe was lost and four natives drowned. Compensation was of 
course demanded; when it was not forthcoming, the American was ambushed 
and killed by the brother of one of the dead men. According to one version, 
the goods were Government property, and the trader responsible only for 
their transport. The Indians’ claims are said to have been forwarded to the 
Government, but while officials pondered or refused, the Indians, losing hope 
of a settlement, fell back on the revenge which alone remained to them. 

In a Karok myth dealing with the establishment of institutions, it is said in so 
many words that “if they kill and do not pay, fighting will be perpetual. If a 
woman is not paid for, there will be bad repute; but if she is bought, everyone 
will know that so much was given for her, and she will have a good name.” 

A Yurok myth, which tells of five brothers who made the sky, instituted 
money and property, and provided for purification from corpse contamination, 
has them say: “If human beings own money and valuables they will be 
pleased and think of them. They will not be vindictive; and they will not 
kill readily, because they will not wish to pay away what they have and prize.” 


MARRIAGE LAWS. 


In marriage the rank of husband and wife and children depended 
on the amount paid for the woman. People’s social status was 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 29 


determined not only by what they possessed, but by what had been 
given by their fathers for their mothers. Men of wealth made ¢ 
point of paying large sums for their brides. They thereby en- 
hanced their own standing and insured that of their children. A 
young man of repute preserved the tradition of his lineage and 
honored the person and family of his wife in proportion as he paid 
liberally for her. A poor man was despised not only for his lack 
of substance, but for the little that he gave for the mother of his 
children, and for the mean circumstances surrounding his own 
origin. A bastard was one whose birth had never been properly paid 
for, and he stood at the bottom of the social scale. 

How far the wishes of girls were consulted it is difficult to say, 
but marriages in which they were unwilling partners are spoken of. 
We are likely to think in such cases of mercenary fathers intent on 
profit, when perhaps the main motive in the parents’ minds was an 
honorable alliance and a secure and distinguished career for the 
daughter. 

“ Half-marriage” was not rare. The bridegroom paid what he 
could and worked out a reasonable balance in services to his father- 
in-law. Of course he lived in the old man’s house and was de- 
pendent on him for some years, whereas the full-married man took 
his wife home at once—in fact had her brought to him. It is not 
certain how often half-marriage was the result of deliberate nego- 
tiations, and how frequently a device for decently patching up a 
love affair. 

In a full marriage the groom was represented by two intermedi- 
aries, kinsmen, and the price was very exactly specified and carefully 
considered. A young man rarely possessed sufficient property in his 
own right, and received the purchase money from his father, or from 
the latter and his brothers. This was not a formal loan, the blood 
feeling being very strong among the Yurok. When the bride arrived, 
at least among the well bred, a considerable amount of property 
accompanied her. Ten baskets of dentalia, otter skins, and other com- 
pact valuables, a canoe or two, and several deerskin blankets, seem 
to have passed in this way among the wealthy, without any previous 
bargaining or specification. In this way a rich father voluntarily 
returned part of the payment made him, the Yurok say. However, 
on a divorce taking place, these gifts must be returned as fully as the 
stipulated purchase price. 

Sometimes two men traded their sisters to each other for wives; 
but in such case each nevertheless paid to the other the full amount 
of money, as if a single purchase were being transacted. In short, 
the formality of payment was indispensable to a marriage. 

On the death of the father of a household, his sons would be en- 
titled to the price received when their sisters were married. In 


30 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 78 


default of sons, the dead man’s brothers arranged the marriage of 
their nieces and received the pay for them. A man sometimes gave 
to his son part of the money he received at his daughter’s wedding, 
or used the whole of it to buy his son a wife. 

Pressing debt sometimes led to betrothal. An infant daughter 
might be sold to another man for his little boy, the children perhaps 
remaining in ignorance of their relation. As soon as the girl had 
passed her adolescence the marriage was consummated. 

Sometimes an arrangement was entered into by which a youth re- — 
ceived the sister of a sick or crippled man in return for labor or 
services rendered him. 

Divorce was by wish of either party, and entailed only complete 
repayment. A woman could leave her husband at will, provided 
her kin were ready to refund; though this was not their usual dis- 
position unless she had been abused. A man, it seems, was not ex- 
pected to divorce his wife without cause; such as laziness. Probably 
if a reasonable allegation could not be produced, the woman’s rela- 
tives would refuse to repay him, in which case the divorce, while 
still thoroughly open to him, would be an absurd loss. 

An implied condition of purchase of a wife was that she bear 
children. Sterility therefore meant nonfulfillment of contract, and 
was perhaps the most frequent cause of divorce. If a couple with 
children separated, the woman could take them with her only on full 
repayment of her original price. On the other hand, each child left 
with the husband reduced the repayment, and several canceled it 
altogether. Theoretically, therefore, the average middle-aged or 
elderly woman with adult children was free to return to her par- 
ents’ house, and remained with her husband from choice alone. This 
privilege is clear, but the Yurok do not seem to formulate it, perhaps 
because its exercise was not a normal occurrence. 

Similarly, it might be inferred that a wife was bought for a 
natural span of life. If she died young a sister or kinswoman was 
due the husband. If he passed away first his equity did not lapse 
but remained in the family, and she was married by his brother. 
In either event, however, a payment, smaller than the original one, 
was made to her family. In case of the wife’s death this might be 
interpreted as due to a desire to distribute the loss between the two 
families involved, since the furnishing of a marriageable and there- 
fore valuable substitute, perhaps repeatedly, wholly gratis, would 
work hardship on the woman’s kin. The payment by the dead man’s 
brother, however, can not well be understood except on the basis 
that the woman’s family retained an interest in her after her mar- 
riage. A more likely interpretation of both cases is that the Yurok 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF GCALIFORNIA 31 


did not operate on principles so legalistically defined, but held to a 
generic notion that no union could take place without a payment. 
The amount given appears to have been nearly half of the original 
price, although the Indians customarily speak of it as “a little.” 

It is said that even when a married woman of some age died her 
kinsmen were required to provide a substitute or repay her original 
purchase price unless she had borne three or four children. If she 
had had only one or two children, partial repayment was due. 

It may be added that a full year elapsed before the widow’s re- 
marriage to her brother-in-law. During this time she kept her hair 
very short, did not go about much, cried considerably, lived on in 
her dead husband’s house, and kept his property together. 

The levirate, as it is called, and the corresponding custom of 
marrying the sister of the dead or living wife were universal in 
California, although among many tribes payment for the wife was 
shght or nominal and among some lacking. The particular legal 
ideas which the Yurok have connected with these customs can there- 
fore not be regarded as causative of the customs. Historically it 
is extremely probable that priority must be granted to the levirate, 
the Yurok merely investing this with the economic considerations 
that shaped all their life. The foregoing interpretations of Yurok 
marriage laws must accordingly be construed only as an attempt to 
make precise a point of view, not as a genetic explanation. Ethno- 
logically, the significance of the group of tribes represented by the 
Yurok hes largely in the fact that whereas their practices, when com- 
pared with those of the bulk of the Indians of California, are ob- 
viously closely similar at most points, or at least parallel, they never- 
theless possess a distinctive aspect and value throughout. 

If a man was jealous and beat his wife without due cause she was 
likely to return to her parents. Sometimes her father would then 
dissolve the marriage by returning the purchase price. Her maltreat- 
ment did not of itself nullify the marriage transaction. But it 
did cause a claim for lability, and her relatives seem to have been 
entitled to keep the woman until her husband had paid them damages 
for his abuse of her, whereupon he resumed full jurisdiction over 
her. This provision appeals to us perhaps primarily as one of 
humanity. Juridically it is of interest as indicating that a woman’s 
kin retained a legal interest in her. Unfortunately we do not know 
how blood money for a married woman was distributed. It may be 
suspected that its amount was somewhat greater than her marriage 
price, the excess going to her relatives. 


A curious practice was followed in the Wohtek Deerskin dance following 
the Kepel fish dam. Before this was finished on the hill at Plohkseu, they 


3625°—25——4 


oe, BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Ganced downstream from Wohkero at Helega’au. Here the old men made 
men tell what their fathers had paid for their mothers. Those of moderate 
ancestry were permitted. to dance; the rich-born and the illegitimate were both 
excluded. 

A Karok woman born at Ashipak about the time the Americans came had 
relatives among the Yurok of Rekwoi, the Hupa, and the Shasta. Her grand- 
father had had wives in or from five different places. For some of these he had 
paid only partially, the agreefment being that the children should remain in the 
mother’s house. It is likely that this is a case of a wealthy man’s love affairs 
legalized after pregnancy set in, rather than of formally proposed marriage; 
and that the payments made, and the status of the father, were sufficient to 
remove serious stigma. 

Adultery was of course paid for to the husband. From 1 to 5 
strings are mentioned as the fine. 

Constructive adultery also constituted an injury. Speech or com- 
munication between a woman and a former lover made the latter 
liable. If he met her on the trail he might have to pay a medium- 
sized string. If he came into a house in which she sat the husband 
was likely to charge that the visit was intentional, and on pressing 
his claim might succeed in obtaining double compensation. 

Two reasons are given for the payment for seduction. A woman’s 
first bearing is hard and she might die; also, her price to her future 
husband is spoiled; that is, reduced. 


DEBT SLAVERY. 


Slavery was a recognized institution but scarcely an important 
one. The proportion of slave population was small, probably not 
over one-twentieth, certainly not over a tenth. One Yurok man had 
three slaves, but he was exceptionally rich, and may not have 
owned them simultaneously. Slaves entered their condition solely 
through debt, never through violence. Men were not taken prison- 
ers in war, and women and children were invariably restored when 
settlement was made; solitary strangers that elsewhere might have 
been oppressed were suspected and killed by the Yurok. Debt arose 
from legal rather than economic vicissitudes, Yurok industry and 
finance being insufficiently developed for a man to fall gradually 
into arrears from lack of subsistence or excessive borrowing. The 
usual cause was an act of physical violence or destruction of prop- 
erty; striking a rich man’s son, for instance, or speaking the name 
of a dead person of wealth. Slaves made string and nets, fished, 
and performed similar work. They were not killed in display of 
wealth, as farther north on the coast, the Yurok seeing no sense in 
the destruction of property except when carried away by spite. 
Slaves, however, were full property. An owner might buy his slave 
a wife to keep him contented; the children then belonged to the 


KROEEER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 83 


master. The institution seems to have been unknown in California 
except for the advanced northwestern tribes. 

It appears that female relatives paid in blood settlement by poor 
people became slaves or of kindred status. It is said that if the 
man to whom such a woman was handed over wished to marry her, 
or to give her in marriage to a kinsman, he paid a small amount to 
her family. This indicates that the law accorded him a right to 
her services, not to her person, and the former was the only right 
in her which he could transfer on sale. 

A bastard, in burning over a hillside, once set fire to certain valuables which 
a rich man of Sregon had concealed in the vicinity. He was unable to com- 
pensate and became the other’s slave. Subsequently the Sregonite killed a 
Tolowa, and transferred the slave as part of the blood money. This was long 
after the American was in the land; but the slave knew that if he attempted 
to avail himself of the protection of the white man’s law, he would be liable 
under the native code and probably ambushed and killed by his master. He 
therefore arranged with him to purchase his liberty, apparently with money 
earned by services to Americans. 

The Yurok state that their slaves did not attempt to run off. A 
slave might evade a new master; in which case his old proprietor 
would be appealed to and would threaten him with instant death if 
he did not return to the service of his new owner. It must be 
remembered that enslavement of foreigners was not practiced. 
Among his own or known people, public sentiment would support 
the master and not the slave. If the latter fled to aliens, his status 
would at best remain the same, his condition would certainly be 
worse, and he was likely to be killed at once as an unprotected and 
unwelcome stranger. 

Payment for a murdered slave was, of course, due his master, not 
his kinsmen. <A rich owner would receive a high settlement. It is 
the old story of values being determined not only intrinsically but 
according to the value borne by the owner or claimant. 


FISHING PRIVILEGES. 


If several men jointly owned a fishing place, which seems to have 
been the case with nearly all the most prolific eddies, they used it in 
rotation for one or more days according to their share, relieving each 
other about the middle of the afternoon for 24-hour periods. Thus 
a famous Karok spot called Ishkeishahachip, formerly on the north 
side of the river at the foot of the Ashanamkarak fall, but subse- 
quently obliterated or spoiled by the river, belonged for one day to an 
Ashanamkarak man; for one to a man from Ishipishi, a mile above; 
for one to the head man of the village opposite Orleans, a dozen 
miles downstream; and for two days to the rich man of the village 


34 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


at Red Cap Creek, still farther below. A successful fisherman usu- 
ally gave liberally of his catch to all comers, so that it is no wonder 
that the Yurok have a fondness for stopping to chat with a fisher- 
man whom they are passing. Ifa man allowed another to fish at his 
place, he received the bulk of the catch. If only one salmon was 
taken, the “tenant” kept merely the tail end. 

A fishing place near Wahskw was originally owned by two Weitspus men 
who were not kinsmen, or at any rate not closely related. One of them dying, 
his share passed to his son, who sold it to a Wahsekw man for $5 in American 
money. The new part owner also possessed a place at which he was entitled 
to put up a platform a short distance below. 

It was forbidden to establish a new fishing place or to fish below 
a recognized one. This provision guaranteed the maintenance of 
the value of those in existence, and must have very closely re- 
stricted the total number to those established by tradition and inher- 
itance. 

If one man used another’s fishing place, even without explicit per- 
mission of the owner, and fell and slipped there and cut his leg or 
was bruised, he would at once lay claim to the fishing place as 
damages. People would say to the owner: “It was your place and 
he was hurt; you should pay him.” Perhaps a compromise would be 
effected on the basis of the plaintiff receiving a half interest in the 
privilege of the spot. | 

OWNERSHIP OF LAND. 


Up to a mile or more from the river, all land of any value for 
hunting was privately owned; back of this, there were no claims, nor 
was there much hunting. It may be that deer were scarce away 
from the river; but more likely, the private tracts in the aggregate 
represented accessibility and convenience to the game rather than 
exhaustive control of its total supply. It may be added that the 
Yurok country, being well timbered, was poor in small game, deer 
and elk being the principal objects of the chase. Rich men often 
held three or four inherited tracts, poor people perhaps a single one, 
others none. Poachers were shot. A small creek near Weitspus 
is named Otl-amo, “person caught,” because, according to tradition, 
a poacher was there taken in a deer snare. A wounded animal could 
be pursued anywhere. It belonged to the hunter, and the owner of 
the tract in which it fell had no claim upon it. 

Certain prairies on the Bald Hills, valuable for seed gathering, belonged to 
Weitspus and Wahsekw families, who had bought them from the Chilula. 

A Weitspus man who had killed a fellow resident of that village fled to the 


Coast Yurok, bought himself a small stream that flowed into the ocean not far 
from Osagon Creek, and made his home there. This case is doubly illuminat- 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CAEIFORNIA 35 


ing. It shows the personal heterogeneity of the larger villages, and demon- 
strates that land was bought and sold for abode and asylum—a rather equsuet 
feature in American Indian society. 


The ownership of house sites is discussed elsewhere. 
LAW OF FERRIAGE. 


Free ferriage must at all times be rendered. At least in theory it 
is extended also to those who can not reciprocate because of being 
boatless or in chronic poverty. The underlying assumption of this 
custom seems to be that ferriage is a primal necessity to which every- 
one is at times subject and which everyone is also at times in position 
to relieve. The traveler accordingly has much the status which a 
guest enjoys as regards food, but his claims are crystallized into a 
definite privilege. The Yurok and their neighbors extend the right 
also to Americans resident among them, charging ferriage only to 
transient voyagers. In the old days even an enemy with whom one 
did not speak had to be taken as passenger. Such a man on arriving 
opposite a village shouted. If no one was about but the one who 
bore him a grudge, the latter nevertheless paddled over. The trav- 
eler sat in the boat with his back to the steersman, keeping silence. 
For a refusal to accord ferriage from three to six short dentalia 
could be claimed. If a traveler finds a settlement deserted, he takes 
any boat at the river’s edge and puts himself across, without the least 
care or obligation as to its return. 

The carrier being his passenger’s agent, the latter becomes liable for any 
injury to him. A Yurok of Kenek had his house catch fire while ferrying an ac- 
quaintance. The latter was due to repay his entire loss: except for the service 
rendered the owner would have been-at hand and might have extinguished the 
blaze, the Yurok said. 


LEGAL STATUS OF THE SHAMAN, 


Shaman’s fees for the treatment of disease were very high, as the 
examples previously given indicate. Shamans are said to have fre- 
quently urged their female relatives to try to acquire ‘“ pains ’— 
shamanistic powers—because wealth was easily got thereby. ‘The rule 
was for payment to be tendered with the invitation to cure. Usually 
some negotiation followed. The doctor held out for more; but being 
legally obliged to go was apt to plead indisposition or Hiker of her 
own. The offer was then increased, the pay being actually shown, it 
appears, and, reaching a satisfactory figure, was accepted, and the 
shaman went on her visit. Acceptance, however, implied cure, and 
if this was not attained the entire amount must be returned to the 
patient or his relatives. This was the old law; but the Karok state 
that American physicians’ example has in recent years caused the 


36 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


practice to spring up of the shaman retaining a small part of her fee 
as compensation for her time and trouble. 

Usually the patient felt improved and the doctor returned claim- 
ing a cure. If a relapse followed, she was summoned and came 
again, receiving a small fee. In strict logic, she should have served 
for nothing, the patient not having received the complete cure that 
was tacitly contracted for; but a new effort being involved, there 
seems to have been some concession to this. The principle is analo- 
gous to that which compels a widower to pay a small sum for his 
second wife, who replaces the first. It is as if the law recognized 
the equity of partially distributing the loss in cases that are in their 

nature beyond human agency. This is a mitigating influence that 
contrasts rather strangely and somewhat pleasingly with the re- 
morseless rigor of the main tenor of Yurok law. 

It is a common belief of the Yurok that some shamans ath 
extract one of the pains from a sick person, thus effecting a tempo- 
rary improvement in his condition, but deliberately leave another 
within him, in order to be paid for a second treatment. Other 
shamans sometimes accused them of such malpractice, declaring they 
could see the remaining pain. It is very characteristic that the 
Yurok and their northwestern neighbors think in such cases of the 
shaman’s motives as greed, the other California Indians almost 
invariably as malice. 

It is in accord with this diversity of point of view that one 
scarcely hears among the Yurok of shamans being killed for losing 
patients, one of the commonest of events elsewhere in California. 

On the other hand, the law-spinning inclination of the Yurok is 
manifest in their absolute rule that a shaman who had declined to 
visit a patient was liable, in the event of his death, even after treat- 
ment by another shaman, for the full fee tendered her, or even a 
little more. Only a conflicting case, or genuine sickness of the 
shaman herself, was ground for an attempt on the shaman’s part 
to evade this liability. The argument was that if the fee had been 
accepted and treatment extended, the sick person might not have 
died. Hence the lability was complete up to the amount which the 
patient’s family were ready to offer in his behalf. A Karok shaman 
who had attained some reputation by once appearing to die and then 
returning to tell of her experiences in the other world, subsequently 
laid herself open to a claim for not attending a sick person and 
refused to settle it. The kinsmen of her prospective but deceased 
patient thereupon waylaid her in the brush and choked her to death. 
Many a central and south California doctor has met this fate: but his 
supposed misconduct was intent to kill, as evidenced by failure to 
cure. The northwesterners took satisfaction because a claim for 
damages was not met. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 87 


It is said that people were bewitched not only by shamans hunger- 
ing for fees and by avowed foes, but sometimes by mere enviers, who 
hoped to see a rich man’s wealth yvradually pass from him to his 
physicians. 

A Karok of Katimin began to suffer with headache, and accused a woman 
of having bewitched him, Doubtless there was ill feeling between them. He 
formally voiced his complaint to her brother. The family conferred and offered 
him three strings as damages. He’ refused the amount as insufficient, and 
they, feeling that a sincere effort at reparation had been slighted, announced 
that they would henceforth be inivashan, enemies. Since that time the fami- 
lies have not spoken, 


MOURNERS’ RIGHTS. 


As long as a corpse remained unburied, no one was allowed to 
pass the village in a boat. If a traveler attempted to go on, the 
kin of the dead person would lay hold of his canoe. If he suc- 
ceeded nevertheless, he incurred liability to them. The motive of 
the prohibition seems to have been that it was a shght to mourners 
if others transacted ordinary business in their sight or vicinity. 

It is, however, specifically stated that this statute did not apply if 
the dead person had been killed by violence. Similarly those slain 
were not included among the dead of the year whose kin must be 
paid before a village could undertake a dance. ‘The reason is clear: 
if there is a killing, the mourners have been or will be paid, and 
no further compensation is necessary; while those who grieve for 
a relative dead from natural causes are enduring an irremediable 
loss, and their feelings must be assuaged. 

If a man died away from home his body might be taken back or 
buried on the spot. In the latter case the right to interment was 
purchased. Once payment had been accepted for this privileg:, 
subsequent protest at the inclusion of a stranger’s body in a family 
graveyard subjected the critic to lability for a claim for damages. 

Before a major dance could be held, the dead of the year had to 
be paid for. This was done by contributions of the residents of the 
village, or by the rich man of the locality. If a village did not 
hold a dance, the law nevertheless applied, no residents being en- 
titled to visit a ceremony elsewhere until the home mourners were 
satisfied. This is an extremely characteristic Yurok provision. The 
dances were held by them to be absolutely necessary to the pros- 
perity and preservation of the world: still, because they afforded 
entertainment and pleasure to those who assembled, the mourners 
resented the occasion, and prevented it, until tendered pay for the 
violation of their grief. In short, a private right is not in the 
least impaired by coming into conflict with a communal or universal 
necessity. Since the ceremony is desirable, let those interested in 


38 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 78 


it extinguish the personal claim, rather than have the holder of 
the latter suffer, would be the Yurok point of view. To us, the 
legal sanctioning of the obtrusion of a private interest in the face 
of a general need seems monstrous. The native probably feels 
that the mourners are extremely reasonable in allowing the dance 
to be held at all, and that in proportion to the necessity thereof 
the community ought to be ready to make sacrifices. This is an- 
archy; but the Yurok are an anarchic people. 

Before the Weitspus dance of 1901, four families were paid $2 each. The 
compensation thus amounts to only a very small percentage of the value of a 
man’s life. The rich man of Pekwututl, across the river, demanded and re- 
ceived $3 because he was rich. Having the money in his possession, he 
demanded a second payment of like amount for a relative he had lost at 
Hupa. The Weitspus people demurred on the ground that he would be paid 
for this death by the Hupa when they held their dance at Takimitlding; 
but he stood firm and received what he asked. 

If a village did not make or visit a dance for a year the mourners’ 
claim lapsed totally. There was the same limit to the prohibition 
against uttering a dead person’s name. 

According to a Karok informant the dead of the year were paid 
for by the rich men so far as the dead were relatives of those who 
contributed dance regalia, whereas even fellow townsmen who were 
too poor to help, or had been unwilling, were passed over. 

The Yurok declare that the minor “ brush dance” was not preceded by pay- 
ments formerly, but that of late years small compensations have been exacted. 
The Hupa, they state, pay more heavily for the privilege of making this dance. 
The difference in custom may be due to an earlier abandonment of the great 
dances by the reservation Hupa, whereby the brush dance was exalted to a 
more significant position. But it seems more in accord with the spirit of Yurok 
institutions that the brush dance should also have been permitted only after 
compensation ; mourners particularly resent hearing singing. The pay is, how- 
ever, likely to have been small at all times, since the brush dance was in- 
stituted by an individual, who was at considerable expense apart from purchas- 
ing the privilege. 

Compensation for utterances of the name of the dead went, of 
course, to the immediate kin—father, brother, or son. <A brother 
might give part to the widow; but she acted only as custodian of her 
dead husband’s wealth, and was herself still the property of his fam- 
ily, unless she had borne a number of surviving children. If it was 
she that was dead, payment is said to have gone to her husband, not to 
her kin. The Yurok state that the amount of compensation depended 
solely on the rank of the deceased ; age or sex were not factors. After 
the name was bestowed on a child of the family, a year having 
elapsed, the taboo was of course thereby lifted. This makes it clear 
that the conscious motive of the custom is respect for the mourners’ 
grief for a due season. If two men had the same name, the poorer, 


KROBBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 39 


on the death of the richer, would “throw his away,” so as to avoid 
occasion of giving offense. If the wealthy man was the survivor, he 
would pay his namesake’s family, perhaps as much as five strings, 
satisfy them, and retain his name. - 


INHERITANCE. 


Only a small amount of property was buried with the dead, and 
none of this of great value. The bulk of the estate went to a man’s 
sons, but the daughters received a share and something was given to 
all the nearer relatives—at least on the male side—or they would be 
angry. ‘The kinsman who actually interred the corpse—or rather, 
the one who assumed defilement on behalf of the others—made a 
particular claim; no doubt for the restrictions to which his contami- 
nation subjected him. Moreover, if there was no one in the family 
who knew a formula for purification from a corpse, it was necessary 
for this voluntary scapegoat to hire some one to recite on his behalf; 
and the fee for this service was high. It is said that poor men were 
sometimes compelled to give one of their children into slavery in pay- 
ment for this indispensable release from the excommunicating taboo. 

For the building of a house, kinsmen were called upon. They were 
fed but not paid while they labored; and of course could expect re- 
ciprocation. If one of them possessed planks already cut, he fur- 
nished them, to be replaced at subsequent convenience. ‘The house 
was inherited by the son. The brother is said to have received it 
only if there were neither adult sons nor daughters. 

An old and sick Karok woman allowed her half-breed daughter to take 
possession of her property. Thereupon the sister with whom she lived at Kenek, 
no doubt in disappointed spite, said to her: “ You have nothing. I do not 


want you,” and the decrepit woman went to a more charitable relative at 
Rekwoi to end her few days. 


RICH AND POOR. 


The Yurok are well aware of the difference in manners and charac- 
ter between rich and poor in their society. A well-brought-up man 
asked to step into a house sits with folded arms, they say, and talks 
little, chiefly in answers. If he is given food, he becomes conver- 
sational, to show that he is not famished, and eats very slowly. 
Should he gobble his meal and arise to go, his host would laugh and 
say to his children: “ That is how I constantly tell you not to behave.” 
If an obscure person commits a breach of etiquette, a well-to-do man 
passes the error with the remark that he comes from poor people 
and can not know how to conduct himself. Such a wealthy man ex- 
horts his sons to accost visitors in a quiet and friendly manner and 
invite them to their house; thus they will have friends. A poor 


40 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


man, on the other hand, instructs his son not in policy but in means 
to acquire strength. He tells him where to bathe at night; then a 
being will draw him under the water and speak to him, and he will 
come away with powerful physique and courage. 

Life was evidently so regulated that there was little opportunity 
for any one to improve his wealth and station in society materially. 

The poor, therefore, accepted more or less gracefully the patronage 
of a man of means, or attempted to win for themselves a position of 
some kind not dependent on property. A savage temper, and physi- 
cal prowess to support it, were perhaps the only avenue open in this 
direction; shamans were women, and priests those who had inherited 
knowledge of formulas. 

The rich man is called si’atleu, or simply pegerk, ‘* man.” Similarly, a 
wealthy or “real” woman is a wentsduks or “woman.” <A poor person is 
waasoi. A slave is called wka’atl A bastard is called either kamuks, or 
negenits, “mouse,” because of his parasitic habits. Uwohpewek means “he 
is married’; winohpewek, “he is half-married.” 

Even a small village group was known as pegarhkes, “manly,” if its mem- 
bers were determined, resentful, and wealthy enough to afford to take revenge. 

The following Yurok statement is characteristic: ‘The beautiful skins or 
headdresses or obsidians displayed at a dance by one rich man excite the 
interest and envy of visitors of wealth, whereas poor men take notice but are 
not stirred. Such wealthy spectators return home determined to exhibit an even 
greater value of property the next year. Their effort, in turn, incites the first 
man to outdo all his competitors.” 

The Karok speak of a branching of the trail traversed by the dead. One 
path is followed by “ poor men, who have no providence, and do not help 
(with regalia, payments, and entertainment) to make the dances.” ‘The other 
is the trail of people of worth. 

When an honored guest was taken into the sweat house he was 
assigned the tepolat/, the place of distinction, and the host offered 
him his own pipe. A common man was told to lie at legaz, by the 
door, or nergernertl, opposite it. A bastard who entered was ordered 
out, the Yurok say. It is likely, however, that such unfortunates 
were more tolerantly treated by their maternal grandfather and 
uncles. 

Food was sometimes sold by the Yurok: but no well-to-do man 
was guilty of the practice. ‘“ May he do it, he is half poor—tmenemi 
waasot” would be the slighting remark passed; much as we might 
use the term nowveau riche or “ climber.” 


PURSUIT OF WEALTH. 


The persistence with which the Yurok desire wealth is extra- 
ordinary. They are firmly convinced that persistent thinking of 
money will bring it. Particularly is this believed to be true while 
one is engaged in any sweat-house occupation, As a man climbs 


O_O 


KROPBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 4] 


the hill to gather sweat-house wood—always a meritorious practice, 
in the sense that it tends to bring about fulfillment of wishes—he 
puts his mind on dentalia. He makes himself see them along the 
trail, or hanging from fir trees eating the leaves. When he sees a 
tree that is particularly full of these visioned dentalia, he climbs it 
to cut its branches just below the top. In the sweat house he looks 
until he sees more money shells, perhaps peering in at him through 
the door. When he goes down to the river he stares into it, and at 
last may discern a shell as large as a salmon, with gills working 
like those of a fish. Young men were recommended to undergo these 
practices for 10 days at a time, meanwhile fasting and exerting 
themselves with the utmost vigor, and not allowing their minds to 
be diverted by communication with other people, particularly women. 
They would then become rich in old age. 

Direct willing, demanding, or asking of this sort are a large 
element in all the magic of the Yurok, whatever its purpose. Saying 
a thing with sufficient intensity and frequency was a means toward 
bringing it about. They state that at night, or when he was alone, a 
man often kept calling, “ I want to be rich,” or “I wish dental,” 
perhaps weeping at the same time. The appeal seems to have been 
general, not to particular or named spirits. Magic is therefore at 
least as accurate a designation of the practice as prayer. How far 
the desires were spoken aloud is somewhat uncertain, the usual native 
words for “saying” and “thinking” .something being the same; 
but it is very probable that the seeker uttered his words at least 
to himself. The practical efficacy of the custom is unquestionable. 
The man who constantly forced his mind and will into a state of con- 
centration on money would be likely to allow no opportunity for 
acquisition to slip past him, no matter how indirect or subtle the 
opening. 

According to a Karok myth, the sweat house, its restriction to men, 
and the practice of gathering firewood for it, were instituted in order 
that human beings might acquire and own dentalia. 

The Yurok hold a strong conviction that dentalium money and the 
congress of the sexes stand in a relation of inherent antithesis. This 
is the reason given for the summer mating season: the shells would 
leave the house in which conjugal desires were satisfied, and it is 
too cold and rainy to sleep outdoors in winter. To preserve his 
money, in other words to prevent his becoming a spendthrift, a man 
bathes after contact with his wife, and is careful not to depart from 
the natural positions. Strangely enough, the Yurok have a saying 
that a man who can exercise his virility 10 times in one night will 
become extraordinarily wealthy; but there are not wanting those who 
consider this ideal unattainable by modern human beings. 


AY BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


This is a case of typical blending of avarice and magic, as related by the 
Hupa. The grandchild of the rich man of Medilding had its mouth con- 
stantly open. A shaman finally saw and proclaimed the cause. An ancestor 
of the rich man had asked to kiss a dead friend or relative good-by. He 
descended into the grave and, bending over the corpse’s face, used his lips to 
draw out from the nose the two dentalia that are inserted through the septum, 
concealing his booty in his mouth until the grave had been filled. According 
to report, the rich man admitted that an ancestor of his had actually risked 
this deed; and the shaman declared that it was the same dentalia that now 
kept the child’s jaws apart. 

A man who had borrowed a canoe and wished to buy it might 
report to the owner that he had broken it; but the possessor was 
likely to see through the ruse. This is a native instancing of the 
cupidity which seems to them natural and justifiable. 

Gifts were sometimes made by the Yurok, but on a small scale; 
and while reciprocation of some sort was anticipated, it was gen- 
erally smaller and could not be enforced. Presents were clearly a 
rich man’s luxury. The host might say to a visitor whose friend- 
ship he considered worth strengthening: ‘“ You had better return 
by boat,” thereby giving him a canoe. The guest in time would 
extend his invitation; and the visit would end with his presentation 
of a string or two of small money, or a quiver full of arrows. As 
the Yurok say, the first donor had to be satisfied with what he got, 
because he had given a gift. 


MARRIAGE AND THE TOWN. 


The Yurok married where and whom they pleased, in the home 
village or outside, within their nation or abroad. The only bar was 
to kindred; but the kin of persons connected by marriage were not 
considered kin. The wife’s daughter as well as her sister were re- 
garded suitable partners. The smaller villages were so often com- 
posed wholly of the branches of one family that they practiced ex- 
ogamy of necessity. That such exogamy had not risen to native 
consciousness as something desirable in itself is shown by numerous 
endogamous marriages in the larger towns. This point deserves 
particular consideration because the organization of the Athabascans 
of the Oregon coast, which seems to have been identical with that of 
the Yurok, has been misportrayed, simple villages—as ungentile as 
our country towns—being represented as patrilinear clans, and the 
mere rule against the marriage of kindred construed as clan exog- 
amy. ‘The subjoined table illustrates the degree of endogamy at 
one of the larger Yurok towns, Weitspus, and the following examples 
the distance to which its inhabitants were ready to go for wives 
when they pleased. 


HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 43 


KROEBER ] 


(mem,0) 5 +(1omAoy) P 


‘seSe]]IA Jojo wrory suossed ‘([ynynMHog) {7 *8Y Ul esnoy jo Joquinu :*0je ‘ZZ ‘polsieu jJyey ‘+ } ‘persiem ‘+ 


(lomHoy) P+ Er praeqP+ 6 


‘SNdSLIDM LY SADVINAVIL AWOS 


Ue r) ahptiena as } : 





| 


LO+61 © 


aes Ps 


| 


z1d+¢ 2omydIA 





| 


OT NAIOIM F +s19UION 3} 


Aouen 6 +2 Aue 


CMC 
| 


| 


(dimy) 6+12 10M & (eeW) PF4LT d 


| 


LL 2 


(T7ngnMyog) P 


| 


: +(ynyNAYeg) P 





S Sactiae rtd 


44 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


House 15 (fig. 2) belonged to the daughter of the former owner. Her half- 
married husband is of a Karok father from Katimin and a Yurok woman 
of Ho’opeu. Kewik of Nohtsku’m half-married into Ertlerger, but* quarreled 
with his wife’s family, and, moving across the river with her, built himself 
house 3 in Weitspus, whose site his grandson still owned. The father of 
the owner of 9 had two wives: The first a Karok from Ashanamkarak, the 
second a Tolowa. An old man in 10 traded sisters with a Wahsekw man. 


THE CRISES OF LIFE. 


Births occurred among the Yurok and their neighbors chiefly in 
spring. This was, of course, not because of any animal-like impulse 
to rut at a certain season, as has sometimes been imagined, but be- 
cause of highly specialized ideas of property and magic. The 
Yurok had made the just psychological observation that men who 
think much of other matters, especially women, do not often become or 
remain wealthy. From this they inferred an inherent antipathy be- 
tween money and things sexual. Since dentalia and valuables were 
kept in the house, a man never slept there with his wife, as already 
stated, for fear of becoming poor. The institution of the sweat house 
rendered this easily possible. In summer, however, when the cold 
rains were over, the couple made their bed outdoors; with the result 
that it seems natural to the Yurok that children should be born in 
spring. A similar condition has been reported from the far-away 
Miwok region; but the responsible social circumstances, which were 
certainly different from those of the Yurok, are unknown. 

As a girl’s property value was greatly impaired if she bore a child 
before marriage, and she was subject to abuse from her family and 
disgrace before the community, abortion was frequently attempted. 
Hot stones were put on the abdomen, and the foetus thrown into the 
river. There is little doubt that parents guarded their girls care- 
fully, but the latter give the impression of having been more in- 
clined to prudence than to virtue for its own sake. Probably habits 
differed largely according to the rank of the family. Poor girls had 
much less to lose by an indiscretion. 

The prospective mother’s wish was to bear a small child. There- 
fore she worked hard and ate sparingly. Difficulty in labor was 
thought to be caused by undue size of the child brought on by 
the mother’s eating and sleeping too much. 

In most of California women sit in childbirth. For the Hupa 
the same is reported, but the Yurok woman is said to have lain 
bracing her feet against an assistant. Her wrists were tied with 
pack straps to parts of the house frame. When the assistant com- 
manded, she raised herself by these thongs. She must shut her 
mouth, else the child would not leave her body. Many formulas to 
assist childbirth were known. The most powerful of these, as their 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 45 


own content relates, were thought to become effective as soon as 
the reciter entered the house with her herb. 

If the child during the first five or six days of its life were to 
take nourishment from its mother, the Yurok believe that its jaws 
would become affected and it would soon starve. During this period 
it is fed only a little water in which hazel or pine nuts have been 
rubbed, and which looks milky. For about the same number of days, 
or until the child’s navel is healed, the father eats apart, touches 
no meat or fresh salmon, and drinks thin acorn soup instead of pure 
water. The mother is under the same restrictions for a longer period : 
50 days, or 60 for a stillbirth. She spends this time in a sepa- 
rate hut. 

The umbilical cord is severed with a piece of quartz clamped inside 
a split stick, and is carefully preserved in the house for about a 
year. When the child is about to be weaned the father takes the 
shred on a ridge, splits a living fir, inserts the little piece of precious- 
ness, and binds the sapling together again. On his return the baby 
has its first meal other than milk. 

If twins of opposite sexes were born, the Yurok smothered one of 
the pair, usually the girl. They had a dread of such births, which 
they explain on the ground that if the twins lived they might be 
incestuous. Boy twins were believed to quarrel all their lives, but 
were spared. Once triplets were born at Murekw. There was much 
excitement and much talk of killing them; but a Deerskin dance 
was made and warded off the sickness which the portent foreboded. 

When a girl becomes mature she is called ukerhtsperek, and sits 
sient in her home for 10 days with her back turned to the central 
fire pit. She moves as little as possible, and scratches her head only 
with a bone whittled and incised for the occasion. Once each day 
she goes to bring in firewood; on her way she looks neither to left 
nor right, and looks up at no one. ‘The longer she fasts, the more 
food will she have in her life, it is believed. After four days she 
may eat, but only at a spot where the roar of the river confounds 
every other sound. Should she hear even a bird sing, she ceases 
at once. Each evening she bathes, once the first night, twice the 
second, and so increasingly until on the eighth she pours the water 
over herself eight times. The ninth night she bathes ten times; 
and on the tenth day, with declining day, once, squatting by the 
river, while the small children of the village, one after the other, 
wash her back. Her mother or another woman then lays 10 sticks 
on the sand and tells her she will bear so many sons, and places 
10 sticks in a row to represent her daughters. The girl’s dress during 
the 10 days is a skirt of shredded maple bark, such as shamans wear 
during their novitiate. 


46 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


One in every several hundred Yurok men, on the average, pre- 
ferred the life and dress of a woman, and was called wergern. This 
frame of mind, which appears to have a congenital or psychological 
basis well recognized by the psychiatrist, was not combated, but 
socially recognized by the Indians of California—in fact, probably 
by all the tribes of the continent north of Mexico. Only among 
the advanced peoples of that region did the law frown upon trans- 
vestites. The Yurok explanation of the phenomenon is that such 
males were impelled by the desire to become shamans. This is cer- 
tainly not true, since men shamans were not unknown. It is a fact, 
however, that all the wergern seem to have been shamans and es- 
teemed as such—a fact that illuminates the Yurok institution of 
shamanism. The wergern usually manifested the first symptoms of 
his proclivities by beginning to weave baskets. Soon he donned 
women’s clothing and pounded acorns. 

At death, the corpse is addressed: “Awok, tsutl (alas, good-by), 
look well and take with you the one who killed you with uwpunamitl” 
(a closure or pressing of internal organs produced magically). The 
body is then painted with soot, and the septum of the nose pierced 
for insertion of a dentalium shell. Elderberry sticks measure the 
length for the grave. This is lined with planks. Boards are re- 
moved from one side of the house and the body handed by two 
mourners inside to two outside. No living soul passes through the 
opening and the corpse does not leave by the door. The earth on 
which the person has lain in death is thrown away. At the grave 
the dead body is washed with water containing herbs or roots and 
then interred with its head downstream. No one in the town eats 
during the funeral, small children are taken aside, and all who have 
looked upon the dead bathe. Those of the mourners who have 
touched the corpse rub themselves with the grapevine with which 
the body has been lowered into the grave and hand it from one to 
the other, thereby passing on the contamination, to the last one. 
This man for five days shuns all intercourse with human kind, does 
no work, sits in a corner of the house with his back turned, drinks 
no water, eats only thin acorn gruel, nightly makes a fire on the 
grave to keep his dead kinsman warm, and finally returns to com- 
munion with people by undergoing a washing purification of which 
the cardinal feature is a long formula. 

Cemeteries adjoined towns; often lay in their very heart. Large 
settlements sometimes had two or three graveyards. Each family 
plot was small, so that in time numbers of bodies came to be buried 
in one grave. Old bones were always reinterred. At present each 
plot is neatly fenced with pickets and posts; but the Yurok say that 
even in the old days their graves were inclosed with boards. The 
clothing and some of the personal belongings of the dead were set 


“KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA AY 


or hung over the grave; but there was no extensive destruction of 
property, much less any subsequent offerings to fire, as among most 
California tribes. People dying away from home were, if possible, 
transported back for interment; or, a grave was purchased for them 
where they died. 

The dead, called so’o or kesamui—the words are used alike for 
“ehost” and “skeleton ”—were thought to go below. The entrance 
was pointed out at a small tree not far above the river just upstream 
from Sa’aitl, opposite Turip. The Coast Yurok knew a spot in their 
own territory, and the Karok made the path of the dead go up the 
ridge southeastward from the mouth of the Salmon. Underground, 
the dead Yurok came to a river, across which he was ferried by a 
Charon in a canoe. Occasionally the boat tipped over. Then the 
corpse revived on earth. Once the crossing had been accomplished, 
return was impossible. People killed with weapons went to a sepa- 
rate place in the willows; here they forever shouted and danced 
the war dance. Contentious and thievish men also remained apart: 
their place was inferior. <A rich, peaceable man, on the other hand, 
who had constantly planned entertainment for dances, came to the 
sky. Long ago, a young man once followed his beloved, overtook 
her at the bank of the river, and in his anger broke the ferryman’s 
boat, it is said. He brought back his bride, and for 10 years while 
the canoe of the lower world was being repaired or rebuilt, no one 
died on earth. 

If a person revived “after having died,” a special dance, called 
wasurawits, was considered necessary to bring him back to human 
intelligence. This seems to have been a modified form of the brush 
dance, with similar step and positions, held indoors. Only a few 
feathers were used. All available dresses heavily fringed with 
haliotis were shaken to drown the voices of the ghosts which the 
patient had heard and which were rendering him insane. If he was 
violent, he was lifted on the drying frame within the house and held 
by two men; when his strength began to return, he was supported 
and made to dance to speed his recovery. 

Should a person already buried make his way out of the grave, 
the Yurok believed him a monster, from whose insatiable desire for 
destruction they could only save themselves by killing him once 
more; but this was only to be accomplished by striking him with a 
bowstring! 

NAMES. 


The Yurok avoid addressing each other by name, except sometimes 
in closest intimacy. It is the height of bad manners to call a person 
by name, and a Yurok who is so addressed by an American looks 


3625 °—25——_Ai 


48 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


shocked. Of course, English names and nicknames do not count. It 
is not even proper to speak of an absent person by his name before 
his relatives. All sorts of circumlocution come into use, many of 
them known to all the Yurok: Lhkwiyer omewimar, “ Ehkwiyer its 
old man;” IJeta keryern, “the proud one of Meta; ” Ra-hiwoi, “(he 
has his house) on the side of Ra (a streamlet in Murekw)”; and the 
like. An old man at Wahsekw was designated by the fact that his 
house faced upstream. Most of the following names of the women 
reputed about 15 years ago the ablest shamans among the Yurok, 
are of this descriptive type. 

At Wahsekw (farthest upstream of the towns mentioned) : Petsi-metl (pets, 
“upstream ’’). 

At Sa’a: Sa’-wayo-metl. 

At Murekw: 7'smeyowega and Mureku-tsewa. 

At Sregon: Was-metl and Pekwisau. 

At Wohtek: Kewet. 

At Wohkero: Merit-mela (Merip, a town, presumably her birthplace). 

At Sta’awin: Hosi-tsewa. 

At Espau: Kairepu and O’men-mela (O’men, 2 town). 

At Tsurau: Tsurau-tsewa. 

Most of the true personal names of the Yurok are untranslatable in the present 
knowledge of the language, but may have meanings: Tsinso, Melotso, Ninowo, 
Penis, Woilo, Tskerker, O’pe’n, Wilets, Kwegetip (‘‘ yearling deer ’’), Petsuslo 
(“thrown upstream”). Nicknames like Segep, “ coyote,” are of course trans- 
parent. 

As in all California, an absolute taboo is laid on the names of the 
dead. The violation of this constitutes a mortal offense, voidable only 
by a considerable payment. We are wont to think of the hardship 
entailed by such a law on the unwitting and careless; but the Indian, 
reared since earliest recollection in the shadow of this regulation, 
makes no mistakes, and when he utters a dead man’s name may justly 
be presumed to do so deliberately. De mortuis nil, the Yurok would 
paraphrase our saying, and live up to it with even greater emotional 
vehemence. A namesake drops his name at once. Even words that 
resemble a name are not used. When 7egis died, the common word 
tsis, ‘“ woodpecker scalps,” was not uttered in the hearing of his rela- 
tives or by them. Other people, if no tell-tale ill-wishers were about, 
would be free from st.ch scruple. Whatever may have been the orig- 
inal basis of the custom, it is clear that its force among the Yurok * 
is now more social than religious. They no doubt hold that calling 
a ghost might bring it, but they hardly entertain such dread about the 
conversational mention of a dead person. 

The name taboo has sometimes been invoked as a contributory ex- 
planation cf the dialectic diversity of native California. It can 
not have had much influence. The custom prevails in the Great 
Basin, throughout whose broad extent no language is spoken but 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 49 


Shoshonean, and that in only three closely similar forms. More- 
over, the Yurok, and with them apparently many other tribes of 
California, formally end the taboo at the end of a year, by bestow- 
ing the dead person’s name on a younger relative or child of the 
same sex. A youth abandons his name to assume that of a dead 
brother, father’s brother, or even mother’s brother. This may happen 
to him several times; but after middle life he changes no more. 
Children remain unnamed until after they can walk; sometimes they 
are 6 or 7 years old before a kinsman’s name becomes vacant. Some 
sort of designation for them, of course, comes into use, but this 
appellation is “ picked up” for them and not considered their name. 
The Yurok state that after a year the family that has lost a relative 
wishes his name to be out of taboo again. 


WAR. 


No distinction of principle existed in the native mind between 
murder and war. It is rather clear that all so-called wars were 
only feuds that happened to involve large groups of kinsmen, several 
such groups, or unrelated fellow townsmen of the original partici- 
pants. Whoever was not drawn into a war was as careful to remain 
neutral as in a private quarrel. When settlement came it was made 
on the sole basis known: all damage was compensated. [very man 
slain or hurt was paid for according to his value, all captive women 
and children restored, burned houses were paid for, seized property 
handed back. It seems that actual payments for the aggregate 
amounts due were made by each side instead of the lesser value 
being deducted from the greater and the net difference alone paid. 
This practice was perhaps necessitated by the fact that Yurok money 
with all its refinement of measurement was not really standardized 
in the same sense as our own, no two strings, generally speaking, 
being of exactly the same value. In any event the greater financial 
drain bore on the winner. There is no group of tribes in California 
better developed to enjoy tribute than the Yurok and their neighbors, 
and none to whom the idea was so utterly foreign. The wae victis 
of civilization might well have been replaced among: the Yurok, in 
a monetary sense at least, by the dictum: ‘* Woe to the victors.” 

When blood money was offered, the exact length of each string 
was shown by a rod of the precise dimension. This stick was kept 
by the payee, and subsequently measured against the row of dentalia. 
To the ends of the rod were lashed little tabs of buckskin, to make 
possible its being held between the fingers that clasped the string of 
shells. This device enabled the precise value of each string to be 
determined during the period when contact between the principals 


50 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


in conflict, or even handling of the property of one by the other, 
would have been precarious. 

The Yurok took no scalps. They did not trouble to decapitate 
a fallen foe unless it was to make sure of his death. They held no 
scalp dance or formal victory celebration. They did have a war 
dance known as the wert/kerermer, the songs to which are of a lively 
if not stirring character. This was essentially a dance of settle- 
ment. The participants stood in a row, fully armed, with their 
faces painted black. A bowshot or less away their opponents per- 
formed. Before the actual dance took place, the money or property 
to be paid over by each side was “cooked.” It was laid in baskets, 
held over the fire, blown upon, and sung over, while the party danced 
about. No doubt a formula was also recited over the money. The 
purpose of this practice was to insure that if the recipient of the 
pay continued to harbor thoughts of revenge against the payers, his 
wishes would recoil upon himself. After this came the war dance 
proper, performed by each side standing abreast, very much as in 
the great dances; and finally the payments by each side were actually 
handed over, provided the reconciliation had not broken up in a bat- 
tle meanwhile. It seems that the same or a similar dance was also 
made as a preparation before war parties started out, but this is 
not certain. 

The chief weapon was the bow. Im close fighting, a short stone 
club, spatula shaped and blunt edged, was used for cracking heads. 
This was called okawaya. Spears were known, it appears, but very 
little employed. There were no shields, but two types of body 
armor. One was of thick elk hide, the other a strait-jacket of 
rods wound together with string. Some men preferred not to be 
encumbered with so stiff a protection. Women are said sometimes 
to have rushed into a fight and seized men as if to allay the quarrel, 
but in reality to hold them for their brothers or husbands to smite. 

The greatest war of which the Yurok know took place some years before the 
Americans came into the country, probably about 18380 or 1840. Some Weitspus 
men who had married Hupa wives were attacked while visiting there. The 
cause of the grievance has not been recorded. In the course of the resulting 
feud the Hupa attacked Weitspus. During the fight a woman was killed who 
was born of a Weitspus father and Rekwoi mother, and who was herself half 
married, that is, living at her father’s home. Her death angered her relatives 
at Rekwoi, it is said. At any rate they gathered their forces, to which were 
added a number of Tolowa. There were 84 altogether, including 6 women to 
eook for the party. This number shows conclusively that even this war was an 
affair of families or at most villages. If the Yurok as a whole had mustered 
against the Hupa they would have been able to assemble nearly ten times as 
strong. The party traveled toward Hupa by way of Redwood Creek or the hills 
above it. They journeyed three nights, resting during the day. LBarly in the 
morning they waited at Takimitlding. The first Hupa who emerged was 


KROPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 51 


killed. Then the fight was on. Many of the Hupa fell, the others fled, and 
the entire village was burned by the victors, who thereupon seized all the 
canoes and started homeward down the Trinity River. Two of the men had 
taken young women whom they intended to marry. But at Weitspus, where 
the party stopped, probably to eat after the morning’s work and no doubt to 
recount its adventures, some people who pitied the girls enabled them to escape. 
These connivers may have been individuals with Hupa blood affiliations, per- 
haps even direct relatives of the two women. 

About half a year later the Hupa retaliated. They were helped by their kins- 
men up toward the south fork of the Trinity and by the Chilula. Nearly 100 
of them are said to have gone. They descended by boat, traveling at night and 
drawing their canoes up into the brush during the day. Rekwoi was attacked 
and burned much as Takimitlding had been. Those who were not slain had 
difficulty living through the winter because their stores of food had been de- 
stroyed. The Hupa returned as they had come. This fact again indicates the 
private nature of the quarrel. Canoes must be laboriously poled and in some 
spots dragged upstream. Had the Yurok been possessed of any national senti- 
ment in the matter, they could have easily mustered several hundred warriors 
to overwhelm the Hupa while these were occupied with their difficult naviga- 
tion. As a matter of fact, the Yurok relate, the villages along the Klamath 
made no attempt to stop the war party. They concluded that scores being now 
substantially even, a settlement would soon follow. The Hupa indeed sent to 
ask for a settlement, and this took place, large amounts being paid on each side. 

A feud of some note took place between Sregon and Ko’otep. When the lead- 
ing man of Sregon lost his brother by sickness, he accused an inhabitant of 
Wohtek or Wohkero of having poisoned him. The suspect was soon killed 
from ambush. After this a Sregon man was attacked and killed at Ko’otep, 
which is only a short distance from Wohtek. This act involved the people of 
Kko’otep, which was at this time a large village. After a time, settlement was 
proposed, and the two parties met in an open place below Sregon to conclude 
the negotiations. Each side was ready to make the customary dance, when 
some one fired a shot. In the fight that resulted, a Meta ally of the Sregon 
people was killed. The headman of Sregon now went down river with his 
friends and lay in wait at an overhanging and bushy bank at Serper, where 
the current takes boats close in shore. When a canoe of his foes came up, he 
attacked it and killed four of the inmates. The feud went on for some time. 
Sregon, never a large village, fought, with only some aid from Meta, against 
Ko’otep, Wohtek, and Pekwan, but lost only 3 men to 10 of their opponents’. 
The headman at Sregon was sufficiently wealthy, when settlement came, to pay 
for all the satisfaction he had earned. He once said with reference to his ex- 
perience in this and other feuds, that open battles often took place without any- 
one being killed. Somehow men are hard to hit, he philosophized: arrows have 
a way of flying past a human being when a hunter is sure to strike a deer at 
the same distance; as modern military handbooks also tell. 

A small feud occurred between Meta and Pekwan. A number of families 
were camped along the river for fishing, when a man from Wohtek or Wohkero 
was killed by enemies from Meta. The grievance is not reported. Those who 
had slain him fled to Osegon, presumably because they had relatives there. 
The Wohkero kinsmen of the dead man followed them and a fight took place. 
An Osegon and a Meta man fell in this little battle. Subsequently another 
Meta man was killed. Afterwards settlement was made. 

Many years ago, probably before the arrival of the Americans, Opyuweg, 
the largest village on Big Lagoon, became involved in a quarrel with the Wiyot, 


59 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


who attacked the town and killed a number of people. Opyuweg subsequently 
retaliated, but was unable to even the score, the Wiyot being too numerous. 
Consequently when settlement was made Opyuweg received a large balance, 
The village fought this feud alone. 

Soon after 1860 the Chilula attacked Herwer on Stone Lagoon and killed 
10 people. This was at the time the Chilula were in feud with the Americans 
and Herwer was very likely made to suffer for aid or information given the 
whites, or thought by the Chilula to have been given. -The main grievance of 
the Chilula, as well as their danger, must have been from the Americans, but 
satisfaction was more easily taken against the Yurok. 

Once there was sickness at Ko’otep. Three Orekw women married at 
Ko’otep were blamed. An attempt was made to kill them, but one of the 
Ko’otep men protected them against the others. This angered his fellow towns- 
men, who, with the aid of friends from Weitspus, succeeded in killing him when 
he was at Ayotl One of his kinsmen, probably feeling himself impotent 
against the actual slayers, revenged himself by killing one of the three women 
from Orekw, whom he held responsible because it was on their account that 
his relative had become involved in the quarrel which resulted in his death. 
This act, of course, meant war between Orekw and Ko’otep. The two parties 
met several times to negotiate the difficulty before they succeeded. On each 
occasion some one became excited and fighting commenced over again. Seyvy- 
eral men were wounded in these skirmishes, but no one was killed. In the 
final settlement one of the two surviving Orekw women returned to her home, 
and the other was married by a housemate of the man who had lost his life 
through championing her cause. 

Other wars were waged between Wetlkwau and Ho’opeu; between Rekwoi, 
aided by Oketo and Tsurau, against the Tolowa of Smith River; and by 
Weitspus, as an ally of the Karok of Orleans, against the Hupa and Chilula. 


CHAPTER 38. 
THE YUROK: RELIGION. 


Great dances, 538; costume and steps, 55; the dances at Weitspus, 57; the 
Kepel Dam dance, 58; the Jumping dance at Pekwan, 60; dances at the 
mouth of the river, 60; dances on the coast, 61; the brush dance, 61; the 
modern Ghost dance, 62; shamanism, 68; disease and witchcraft, 66; 
special classes of shamans, 67; taboos, 68; formulas, 69; mythology, 73; 
calendar, 74. 


GREAT DANCES. 


The major ceremonies of the Yuork reveal the following qualities: 

1. The motive is to renew or maintain the established world. 
This purpose includes bountiful wild crops, abundance of salmon, 
and the prevention of famine, earthquakes, and flood. To a greater 
or less extent, the expression of these objects takes on the character 
of a new year’s rite. This is particularly plain in the first salmon 
ceremony at Wetlkwau and the fish dam building at Kepel. Other 
ceremonies reveal the motive less outspokenly, but all those of the 
Karok and most of those of the Hupa are distinct world renova- 
tion or first fruits rituals; and the equation by all three tribes of 
the ceremonies of direct with those. of indirect new year’s type 
confirms the interpretation. Most of the rites are made in Sep- 
tember or October, the remainder about April. 

2. The esoteric portion of the ceremony is the recitation of a 
long formula, narrating, mostly in dialogue, the establishment of 
the ceremony by spirits of prehuman race and its immediate bene- 
ficial effect. This formula is spoken in sections before various 
rocks or spots that mark the abode of these spirits. The reciter is 
an old man, usually accompanied by an assistant; any prescribed 
symbolic acts are performed by them alone. They fast and other- 
wise refrain from ordinary occupation; inhabit a house sanctified 
by tradition for this purpose; and spend a number of nights in 
the associated sweat house, sometimes in the company of several 
men who also observe restrictions, though they do not directly par- 
ticipate in the acts of magic or recitation. The only offering made 
is of small quantities of angelica root thrown into.the fire, or of 
tobacco. 

3. After the recitation of the formula, or the major portion, a 
dance begins, and goes on. every afternoon, or morning and after- 


ays) 


54 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


noon, for 5, 10, or more days. The regalia are of forms strictly 
standardized by custom, but are wholly unsymbolical and in no sense 
regarded as sacred. They comprise the most valuable things in the 
world known to the Yurok—all their great treasures, in fact, except 
dentalium shells; and the largest obsidian and flint blades, and 
whitest deerskins, far outvalue any of their money, while the bands 
of woodpecker scalps are each worth more than a string of the 
largest shells. The dances are therefore the one occasion on which 
the wealthy can make public display of the property on which their 
position in the world depends; while the entertainment of visitors 
from .far and near is a burden they are reluctant and yet proud to 
bear. Any man can dance: the lesser regalia are often intrusted to 
boys. The singers are those noted for their ability, and constantly 
compose new songs, although the character of the melodies for each 
type of dance is so uniform that the novel improvisations prove to be 
little but minor variations of one theme, or of a set of similar themes 
cast in one rigid style. Women watch but never dance. The valu- 
ables are not only those of the home town, but of the whole river, 
or of long stretches of it. Men carry their treasures far, and when 
they are responsible for a dance, receive reciprocation from those 
whose dances they have aided. 

4. The dances are of two kinds, known to the Americans as White 
Deerskin and Jumping dance. In some spots only the latter is 
made; wherever the Deerskin dance is made, it can be followed also 
by a Jumping dance. In both, the dancers stand in a line abreast 
facing the audience of men, women, and children, and some glowing 
embers by which sits the formula reciter with angelica incense in 
his hand. The chief singer is in the middle of the line, with an 
assistant on each side; the remainder of the rank form a sort of 
chorus that adds little but occasional monotone grunts or shouts. 
They sway or swing the objects they hold in time to the step or leap 
which constitutes the dance. 

5. The localization of these ceremonies is extreme. The formulas 
abound in place names. ‘They are spoken at a series of places in 
and about the village which are exactly prescribed. The sacred 
house and sweat house of each ceremony are believed to have stood 
since the time when there were no men in the world: the planks, it 
is true, are replaced, but the structures occupy the identical spot. 
The dance ground itself is always the same; and when a dance moves 
from village to village or hillside, it is in invariable sequence. The 
selection of the places that enter into the ceremonies is traditionally 
arbitrary. It is true that the largest villages are the ones in which 
dances are held, and that some of the spots of ritual are landmarks; 
but there is no appearance of anything symbolic or inherently re- 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 55 


ligious in their choices. The places are usually not prominent in 
myth, and it is evidently the fact that the dance is made at a par- 
ticular site that has caused the nameless and colorless spirit referred 
to in the formula to be associated with it, not the reverse. It is the 
locality that has ceremonial preeminent sanctity to the Yurok. Else- 
where in California the Indian thinks first of his spirit or god and his 
characteristics or history; if a certain spot counts at all, it is because 
of its connection with the deity. There is something strangely old 
world and un-American in the Yurok attitude, a reminiscence of high 
places and fanes and hallowed groves. 

6. The dances are conducted with a distinct attempt at climactic 
effect. On the first days they are brief and the property carried is 
inconsiderable. Gradually they grow in duration, intensity, and 
splendor. The famous treasures begin to appear only toward the 
last day: the most priceless of all are reserved for the final appearance 
of that day. The number of dancers, the vehemence of their motions, 
the loudness of the songs, the crowd of spectators, increase similarly ; 
even on each day of the series, an accumulation is noticeable. The 
performances are always conducted by competing parties. Each of 
these represents a village—the home town and from one to five of 
those in the vicinity. These match and outdo one another, as the 
rich man of each village gradually hands over more and more of his 
own and his followers’ and friends’ valuables to the dancers to display. 

The gradual unfolding of the ceremonies is illustrated by the progress of the 
Weitspus Jumping dance on its way uphill. At the first stop, on one occasion, 7 
dancers, mostly boys, stood in line, and the songs continued for about 14 leaps. 
Only two dancers wore woodpecker scalp headbands. Gradually the dancers 
became more numerous, the boys disappeared, the songs lengthened, the head- 
bands became 5, then 6, then 9; until, at the summit, 16 men, each with a standard 
band, danced to songs of nearly 40 leaps. 

Such is the character of the great ceremonies. 

All ceremonies are likely to have been annual in the old days, but 
for many years the custom has been to hold them only in alternate 
years at each locality. Those on the coast have not been performed 
in a long time, and of late even the river dances have become very 
irregular. 

Opyuweg is the name the Yurok apply to any form of major dance, and to 
that only: the “brush” dance is wmeleyek or worero, the war dance wertlker- 
ermer, the shaman’s dance remohpo. The Jumping dance is sometimes called 
wonikulego’ but this is a descriptive term: “they leap up.” The Karok new 


year’s rites at Katimin and Orleans are named welailek by the Yurok, the one 
at Amaikiara upuntek, that of the Hupa at Takimitlding uplopu. 


COSTUME AND STEPS. 


The Deerskin dancers wear aprons of civet cat or a deer-hide blanket about 
the waist, masses of dentalium necklaces, and forehead bands of wolf fur 
that shade the eyes. From the head rises a stick on which are fastened 


56 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


two or four black and white eagle or condor feathers, so put together as to 
look like a single feather of enormous length, its quill covered with wood- 
pecker scalp; or, three slender rods of sinew, scarlet with attached bits of 
scalp, rise from the stick, The dancers also hold poles on which are white, 
light gray, black, or mottled deerskins, the heads stuffed, the ears, mouths, 
throats, and false tongues decorated with woodpecker scalps, the hide of the 
body and legs hanging loose, <A. slightly swaying row of these skins looks 
really splendid. The singer in the center of the line, and his two assistants, 
add to the costume of the others a light net, reaching from the forehead 
to the middle of the shoulders and terminating in a fringe of feathers. Their 
apron is always of civet-cat skins. The step of the entire row is merely a 
short stamp with one foot. At each end of the line and in front of it is a 
dancer who carries an obsidian blade instead of a deerskin. Over his wolf-fur 
forehead band is a strap from which project like hooks half a dozen or more 
curve-cut canine teeth of sea lions. From the head hangs down a long, close- 
woven or crocheted net, painted in diamonds or triangles, and feather fringed. 
A double deerskin blanket passes over one shoulder and covers part of the 
body ; or is replaced by an apron of civet or raccoon skins. Under the left arm 
is a fur quiver. These two dancers advance and pass each other in front of 
the row of deerskins several times during each song, crouching, blowing a 
whistle, and holding their obsidians out conspicuously. In the final drama of 
the ceremony they may number four instead of two. All the dancers are 
painted with a few thin lines of soot across the cheeks or down the shoulders 
and arms; or the jaw is blackened, or the chin striped. The painting is quite 
variable according to individual, and decorative, not symbolic. 

The Jumping dance varies between two steps, which are never changed 
while a song is in progress. In the first the hand holding a dancing basket 
is raised, then swung down and the knees bent until the fingers touch the 
ground, whereupon the dancer hops about half a foot into the air. In the 
second form of dance one foot is stamped violently as the basket descends. 
The drop or stamp coincides with the beat of the music; the leap itself is 
therefore begun at the end of a bar of song. 

The principal ornament worn in this dance is a buckskin band, tied over the 
forehead with the ends flapping. Its central portion is carefully covered with 50 
large woodpecker scalps, and bordered with lines of other feathers and a 
strip of white fur from a deer belly. Before the dance reaches its height, 
this band is often replaced by a stuffed head ring of skin, to which about 
five large woodpecker scalps are glued und sewed with sinew. Either headdress 
is topped by a long white plume on a stick. From the neck hang masses of 
dentalium beads; about the hips is folded a double deerskin blanket, the fur 
side inward. In one hand is a cylindrical basket, slit along one side. ‘This 
has no utilitarian prototype, nor do the Yurok put anything but grass stuffing 
into it or attach any symbolic association to it. This basket, ego’or, suggests in 
its shape an enlarged, native money box; but the Yurok do not see the re- 
semblance. Face and body paint is slight, as in the Deerskin dance. 

Not one of the ornaments worn or carried in either of the two ceremonies 
appears to have the least mythological or ritualistic significance. All the dress 
is standard, but by meaningless custom alone. Also, not a single one of the 
numerous ornaments is in use among any of the California tribes except the 
few adjacent to the Yurok who practice the identical ceremonies, The wood- 
pecker scalp bands alone have some analogues in the lower Sacramento Valley, 
where belts and headpieces of the type appear in the Kuksu ceremonies. These 
seem, however, to have been often made on a close network, instead of buck- 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 57 


skin, and when intended for headwear to have been broad in the middle and 
tapering toward the ends. One such specimen of this shape has been found 
among the Hupa, only a few miles from Weitspus; but its history is unknown, 
and it may either represent an ancient type or be a traded article. Outside of 
the partial similarity of these bands, there is no specific resemblance between 
the northwestern regalia and those of central and southern California. Whether 
the same uniqueness applies also toward Oregon is not known, 


THE DANCES AT WEITSPUS. 


The Deerskin dance at Weitspus comes in autumn, and is held 
on a little terrace facing the village (fig. 2). It lasts 12 to 16 days, 
according to the number of visitors present, their requests, and the 
quantity of treasures they bring. There is a short dance late each 
morning, another before sunset. By the last day the evening dance 
has grown to occupy most of the afternoon. Wahsekw, Loolego, 
Pekwututl, and Weitspus equipped the competing parties of dancers 
in the old days. The concluding dance was formerly made in two 
large canoes that crossed the river from Pekwututl to Weitspus. 

The Jumping dance at Weitspus lasts two days. The formula 
reciter, followed by a girl assistant or wood gatherer, prays and 
makes offering, beginning early in the morning at three rocks or 
bushes in the village, then at five on the way up the mountain 
Kewet, at a ninth spot near the summit, at a tenth on top, which 
subsequently serves as a dressing place, and at an eleventh, under 
a venerated cedar, where a fire is kindled and the dances of the 
remainder of the afternoon and next day are held. The people fol- 
low him up at respectful distance, breakfastless. There is no danc- 
ing in the village. At the fourth to eighth halts, small groups of 
men and boys dance in line to three songs. At the ninth and tenth 
stops, a larger number of men dance in a circle; under the sacred 
tree they dance to three songs in a circle and then to three in line. 
All the way up, the older people occasionally weep as they think of 
their dead of long ago who used to come with them to these cher- 
ished spots; and each man’s and woman’s wish is to be similarly 
remembered after he or she is gone. When the tree is finally reached 
and the dance reaches its height, there is an outburst of wailing: 
the song and lamentations, the brilliance of the ornaments, and the 
streaming tears, make an impressive scene. Then everyone, hungry 
and tired, goes to eat and relax amid merriment. 

In the afternoon the village parties begin to dance against each 
other, and visitors from a distance arrive. Wahsekw has made its 
own way up the mountain and now endeavors to surpass Weitspus. 
As it grows dark the dancing ends, and the people camp for the 
night. 


58 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 78 


The next day dancing is resumed. ‘The line grows in length, more 
and more of the gleaming headbands are produced, until in the 
afternoon the ceremony comes to a magnificent climax of half an 
hour with hundreds of spectators weeping aloud. Then all pack up 
and journey well satisfied back to Weitspus. 

Here is a case of Indian allegation versus action. 


The Deerskin dance at Weitspus is usually stated to continue from 12 to 16 
days. In 1901 it commenced on September 38 and ended 18 days later, on 
September 20, in a great quarrel. Too many old men had saved out their 
most precious obsidians for the final appearance at the end of the afternoon, 
no one would withdraw, the altercation soon developed recriminations, old 
jealousies were awakened, all the men present took sides and participated in 
the argument, and the end was that everyone wrapped up his regalia and went 
away. Thus the climax of the dance never came off. The Jumping dance 
was announced for two days later, and most of the visitors went home to 
stow away their deerskin ornaments and bring those for the Jumping dance— 
ostensibly. Actually most of them were much embittered, and there was a 
general feeling that the Jumping dance would not be held. On September 21 it 
rained, and the old man who knew the sacred formula for both dances an- 
nounced that the weather would prevent the dance. The Indian opinion was 
that he was still angry. He was a poor man, but had become involved in the 
quarrel. 

On September 26 an American visitor attempted to get the dance under 
way, but the old man refused to take part “ because a moon had now gone by 
since the Deerskin dance.begun.” Really only 24 days had elapsed. On Sep- 
tember 30 he alleged the same reason with more accuracy; if it rained the 
following day the dance would have to be definitely omitted for the year, 
because of the interval of a moon. The American persisted, however, and the 
old formula speaker remaining obdurate, another man who had several times 
assisted him volunteered to act. He did not know the entire formula, he 
admitted, but enough of the essential parts to answer. He fixed the payment 
due him at $4 in American money. This was regarded by the Indians as a 
reasonable amount, but no one wished to contribute now. Some tentative 
pledges of small amount were made, however, and by dint of persistent dun- 
ning and soliciting, with an addition by himself, the interested outsider after 
several days succeeded in bringing together the whole of the stipulated sum. 
As soon as this was handed to the assistant, the native attitude changed to one 
of interest. The new formula reciter began his preparation. At once his 
chief decided to officiate in person, and claimed the fee. Part of this having 
been already spent by the substitute at the trader’s store for flour and a shirt, 
the old man accepted the balance and next morning was at his task. The 
dancers followed him, and about noon, when the assemblage reached the sum- 
mit, all differences seemed to have been forgotten and the ceremony developed 
undisturbed to the end of the next day. 


THE KEPEL DAM DANCE. 


Perhaps the most famous of.all ceremonies among the Yurok is the 
Deerskin dance associated with the building of a salmon dam at 
KXepel in early autumn. The dam is made at the upstream edge of 
that village; the sacred house and sweat house of the ceremony stand 
in adjoining Sa’a; most of the dancing is in villages downstream. 


KROBBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 59 


The ceremony is in charge of the usual formulist, who, with an as- 
sistant, restricts himself to a diet of thin acorn gruel and visits many 
hallowed spots for 10 days. For gathering firewood he has a 
woman assistant. During the 10 days a band of at least 60 men— 
a smaller number would be unable to complete the work in time— 
assemble the posts, stakes, and withes and erect the weir. These 
materials are obtained in specified ways at designated spots, and, 
with all the sanctity of the occasion, custom provides many occasions 
for merrymaking. ‘The weir is built in 10 named sections by as many 
companies of men. Each group leaves an entrance, behind which 
is an inclosure: when salmon have run into this, the gate is shut 
and the fish easily taken out with nets. Comic interludes increase 
toward the end. On the last day the formulist’s assistant, wearing - 
a beard and personating a Karok who has eloped with another man’s 
wife, pretends to be fleeing vengeance and allows his canoe to be 
capsized in midstream. He swims to Kepel, crouches, and the mass 
of men, armed with long poles, clash them together over his head 
and lay them on his back until he is almost covered from sight. 
This episode is repeated with but little improvised change from 
year to year, but is received by the multitude with appreciation that 
grows with familiarity. The end of the dam building is a period of 
freedom. Jokes, ridicule, and abuse run riot; sentiment forbids 
offense; and as night comes, lovers’ passions are inflamed. 

The formula for this ceremony is imperfectly known; but many 
of the actions, as well as the purpose of the dam, accentuate its tenor 
as a new year’s and world establishing rite. 


Before the great weir is finished, a sort of imitation Deerskin dance is held, 
with long flat cobbles to represent obsidian blades, by the river at Murekw, 
just downstream. The night of the completion, and the next day, the proper 
Deerskin dance is danced at Kepel. A few days pass; and then the people 
gather again about Wohtek-Wohkero, camping in groups, and dancing, for 10, 
12, 14, or 16 days, at a spot just downstream from the village, with Wohtek, 
Ko’otep, Pekwan, Sregon, Murekw, and Kepel-Sa’a competing. After another 
“ten days,” the Jumping dance is made, for a night and a day, at Murekw, or 
in alternate years on the hill above Merip. Other accounts place the main Deer- 
skin dance at Wohtek, and alternate a brief supplementary Deerskin dance at 
Halega’u, downstream from Wohkero, with the Murekw and Merip Jumping 
dances. 

Kepel-Sa’a has not been a large community in historic times. Its selection for 
the dam is no doubt due to a favorable condition of the river bed. The asso- 
ciated dancing is mostly held at larger villages. That at Wohtek-Wohkero may 
be suspected to have taken place at Ko’otep before the ruination of this town 
by the floods of 1861-62. Myths tell how the woge spirits were about to insti- 
tute the dam at Turip, and how, when it was moved to Kepel, the Turip people, 
coming over the hills to take back their rights by force, were turned into red- 
wood trees still visible from Kepel—the farthest of the species upstream. ‘The 
lie of river and hills at the two places is very similar, and this resemblance 
to the eye, with the outposts at Kepel of the trees that dominate the view at 


60 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [RuLL. 78 


Turip, may be the sole foundation of the tale; or a dam at Turip may have been 
a former actuality. 

The dam and dance have not been made for many years, primarily because 
enough men can no longer be assembled for the construction, but in native 
opinion because no one ean recite the entire formula. A woman married in Meta 
is reputed to be the only person who knows certa'n passages, and she will not 
teach them. She has lost her parents, all her brothers and sisters, and 10 chil- 
dren, it is said. The ceremony would be for the health of the world; and in 
her own grief, she wishes no one else to be happy among the undiminished array 
of all his kin. So tell the Yurok; and while they regret her sentiment, they 
seem to find it natural and scarcely disapprove. 


THE JUMPING DANCE AT PEKWAN. 


The Pekwan ceremony is a Jumping dance, partly held in a large 
house. For 10 days the formulist—with a number of elderly com- 
panions, women as well as men, the te¢/—fasts, restrains himself, and 
spends his time in the sacred house and sweat house. It appears 
that this group of persons sings much of the time.’ The last night 
they remain awake in the sweat house. The next day the people 
dance by the river, and in the afternoon or evening go up into the 
sacred house, whose roof and walls have been removed to give a view 
inside. ‘They dance first before it, then in the interior, which, how- 
ever, accommodates only about 10 dancers. After this they dance 
at four spots in or by the village, proceeding in upstream order from 
one to the other. The competing parties represent Wohtek, Sregon, 
Murekw, and Pekwan. This continues for two days, after which the 
old people again sing in the sweat house one night, beating the walls 
with sticks. This is an early autumn ceremony. 


DANCES AT THE MOUTH OF THE RIVER. 


Rekwoi had a similar Jumping dance, held partly in a sacred 
house. ‘The climax was a dance made in two large canoes, which 
approached across the broad lagoon abreast. The season for the 
ceremony seems to have been autumn. 

Wetlkwau, on the opposite side of the mouth, formerly had a 
more venerated rite. There was a sacred house and sweat house, 
and the formulist kept a pipe that was regarded with the greatest 
fear. Each year, it may be presumed about April, he and his assist- 
ant proceeded to the very debouch of the river and speared the first 
salmon. ‘This was cooked on the beach and the assistant attempted 
to eat it entire. Should he ever succeed it was thought that he would 
become extremely wealthy. Some fragments of the formula that 
are known tell of the coming of the great salmon leader from the 
miraculous country across the ocean. 


1 More on the tetl is to be found in Lucy Thompson (see Bibliography). 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 61 


Wetlkwau also made a Deerskin dance, which, with the shriveling 
of the village, has long been abandoned. It was evidently an after- 
math to the salmon rite. In this the competing towns were Turip, 
Rekwoi, and Wetlkwau. On the last day they danced across the 
lagoon in boats and finished on the hill above Rekwoi. No one was 
allowed to witness the boat dance whose father’s payment for his 
mother had not included either a canoe or one of the large Hudson 
Bay Co. knives, which before 1850 were extremely valuable. Some- 
times at Wetlkwau the final dance above Rekwoi was omitted and 
a separate Jumping dance substituted. This is said to have been 
held 20 miles upstream on the hill back of Pekwan. 


DANCES ON THE COAST. 


Orekw, at the mouth of Redwood Creek, held a Jumping dance 
Pecrinted with a traditional house. 

Another Jumping dance was made at Oker or more exactly at 
the main village of Opyuweg, “they dance,” on Big Lagoon, Oketo. 
This included dancing indoors and in boats on the lagoon. It must 
have been an important ceremony, since it lasted 10 to 12 days. The 
formula is reported similar to that spoken at Rekwoi, and different 
from those of Orekw and Pekwan. 

It is rather remarkable that Tsurau at Trinidad, sometimes reck- 
oned the largest Coast Yurok village, possessed no dance. The Coast 
Yurok frequented a Jumping dance made by the Wiyot on Mad 
River, and sometimes went to a ceremony of another type made by. 
the Wiyot of Olog on Humboldt Bay. They declare that these far- 
ther Wiyot rarely visited them at the Oketo dance, except one 
famous rich man named Munters, “ white,” to whom story accredits 
10 wives who all drowned at once on Humboldt Bay. 


THE BRUSH DANCE. 


A minor dance is called the “ brush dance” by the Americans. It is 
ostensibly held to cure an ailing child. As a matter of fact it is 
often made when the younger men are desirous of a_ holiday. 
Whether, however, the initiative comes from an alarmed mother or 
from those who wish to enjoy themselves, the sick child must be pro- 
vided. It is kept at the dance all night, and the woman who recites 
the formula speaks it for the child’s benefit. The dance is held in the 
living house, but the roof and most of the walls of this are taken down 
for the occasion. On the first night young men dance about the fire 
for a few hours. They wear no ornaments but hold boughs of foli- 
age up before them. The following night is an intermission, and on 
the third or fourth night the dance proper takes place from dark 


62 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


until dawn. The regalia are somewhat variable, especially as regards 
headdresses, but represent no great value. Arrow-filled quivers and 
sometimes small obsidian blades mounted. on sticks are carried. All 
ornaments of considerable intrinsic value are reserved for the two 
great dances. The participants enter the house in competitive par- 
ties, each dancing to three songs on every appearance. Two formu- 
las are in use for the dance, or, it would be better to say, two types of 
ceremonial action in connection with the formula, since the latter 
is always somewhat different according to the eid reciting it. 
The wmeleyek formula is spoken on the first and third nights; the 
alternative worero, which is considered stronger, on the first and 
fourth, and is followed by the waving of. pitch-pine brands over the 
child. 


THE MODERN GHOST DANCE. 


The first Ghost dance movement that originated among the north- 
ern Paiute reached the Yurok about 1872 via the Shasta, Karok, and 
Tolowa, but endured only a short time, and vanished with scarcely 
any effect. It seems that groups like the southern Wintun and Pomo, 
whose institutions had long been suffering under Spanish and Amer- 
ican contact, embodied considerable elements of Ghost dance doctrine 
into what remained of their religion. 

From the Shasta of Scott River the Ghost dance spread to the 
Happy Camp Karok. Report traveled, and both Tolowa and lower 
Karok came to see and learned to believe. A woman of Amaikiara 
seems to have been the first to dream among the latter. Many 
Yurok were attracted and came to Amaikiara with their dance orna- 
ments. Perhaps they were shocked at the announcement that when 
the great change came these precious things would vanish. At any 

rate, most of them grew tired and went home. The Hupa either 
never came in numbers or failed to be seriously influenced. 

The dance actually reached the Yurok from the Tolowa. An old 
man from Burnt Ranch instituted it at Sta’awin, above Turip, where 
he came to visit a Yurok nephew. After his return, the nephew be- 
gan to dream. The dance was then taken down the coast to Big 
Lagoon, and up the river to Ko’otep, then not yet resettled after the 
flood of 1862. This was in the summer after the Karok had become 
converted. The Yurok prophet and his Tolowa uncle announced 
that the dance must be held also at Weitspus if the dead of that vi- 
cinity were to return; but the movement waned before they could 
effect their purpose. There seem always to have been a number of 
Yurok who remained unconvinced, and none, except the immediate 
family of the dreamer, on whose minds the doctrine had more than 
a passing hold, 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 63 


The beliefs and practices sound as if taken from a description of 
the Dakota 20 years later. The world was to end; the dead would 
return, true converts among the living survive, disbelievers turn to 
stone. The new world was to be sexless; and in preparation men and 
women were instructed to bathe together without shame, and hus- 
band and wife to ignore each other. All planking was removed 
from graves to facilitate the resurrection. The prophets visited 
the dead in dreams and carried messages from them—once even that 
they would appear the next day. ‘The dancers, men, women, and 
children, formed concentric circles, revolving in opposite directions. 

Local custom, however, colored the doctrine at several points. 
Dogs were killed. All valuables would turn to rubbish, it was pro- 
claimed, unless exposed in the dance. When there was dancing in 
the morning, breakfast must be deferred until after it, as in old 
native ceremonies. Sometimes the dance took place indoors. The 
officiating prophet remained aloof from the crowd in a house of his 
own, like the formula reciter of a typical Yurok rite. 


SHAMANISM. 


A Yurok woman goes through the following stages to become a 
shaman : 


First she dreams of a dead person, usually if not always a shaman, who 
puts into her body a “pain.” The possession of this animate object in her 
person is what essentially constitutes her a shaman. 

Then the remohpo, or ‘‘ doctor dance,” is made for her in the sweat house for 
10 days, during which she fasts and dances severely under the direction of older 
shamans. The pain is thereby induced to leave her body, is exhibited, and is 
then reswallowed by her. The purpose of this dance is to give the novice con- 
trol of her ‘‘pain.” 

After this, in Summer, she goes to a “‘seat” or little monument on a 
mountain top, where she spends one night in speaking or dancing. The 
function of this act is obscure. 

After her return she usually goes through the remohpo once more. 

Then follows the ukwerhkwer teilogitl, a dance around a large hot fire, to 
“cook the pains.” The idea perhaps is that the pains are rendered more 
pliable or amenable to her will. This rite includes a formula. The shaman 
is now ready to practice her profession. 


The Yurok accept as a self-evident fact, which they do not at- 
tempt to explain, their conviction that possession of one or more 
pains enables the carrier to see and extract similar pains from 
people who have been made sick by their internal presence. ‘The 
emphasis, in their ideas, is wholly on the “pain.” The spirit enters 
into belief only to bestow the first pain, and seems not to be con- 
sidered active thereafter. Moreover, the spirit is the spirit of a 
human being, sometimes of an ancestor, in human form; not of an 


3625°—25 6 


64 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


animal or mountain or lake, rarely of a disembodied divinity. The 
customary North American concept of the “guardian spirit” is 
therefore reduced to a minimum among the Yurok. The pain, on 
the other hand, as a material though animate object operating homeo- 
pathically, as it were, and therefore sympathetically, brings Yurok 
shamanism a step nearer magic than is usual. 

This is a native summary of a shaman’s inception: 


A woman on her way for firewood perhaps begins to think of the dead who 
formerly lived in her town, notes how grass-grown and dim the path is, clears 
it of brush, and weeps in recollection. Not long after she dreams. <A person 
says to her: “I pity you as you always cry when you gather wood. You should 
become a shaman. Hat this!” The woman, not knowing what it is, eats what 
is offered. She wakes and realizes that what she thought reality was a dream. 
The base of her sternum hurts; it is a pain growing in her. But perhaps when 
she is on the path again, she may decide: ‘‘ Well, I dreamed it so. I will 
try.” Then she tells them in the house of her experience, and her relatives 
take her into the sweat house and make the remohpo for her for 10 days, so 
She will acquire (her power) readily. The purpose of the dance is to make the 
pain which she dreamed to have been put into her come out of her body. Per- 
haps it is displayed on a flat basket. Then she drinks it again. Later, in 
summer, in the seventh month, a male relative accompanies her to a stone 
chair (tsektseya) on a mountain. There are such on Kewet, the mountain 
behind Weitspus, and on other ridges. These seats are good for other things 
also. They can be used to acquire luck in gambling or power of bewitching 
people; but they can not be used ignorantly. One must know how long to 
tast, how to offer tobacco, what formula to speak. The seats have been there 
since the time of the woge. The shaman dances by a fire near the chair, and 
speaks things that are not known to other people. Her kinsman watches that 
she does herself no harm. In the morning he leads her back. They are already 
dancing in the sweat house. At last she enters; and then for 10 days the 
remohpo goes on again. Men sing for her; when she is exhausted, one of her 
relatives dances for her until she recovers. This is the only time a woman 
enters the sweat house (sic; but see below). 

According to further accounts, a shaman becomes a shaman by dreaming of 
a dead shaman, who gives her the initial power. Often a woman seeks to be a 
shaman, At every opportunity she cries and cries, until finally the desired 
dream comes to her. 


A man who knew the formula and ritual for the “ pain cooking ” 
after the second remohpo described it as follows: 


Two kinsmen of the new shaman bring four limbs of pitch-pine wood and four 
large slabs of bark from a mountain. A fire is made with these eight pieces 
of fuel in the house after the roof has been taken off. The novice has been 
painted, in the sweat house, with black vertical stripes. She now joins the 
people in the house, who dance in a circle alternately to the right and left about 
the fire, wearing fir branches in their belts to shield them from the heat. 
When the ordeal becomes unendurable, they pour over themselves a little water 
which the ritualist has prepared with herb in it. There is a separate vessel 
for the novice. Spectators look on from outside. The dancing continues 
without pause until the fire is wholly consumed. Then some one pretends ill- 
ness, and the novice seizes and begins to suck him as if to extract his pain. 
Sometimes, too, a woman falls down during the dance, seized with a pain 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 65 


which will ultimately make her a shaman. Some older practitioner then at 
once diagnoses her condition. This pain-cooking rite is not indispensable, but 
novices like to undergo it because it increases their power and enables them 
to earn more in their profession. The ritualist is in charge because he knows 
the necessary formula and herbs. He is generally not a shaman himself, 


The following is an account given by a shaman of repute of her 
acquisition of her powers: 


I began with a dream. At that time I was already married at Sregon. 
In the dream I was on Bald Hills. There I met a Chilula man who fed me 
deer meat which was black with blood. I did not know the man, but he was 
a short-nosed person. I had this dream in autumn, after we had gathered 
acorns. 

In the morning I was ill. A doctor was called in to treat me and diagnosed 
my case. Then I went to the sweat house to dance for 10 nights. This whole 
time I did not eat. Once I danced until I became unconscious. They carried 
me into the living house. When I revived I climbed up the framework of 
poles for drying fish, escaped through the smoke hole, ran to another sweat 
house, and began to dance there. 

On the tenth day, while I was dancing, I obtained control of my first “ pain.” 
It came out of my mouth looking like a salmon liver, and as I held it in my 
hands blood dripped from it to the ground. This is what I had seen in my 
dream on Bald Hills. I then thought that it was merely venison. It was when 
I ate the venison that the pain entered my body. 

On the eleventh day I began to eat again, but only a little. 

All that winter I went daily high up on the ridge to gather sweat-house wood 
and each night I spent in the sweat house. All this time I drank no water. 
Sometimes I walked along the river, put pebbles into my mouth and spat them 
out. Then I said to myself: “ When I am a doctor I shall suck and the pains 
will come into my mouth as cool as these stones. I shall be paid for that.” 
When day broke I would face the door of the sweat house and say: “A long 
dentalium is looking in at me.” When I went up to gather wood, I kept 
saying: ‘The dentalium has gone before me; I see its tracks.’ When I had 
filled my basket with the wood, I said: “ That large dentalium, the one I am 
carrying, is very heavy.” When I swept the platform before the sweat house 
clean with a branch, I said: ‘‘I see dentalia. I see dentalia. I am sweeping 
them to both sides of me.” So whatever I did I spoke of money constantly. 

My sleeping place in the sweat house was atserger. This is the proper place 
for a doctor. I was not alone in the sweat house. Men were present to watch, 
for fear I might lose my mind and do myself some harm. 

Thus, once while the others slept, I dreamed I saw an wma’a coming. One of 
his legs was straight, the other bent at the knee, and he walked on this knee as 
if it were his foot, and had only one eye. Then I shouted, dashed out, and ran 
down along the river. My male relatives pursued me and brought me back un- 
conscious. Then I danced for three nights more. At this time I received my four 
largest pains. One of these is blue, one yellowish, another red, and the fourth 
white. Because I received these in dreaming about the wma’a they are the ones 
with which I cure sickness caused by an wma. 

My smaller pains are whitish and less powerful. It is they that came to 
me in my first period of training. The pains come and go from my body. I 
do not always carry them in me. To-day they are inside of me. 

Again, not long after, I went to the creek which flows in above Nohtsku’m. 
I said to myself: “‘ When people are sick, I shall cure them if they pay me 


66 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 


enough.” Then I heard singing in the gully. That same song I now sing in 
doctoring, but only if I am paid sufficiently. After this I danced again for 10 
days. 

In my dancing I could see various pains flying above the heads of the people. 
Then I became beyond control trying to catch them. Some of the pains were 
very hard to drive away. They kept coming back, hovering over certain men. 
Such men were likely to be sick soon. Gradually I obtained more control of 
my pains, until finally I could take them out of myself, lay them in a basket, 
set this at the opposite end of the sweat house, and then swallow them from 
where I stood. All this time I drank no water, gathered firewood for the 
sweat house, slept in this, and constantly spoke to myself of dentalium money. 
Thus I did for nearly two years. Then I began to be ready to cure. I worked 
hard and long at my training because I wished to be the best doctor of all. 
During all this time, if I slept in the house at all, I put angelica root at the 
four corners of the fireplace and also threw it into the blaze. I would say: 
“This angelica comes from the middle of the sky. There the dentalia and 
woodpecker scalps eat its leaves. That is why it is so withered.” ‘Then I 
inhaled the smoke of the burning root. Thus the dentalia would come to the 
house in which I was. My sweating and refraining from water were not for 
the entire two years, but only for 10 days at a time again and again. At such 
periods I would also gash myself and rub in young fern fronds. 

In the seventh moon, after nearly two years, I stopped my training. Then 
the wkwerhkwer teilogitl formula was made for me and we danced about the 
fire. This cooked me, cooked my pains in me, and after this I was done and 
did not train any more. 

When I am summoned to a patient I smoke and say to myself: “I wish you 
to become well because I like what they are paying me.” If the patient dies, 
I must return the payment. Then I begin to doctor. After I have danced a 
long time I can see all the pains in the sick person’s body. Sometimes there 
are things like bulbs growing in a man, and they sprout and flower. These I 
can see but can not extract. Sometimes there are other pains which I can not 
remove. Then I refer the sick person to another doctor. But the other doc- 
tor may say: “ Why does she not suck them out herself? Perhaps she wishes 
you to die.” Sometimes a doctor really wishes to kill people. Then she blows 
her pains out through her pipe, sending them into the person that she hates. 


A shaman is called kegeior, the pains, teénom or tetlogitl, teilek 
or tedle’m is “sick.” 


DISEASE AND WITCHCRAFT. 


The function of shamans is to diagnose in a condition of clair- 
voyance into which dancing and smoking the pipe has brought them; 
to manipulate the patient; and to cure by sucking out his pain. They 
do not ordinarily employ herbs or medicaments, these being reserved 
as the physical basis of the rituals of which formulas are the central 
feature. The pipe is the shaman’s chief apparatus; she also wears 
strings of feathers from the two masses of her hair, and a maple-bark 
skirt. Her song may be learned in her original dream; the words she 
is said to improvise. 


KROEBER J HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 67 


Disease is caused in various ways. ‘The breaking of a taboo or 
ceremonial regulation often makes illness, but such is perhaps most 
often treated by another ceremony or a formula. 

Shamans themselves make people sick in order to earn fees. ‘They 
perhaps smoke during the night, then address their pipe, saying: 
“So and so, I wish you to become ill.” When called to treat such a 
man, they are likely to leave at least one pain in him, that after this 
has grown they may be summoned with another fee. 

Then there are people who have learned or bought a mysterious 
thing called wma’a, with which they destroy those whom they envy 
or hate. The possessors of such charms seem also to be called wma'a. 
Sometimes this thing is put on the end of a little arrow which is shot, 
at night from a distance, from a miniature bow at the house of the 
victim, one of whose inmates soon sickens. At times an wma’a can 
be seen at night, traveling on his nefarious errand. He may be car- 
rying his charm concealed under his arm, but the thing is strong, 
breaks out, and is visible as sparks or a bluish light that shoots or 
rises and falls. If this enter a man, he is likely to sleep into his death. 
Some shamans, however, can suck it out. 

Another cause of disease is a sort of poison called ohpok, com- 
pounded of crushed dog flesh, salamander larva, frog, or rattlesnake. 
This is put into the victim’s food, care being taken that it reaches 
only him,and that any residue is destroyed. Fora whole year he con- 
tinues in apparent health; but when the same season comes around, he 
sickens, as the poison grows in him. Strong shamans can see and 
extract the ohpok by the customary means. 

Upunamitl is a greatly dreaded swelling or choking of organs, due 
to an internal growth, but is perhaps to be interpreted as being to 
the Yurok a physiological process, since it appears itself to be caused 
by witchcraft, breach of taboo, and perhaps other influences. 

The Yurok also fear what they call sa’atl or sa@aitl, dwarf-lke 
spirits who haunt overgrown spots in creeks, and the like. Some- 
times a bark is heard from such a place when no dog is about. Then 
one stops his ears with his fingers and runs off. Nor is water drunk 
from such streams. The word sa’ait/ is probably connected with so’o, 
“ ghost” or “skeleton,” and o-swai-wor, “ his shadow.” 


SPECIAL CLASSES OF SHAMANS. 


Three kinds of specialists among shamans, of whom there is fre- 
quent mention with most of the other Indians of California, are un- 
represented among the Yurok—grizzly-bear shamans, rattlesnake 
shamans, and weather shamans. The first class, perhaps, have some 
remote similarity to the wma’a wizards. The functions of the second 
and third are replaced among the northwestern tribes by the recita- 


68 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


tion of formulas. This is explicitly stated for rattlesnake bites, and 
was probably true of weather influencing, if the Yurok concerned 
themselves with this at all. There were shamans who in their initial 
dream ate a snake, carried it in their bodies, visible to other shamans, 
and sucked snakes from their patients; but the disease of which they 
cured was lunacy, nota bite. There was a shaman at Murekw famous 
for his ability to handle hot stones and eat living rattlesnakes, and 
after his death one of his kinsmen continued the practice. Such 
arduous feats, however, are not characteristic of Yurok shamanism, 
in which juggling is unimportant; and it is significant that both these 
individuals were men. 

A Yurok man who wishes to be brave and fierce—‘* mean,” the 
Yurok translate their word t@me/—goes at night to a lonely mountain 
pond, swims, and is then swallowed or taken below the surface by a 
monster. ‘Traditions relate how such men were sometimes “ pitied ” 
and helped by the Thunders, and then became wealthy as well as 
strong. Most men’s ambition did not le in this direction. This 
belief is rather closer to the notions of the source of shamanistic 
power obtaining among most North American Indians, but stands 
well apart from the typical aspects of Yurok shamanism. 


TABOOS. 


The Yurok are firmly convinced of the definite immortality of the 
spirits of the game that they kill. Long ago, they say, the salmon 
declared, “ I shall not be taken. I shall travel as far as the river ex- 
tends. I shall leave my scales on nets and they will turn into salmon, 
but I myself shall go by and not be killed.” 


The old deer tell the young to try the house of such a one. Then one of the 
young deer lies down in that man’s snare and dies. He eats its flesh with 
parched seed meal as flavoring and acorn gruel. The women sit still during 
the meal. They do not eat the head. None of the flesh is dropped on the 
floor, so that it may not be stepped on and carried outdoors by the soles; any 
scraps ire scrupulously gathered and put away. After the meal the hands are 
carefully washed in a basket or wooden basin, then rubbed with fragrant 
chewed pepperwood leaves. The meat is served on wooden platters, which are 
washed only with water in baskets, never in a stream. The deer Sees every- 
thing. After two days it returns. ‘‘ How do you like that house?” the elders 
ask. “‘I do not like it,” it says. ‘‘ He does not wash his hands, and his women 
shift their feet while they sit at the meal.” Or it answers: “ He is good. He 
acts rightly. Smell my hand.’ They sniff it, like the pepperwood, and fre- 
quently go into that man’s snares. So the deer never grow less, however much 
they are killed, the Yurok insist; and the hunter’s success is brought not by 
his own cunning, but by the favor he can win from his game by respectful 
treatment. 


If the hands are washed in flowing water after a meal of veni- 
son, it is thought that the deer is drowned. It is believed that 


KROERER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 69 


deer can not abide the whale; the flesh of the two is not eaten to- 
gether, and whale meat is called “rotten wood” before a hunter 
in order not to spoil his luck. It is said that the deer dislike houses 
that seem dead and empty: “I constantly see smoke there, I will 
go to that house,” they are thought to declare. 

Salmon, or fish of any kind, are not eaten at the same time with 
bear meat, grouse eggs, or acorns blackened by prolonged soaking. 

The Yurok avoid strange water, and will not drink from the 
most familiar stream in certain reaches. River water is never 
taken. A dog, the deadliest of poisons, might have been drowned, 
or a girl have thrown in an abortion. 

Sometimes, after a killing, the slayer would set up a plank on 
the ridge above his house, cut the end into the rude semblance of a 
nose, attach a stick as arm, and fasten to this a bow. Then he 
addressed the figure: “ You killed him. Take the evil that his 
kinsmen are thinking.” 

Any things connected with the physiology of sex on the one 
hand and with deer on the other are thought utterly incompatible 
by the Yurok. The prospective hunter therefore carefully keeps 
away from his wife, or counteracts the effect by reciting a formula 
of special potence. Nor does he approach her after a meal of veni- 
son or sea-lion flesh, for fear of bringing illness on their child. 
Such disease can be averted only by public confession after birth. 

A number of taboos were enjoined on boatmen while on the ocean. 
Under no circumstances would they carry a corpse, a dog, or a 
bearskin, consume food, or speak of a woman as wentsauks,: instead 
they called her megawitl. Even on the river, travelers could not 
eat a meal; but if in haste they might carry fire on a layer of earth, 
heat stones, and then, disembarking, quickly cook. Near Kenek, 
Merip, and Kepel, there are large stones at the water’s edge, in 
front of which no corpse may pass, according to the injunction of 
the ancient woge spirits who took up their abodes in these rocks. 
The one near Merip extended his prohibition to women also, who 
therefore land above or below the huge block and walk inshore 
of it. 


FORMULAS, 


A trait of Yurok formulas is that while those devoted to the same 
end run along closely patterned lines, no two are alike. One man 
may even know several formulas serving the same purpose. Thus 
an old man at Orekw has three formulas for releasing from corpse 
contamination. One, that of wertspit, the insect responsible for - 
death, calls on the spirits of only 3 spots; another names 12 localities ; 
the third, 22, beginning far upstream, proceeding to the mouth of the 
river, then south along the coast, and ending beyond Orekw, 


70 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 


A Weitspus formula serving the same purpose calls on the spirits 
in 18 rocks. They are: 


. Ayomok, far up the river. 

. At the Karok village Inam., 

At the Karok village Ashanamkarak. (PI. 6.) 

At the Karok village Amaikiara. (Pl. 7.) 

At Atskergun-hipurayo, a short distance below. 

. At Wetsets, 2 miles above the Karok village Panamenits. 
. At the Karok village at Camp Creek, Yurok Olege‘l. 

. At Otsepor, Bluff Creek, in Yurok territory. 

. Houksorekw, in the river, half a mile above Weitspus. 
10. Oreuw, opposite Weitspus at Ertlerger. (Fig. 2.) 


CONAMIAWNHH 


Here the mourner is washed. The recitation resumes: 


11. Otsep, above Kenek. 

12. Okegor, at Kenek. (PI. 4.) 

13. Tsekwa, at Merip. 

14. Awiger, below Sa’a. 

15. The hill at the mouth of Blue Creek. 

16. Sa’aitl, at the entrance to the world of the dead. 

17. Below Ho’opeu, perhaps at Omenoku. 

18. Oregos, a bold column at Rekwoi, at the very mouth of the river. (PI. 5.) 


A similar formula belonging to a Rekwoi man names 10 spirits: 


. At the Karok village Kasheguwaiu. 

. At the Karok village Ashanamkarak. 

At the Karok village Ka’arler at Orleans. 
. At or opposite Weitspus. 

. Okegor at Kenek. 

. Tsekwa at Merip. 

. Merhkwi at Kepel. 

. Awiger below Sa’a. 

. Kemenai at Omenoku. 

10. Oregos at Rekwoi. 

The spirits in these rocks did not wish human beings to die when ‘ those 
through whom we die” had their way. The fifth, sixth, and eighth—corre- 
sponding to numbers 12, 18, 14 in the preceding list—objected so strongly that 
they became the ones who refuse to allow a corpse to pass them on the river. 
The tenth found a plant which makes the mourners’ spoiled body good once 
more. 


OCHONAMIRWNH 


With these formulas may be compared one of the same character 
recorded in both the Hupa and Yurok languages from a Hupa 
woman of Yurok ancestry. It is clear from this instance of transla- 
tion that the exact sound of the words seems of little moment to the 
Indians, the sense being the effective means of the formula. This 
recitation addresses rocks at the following spots on the river bank. 
. Kohtoi, Hupa Haslinding, on the Trinity above Hupa Valley. 

Below. 
Petsohiko, Hupa Djishtangading. 


. Ergerits, Hupa Tseyekehohuhw. 
. Oknutl, Hupa 'Honsading. 


oe oc a 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULEBTIN /G*+PEAE a4 





YUROK FISHING FOR SALMON IN KLAMATH RIVER AT KENEK 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BU EGETSIING /3ae PEAS 





MOUTH OF KLAMATH WITH PART OF 
YUROK VILLAGE OF REKWOI AND 
ROCK OREGOS, ABODE OF SPIRIT THAT 


PURIFIES FROM CORPSE CONTAMINA- 
TION 





YUROK CANOE SHOOTING THE RAPIDS 
AT KENEK 


UREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BUCS RNG (oe PLAT EeG 





KAROK FISHING WITH -PLONGE NET jAT..FOOT 
OF FALL IN KLAMATH AT ASHANAMKARAK : 





ALTAR, AT SAME SETTLEMENT, WHERE FIRE IS 
KINDLED ANNUALLY IN AMAIKIARA FIRST- 
SALMON RITE 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BUR EE UN. Gamuk PAs, 


oe 
Oe 





KAROK FISHING FROM SCAFFOLD OPPOSITE 
AMAIKIARA 


The eddy carries the bag of the net upstream. This is the most common 
method of taking salmon among the northwestern tribes. 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 71 


6. Below and opposite. 

7. Pekwututl. 

8. Merip (compare 6 in the last list). 

9. Nohtsku’m. 

10. Wetlkwau, at the mouth opposite Rekwoi. 

11. Rekwoi-kas, probably the same as Oregos at Rekwoi. 

Six of these places are on the Trinity in Hupa territory, 5 among the Yurok 
on the Klamath. This is the Yurok version. The recorded Hupa original or 
translation speaks of 10 places, but actually names 12, only 5 of them on the 


land 


Trinity, the second in the above list being omitted. The 7 in Yurok territory 


6. Hotuwaihot, Pekwututl. 

7. Chwichnaningading. 

8. Senongading-tanedjit, Nohtsku’m. 

9. Kyuwitleding, Sregon. 

10. Kitlweding, Sa’aitl. 

11. Tseticheding, Wetlkwau. 

12. Mukanaduwulading, Rekwoi. 

It thus appears that the formulas are not absolutely memorized 
as to content, even the framework of names and places fluctuating 
somewhat in the mind of the reciter. The change which a formula 
can undergo in a few generations of transmission is therefore con- 
siderable. It seems that the innumerable formulas known among 
the Yurok and their neighbors fall into a rather limited number 
of types, in each of which the idea is identical, but the skeleton as 
well as the precise wording individually different and unstable. 
Beyond this, there is a marked fundamental similarity of concepts, 
and even of stock expressions, extending to practically all formulas 
irrsepective of their purpose. For instance, spirits or plants so pow- 
erful that dentalia come to them and remain voluntarily under the 
most adverse circumstances, such as the presence of human bones, 
are likely to be mentioned in any kind of a formula. 

The Yurok-Hupa recitative just mentioned is an example. It 
begins thus: 

* Hahahahaha—I come to you who sit at Kohtoi. You are said to be the wise 


one. I am thus as it was left for us of the human world. My body frightens 
human beings. They make a fireplace while I have none. I make my fire alone. 


Ido not eat what they eat. I do not look about the world. My body frightens 


them. Therefore, I tell you, let your mind be sorry for me.” 

“ Yes,” is the spirit’s answer, “ I saw him running downstream across the river 
With string about his head. No, I am not the one. I shall tell you who is the 
wise one, but in return you must leave for me that which makes human beings 
happy (tobacco). Hurry on to him who sat down opposite Dyishtangading.” 

The mourner makes the same appeal and receives a similar answer from each 
of the other spirits, until he repeats his request to the one at the mouth of the 
river, adding that he has been in vain at nine (sic) other places, and at each has 
been told that another is the really wise one. Then the Rekwoi spirit replies: 

“T hear you.- Do not be afraid. You shall travel again in the human world. 
You shall eat what people eat. Where they make a fire, you shall have yours. 


72 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY  . [BULL 78 


You shall look about in the world. Your body will be new. I shall lend you 
this my herb and with it my medicine. You shall hunt and the deer will lie still 
for you; and it will be the same with dentalia. Now look, here it (my herb) 
stands outside my house. When it commences to be dark, it is grown high. And 
to-morrow in the morning it will be eaten down. Deer will have come to feed 
on it. Look at this, too, which stands erect behind the fire. Dentalia cut it 
down. At dawn it has grown up again. It has come to my head that it will be 
so with you (4. e., you have the medicine, food and riches will seek you as if you 
had never been contaminated). Take my herb with you. I thought that I would 
lend it. But there will not be many who will know that (formula) by means of 
which my mind will be made sorry for human beings of the world. Well, take 
this my herb with you. But leave for me much of that (tobacco) which makes 
people happy with its body.” 


There is certainly sufficiency of direct appeal in this to suggest 
prayer. But it is notable that the spirits’ answers are also given; and 
it is in these recited replies, and in the herb or root with which the 
formulist has previously provided himself, that the efficacy of the 
procedure is believed to reside. In fact, the whole, including the 
minute offerings of tobacco, 1s a dramatic enactment of a journey be- 
lieved -to have been actually performed by an afflicted ancient in 
search of relief. 

Such, at any rate, is the obvious character of most northwestern 
formulas, and these differ among one another chiefly in the degree to 
which they are preponderatingly in the narrative form of a myth or 
pure dramatic dialogue. A Hupa “brush dance” formula illustrates 
the tale-like type. 


“In the world’s middle she and her granddaughter lived. And after a time 
a person grew in her (granddaughter’s) body. ‘Hei! Human beings are 
about to come into being, it Seems; their smoke is everywhere,’ she said. And 
the (unborn) child became sick from her. And it came from her. And she 
thought, ‘ With what is it that we shall steam this child?’ ”’ 

Thereupon the old woman sent her granddaughter out to find the necessary 
medicine. The girl Saw wild ginger, dug it, and when the baby was steamed it 
evinced greater animation. The old woman then found pitch-pine sticks, lit 
and waved them over the child (as is done in the dance). Then she thought: 

‘Human beings will soon come into existence. Perhaps their children will 
become sickly from them. They will think of our bodies. With what is it 
that we can make them think of us? Yes. One night will pass before (the 
final night of the dance). There will not be only one herb (in all the cere- 
mony ).” 

So again she told her granddaughter to look. The girl went east, and at 
the foot of Mount Shasta saw a basket floating, but it was empty. She fol- 
lowed, lost it, and found it again at Kitokut, then at Kilaigyading, then, still 
going down the Klamath, successively at Otsepor, above Weitspus, at Weitspus, 
Kenek, Kepel, Pekwan, north of Rekwoi on the ocean, south of Orekw, and 
finally, near by, at Freshwater Lagoon, where it came to shore. The basket 
was still empty, but now she saw a house in which she found an old woman 
who said she had been thinking of her and her troubles. 

“*There in the corner is your basket,’ the old woman said, put her hand 
on it, held it up toward the sky, and (the girl) saw something (yellow pine 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 73 


bark, the desired second medicine) fall into it. She held that (bark) up 


pointing crosswise and gave it to her and said: ‘Take it and put it in your 
child’s mouth.’ ”’ 

With that attainment ends the formula, which is now used with the vege- 
tables and brands mentioned in curing sickly children. 

It is significant of the interrelations of the northwestern tribes 
that the 12 localities mentioned by name in this Hupa formula are 
in Shasta, Karok, Yurok, and Coast Yurok territory. On the other 
hand, the first of eight places designated in an analogous Yurok 
formula for the brush dance is in Chilula land. The spots are: 

Plokseu, on the Bald Hills. 

Oreuw, at Ertlerger. 

Okegor, at Kenek. 

Awiger, near Sa’a. 

Oso, a hill opposite the mouth of Blue Creek. 

Oka, a mountain downstream from Blue Creek. 

Sa’aitl, opposite Turip. 

Terwer, at the mouth of the creek of that name. 

Several of these spots are prominent in the corpse purification 
formula and definitely associated with death taboos. It is therefore 
clear that any religious landmark was likely to be seized upon and 
worked into a formula, irrespective of what it primarily suggested 
to the native mind. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


The Yurok sometimes loosely mention Wohpekumeu, “ widower 
across the ocean,” as the one that made things as they are. But their 
tales ascribe to him only the institution of a certain limited number 
of practices. He was born at Kenek, lived there when not traveling 
in curiosity or under impulse of amatory desires, and was finally car- 
ried to the land across the salt water by the Skate woman, to rejoin 
the other woge who had departed from this world before. At Amai- 
kiara in Karok territory he deceived the woman who kept all salmon 
confined, and liberated the fish for the use of future mankind. From 
the sky he stole acorns—a benefit attributed also to Megwomets. Un- 
til he instituted birth, every woman’s life was sacrificed in the pro- 
duction of her first and only child. Everywhere he pursued women, 
often unsuccessfully ; and according as his wooings resulted, he made 
or marred good fishing places. Eager for feminine conquest, he at- 
tempted to deny or evade his son Kapuloyo, and finally, in order to 
marry the young man’s wife, abandoned him on a high tree and 
blinded his grandson Kewomer. Kapuloyo escaped, gathered to him- 
self all the dentalia in the world, and departed downstream ; but near 
the mouth of the river, Wohpekumeu overtook him and recovered 
enough money to restock the supply for men, 


74. BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


Almost as great a favorite in tales as this tricky and unreliable 
benefactor of mankind, is Pulekukwerek, ‘downstream sharp,” so 
named from the horns on which he sat—a grave, unconquerable char- 
acter, who smoked tobacco but never ate, passed women by for the 
sweat house, and by strength and supernatural gifts destroyed mon- 
ster after monster. His birth, as his name indicates, was far north 
on the coast at the end of the world. With their own devices he 
put an end to those who crushed people in pretending to split logs, 
speared them in playing games, and killed them with overstrong 
tobacco. He burned blind cannibal women, killed sa’att/ monsters 
with hot stones, and deprived of his power a dangerously jealous man 
of Merip. He drove women from the sweat house that they still 
frequented. He stole the boy Night, found the man who could 
weave the sky, and placed the stars upon it. When the time came, 
he retired uncompelled to the far-away land of dentalia and everlast- 
ing dances. All that the Yurok have of respectful admiration in 
their mythology they lavish on Pulekukwerek. 

At times Pelintsiek, “great dentalium,” or some other form of 
the money shell, appears half divinized in the traditions, and as- 
sumes certain of the functions usuaily ascribed to Wohpekumeu and 
Pulekukwerek, especially those of a broadly institutory nature. 
Sometimes the three appear in conjunction with Ki-wesona-megetotl, 
“Sky holder.” 

Megwomets, a bearded dwarf, carries acorns on his back and is 
the distributor of vegetal abundance. He enters into a few myths. 

A number of episodes are told of Segep, coyote, but he is less 
frequently a favorite of invention, even in despicable situations, 
than among most California tribes, and the only achievement to his 
credit is the killing of the sun who had caused his children’s death. 
‘The raccoon alone was able to lift the luminary back to his place: 
Tlkelikera, the mole, Wohpekumeu’s sister, is more rarely mentioned. 
Wertspit, the locust larva, wished death into the world. Kego’or, 
the porpoises, lived with most of the foregoing at Kenek until the 
impending arrival of the human race, when they retired to Sumig, 
Patrick Point. Thunder and Earthquake were also inhabitants of 
Kenek, until the latter was beaten at his favorite game of shinny ball 
by a young man from the mountain Kewet. The house sites of many 
of these great ones of old are still shown at the little town. 

The world is believed to float on water. At the head of the river, 
in the sky, where the Deerskin dance is danced nightly, are a gigantic 
white coyote and his yellow mate, the parents of all coyotes on earth. 


CALENDAR. 


The Yurok monthly calendar commences “at Christmas,” that is, 
with the winter solstice. The first 8 or usually the first 10 moons are 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 75 


numbered, not named. The remainder, up to 12 or 13, are designated 
by terms that appear to be descriptive. 


1. Kohtsewets. 8. Knewoleteu. 

2. Na’aiwets. 9. Kerermerk or Pia’ago. 
3. Nahksewets. 10. Wetlowa or Le’lo’o. 

4. 'Tsona’aiwets. 11. Nohso, 

5. Meroyo. 12. Hohkemo. 

6. Kohtsawets. 18. Ika’amo., 


7. Tserwerserk. 


Informants who reckon 12 moons in the year omit one toward 
the end, or give Zohkemo as a synonym of Vohso. The most consist- 
ent accounts regularly enumerate 13. Pia ago is said to refer to a 
red berry gathered then. The meaning of Le’/o’o is undetermined, 
but it is the month of the world renewing ceremonies of the Karok. 
In Vohso the people camp out to gather acorns. /ACwamo seems to re- 
fer to cold. The older Yurok are aware that some of them allow 13 
moons to the year and others only 12. When individual reckonings 
differ, long arguments result. But when the acorns are ripe for 
picking, disputes end, for it is then unquestionably NVohso. This 
method of correction by seasonal phenomena is quaint in view of 
the unquestionable astronomical starting point, and suggests that 
this was such in theory rather than by close observation. At the 
same time, the knowledge of the fact that 12 moons do not suffice for 
a return of the sun indicates a closer reckoning of time than pre- 
vailed among central Californian tribes. Of similar order is the 
Yurok statement that the Pleiades—teinem, “ the many ”—are invis- 
ible for one month only. They disappear at the end of the fifth 
moon, are gone to lie in the water in the sixth, and in the seventh 
reappear just before daybreak. 


CHAPTER 4, 
TEE UY UROK eA Bits: 


Dress, 76; houses, 78; sweat houses, 80; boats, 82; food, 84; fish and game, 84; 
acorns, 87; tobacco, 88; bows, 89; basketry, 90; wooden implements, 92; 
utensils of elk horn, 93; receptacles, 93; tools, 94; music, 95; musical instru- 
ments, 96; conclusion, 97. 


DRESS. 


The dress of northwestern California was essentially that of all the 
tribes of the State. Young men usually folded a deerskin about the 
hips. Their elders did not scruple to go naked. A breechclout was 
not worn. Women put on a buckskin apron, about a foot wide, its 
length slit into fringes, which were wrapped with a braid of lustrous 
Nerophyllum or strung with pine nuts. From the rear of the 
waist a much broader apron or skirt was brought around to meet 
the front piece. This rear apron was again fringed, but contained a 
considerable area of unslit skin. Women also habitually wore neat, 
round, snugly fitting caps of basketry (P1. 73, 7). These were mod- 
eled with a nearly flat top, but degenerated after some months into a 
peak. In cold weather both sexes threw over the shoulders a blanket 
or cape, normally of two deer hides sewn together (Fig. 3). A single 
skin or a garment pieced of small furs might be used instead. This 
cape was neither fitted to the form nor squared. The Yurok appear to 
have fancied the somewhat ragged effect of dangling legs and neck. A 
rectangular blanket woven of strips of rabbit fur, much used through 
the remainder of California and over large areas eastward, was rare 
or unknown among the northwestern tribes, perhaps because rabbits 
are scarce in their country. Capes and men’s loin cloths always had 
the fur left on. Women’s aprons were always dressed, 

Rich women ornamented their dress heavily. Hahotis and clam- 
shells jangled musically from the ends of the fringes; and occasion- 
ally a row of obsidian prisms tinkled with every step. Poor women 
contented themselves with less. They may sometimes have had re- 
course to a simple skirt of fringed inner bark of the maple, which 
was standard wear for adolescent girls and novitiate shamans. 

The only footgear of moment was a one-piece front-seamed moc- 
rasin without decoration, donned chiefly for travel, by women gath- 
ering firewood, or sometimes as part of full dress. It was not worn 


76 


RROKBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA fu 


regularly by either sex. Modern specimens add a heavy sole, but 
this seems not to have been used in purely native days. Men put 
on a knee-length buckskin legging and a rude snowshoe—a hoop 
with a few cross ties of grapevine—when they went up into the 
hills in winter to hunt. 

Men wore their hair at least half long. A confining net of string, 
customary in many other parts of California, was not known here. 
In boating, a thong might keep the hair out of the eyes. Before a 
fight, it was usually piled on top of the head. When the hunter 
donned a deer hide and stuffed deer’s head (pl. 8), a disguise as likely 
to deceive a puma lurking in a tree as the game, he cushioned his hair 
over the nape and 
ran several sharp 
bone skewersthrough 
it. Women gathered 
their hair in two 
masses that fell in 
front of theshoulders 
and were held to- 
gether by a thong, or 
on gala occasions by 
a strip of mink fur 
set with small wood- 
pecker scalps. 

In mourning, the 
hair was shortened. 
A widow cropped 
hersclosely. A neck- 
lace of braided X ero- 
phyllum was put on 
by all near mourners. 
The Yurok say that this was never removed, being worn until it fell to 
pieces. It is likely that if it lasted a year, it was taken off when the 
name taboo of the dead was lifted. Perhaps it usually distintegrated 
before. 

The Yurok did not usually mutilate any part of the body for the 
attachment of ornaments. Pendants of hahotis were hung around 
the ears. The nose, contrary to the custom of some adjacent tribes, 
was bored only after death. A reference to this condition was there- 
fore construed as something hke a curse. 

Women had the entire chin, from the corners of the mouth down- 
ward, tattooed solidly except for two narrow blank lines. A begin- 
ning was made with three vertical stripes, which were broadened 
until they nearly met. Occasionally a row of points diversified the 
edges of the area. This style is universal in northwestern California. 





Iig.. 3.—Blanket of two deerskins, painted. Hupa. 


78 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY _ BULL. 78 


A little familiarity makes it rather pleasing. Lines and angles and 
circles always look like something added to the face. The solid 
mass, conforming to the contours of the chin, favored by the Yurok, 
soon seems an integral part of the features and serves to emphasize 
a well-modeled jaw. Certainly it is not long before a younger 
woman or half-breed who has escaped the tattoo strikes one with 
a sense of shock, as of something necessary missing. When pressed 
to explain the custom, the natives, as in all such cases, of course give 
a reason which is not the cause of the practice, but is interesting as 
their psychic reaction to the custom. They say that an untattooed 
woman looks like a man when she grows old. (Fig. 45 a.) 


HOUSES, 


The Yurok house is built wholly of planks split from logs with 
wedges and more or less adzed. It contains no posts and no beams. 
The roof planking is supported by three or four plates that rest 
on heavy planks in the front and rear walls. Two of these plates 
run near the side walls; the others form ridgepoles. ‘The usual house 
has two ridges and three roof slopes, the middle one not quite level. 
A single-ridged house is to the Yurok a sign of the owner’s poverty: 
he builds only 8 fathoms wide; a well-to-do man 4. Actual front- 
ages by measurement are 174, 19, 20, 214 feet. The depth is about a 
yard more. No houses surpassing or falling short of these figures 
by more than a foot or two were built. (Pls. 9, 10, 11.) 


The walls are of planks set endwise in the ground, usually two rows thick. 
Little care is given the side walls, which are only a few feet high and pro- 
tected by the overhanging eaves. For the front and rear, splendid solid planks 
from 1 to 4 feet in width are sometimes used. In the middle of the wall they 
may rise 10 or more feet. The boards in each wall are held together by two 
squared poles, one inside and the other out, lashed together with grapevine or 
hazel withes passing through holes in several of the boards. The plates, which 
often project several feet, rest in rectangular notehes cut into planks of par- 
ticular strength. The roof boards are as thin and wide as they can be made 
and from 8 to 10 feet long. They are merely laid on in two overlapping thick- 
nesses. The lower ends are often not squared, and weather and split off irregu- . 
larly, giving the Yurok house a very untidy look in our eyes. The smoke hole 
is made by laying aside a board in the middle. In rainy weather this leans 
over the opening, propped by a stick set at an angle. <A refinement is intro- 
duced by gouging a gutter along the edges of the two boards bordering the 
smoke hole, to prevent side flow into the opening. The smoke hole is never 
used as a door, but it serves as the only window. Measuring about 2 by 7 feet, 
it admits a little shifting Sunshine and a fair illumination to the middle of 
the house, but this remains cool in midsummer. It darkens early, and the 
corners are dim and musty at noon. A short log ladder with cut-in notches 
usually gives ready access from the ground to the roof when the smoke-hole 
plank is to be shifted or a leak repaired by an adjustment of boards. 

The door is a round hole about 2 feet in diameter, cut a few inches above 
the ground through a plank of exceptional breadth and thickness. This plank 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN /37 iPLATE TS 





HUNTER’S HEADDRESS FOR DECOYING DEER. KAROK 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 9 





THREE ALIGNED HOUSES WITH STONE PLAT- 
FORMS IN FRONT, IN YUROK VILLAGE OF 
WAHSEKW 





INTERIOR OF YUROK HOUSE AT WEITSPUS; 
SALMON HANGING FROM DRYING FRAME 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 10 





KAROK HOUSE,. SIDE VIEW, SHOWING DOUBLE 
PITCH AND RAGGED SHINGLING OF ROOF 





INTERIOR OF YUROK SWEAT HOUSE, WITH 
EXIT, FIRE PIT, FLOOR BOARDS, AND HEAD 
REST 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATES 





YUROK TOWN; PLANK-COVERED GRAVES IN 
FOREGROUND 





HUPA MEASURING DENTALIUM MONEY AGAINST 
TATTOO MARKS ON HIS FOREARM 


-KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 79 


is always near one end of the front wall. Two stones are planted as conven- 
ient grips just inside and often outside the entrance. The door proper is a 
plank that slides in a groove—often a piece of gunwale of an old canoe—and 
is held upright by two stakes. It can be tied but not locked. The plank in 
which the hole is cut is sometimes simply ornamented in geometrical relief. 
eis iz.) 

Just inside the door a partition extends nearly across the house 3 or 4 
feet parallel from the front. The blind alley thus formed serves for the storage 
of firewood, and is often littered with carrying baskets and rubbish. This 
narrow compartment about takes up the excess of the length of 
the house over the breadth. 

The square remainder of the interior is on two levels. The 
center, for about half the diameter of the whole area, is dug out 
from 2 to 5 feet. The surrounding shelf, some 5 or 6 feet 
wide, is at the natural level of the ground, or substantially 
so. The central depression is the cause of the pits that mark 
the sites of ancient houses. It is entered by a notched ladder 
(Fig. 4), sometimes as much as 2 feet wide. A second ladder 
may stand at the far corner from the door, for convenient 
access to the farther sides of the shelf. The corners of the 
pit are always cut off, sometimes to such a degree as to make 
it more nearly a regular octagon than a square. The sides of 
the pit are always carefully lined with thin, even, and smoothed 
slabs. These may reach a breadth of 4 feet. In the middle 
of the pit is the fireplace, a shallow excavation usually 
bordered by five stones. Above it, at less than a person’s 
height, hangs a huge criss-cross of several tiers of poles in 
squares, on which salmon sides or other provisions are sus- 
pended. Those on the lower rungs are more easily taken down 
than avoided with the head. (PI. 9.) 

The ‘ shelf” area serves for storage. In a prosperous house, 
it is largely filled with huge storage baskets, 2 or 3 feet in 
diameter, filled with acorns and covered with inverted conical 
baskets. The spaces behind and among these are often crowded 
with. other provisions, baskets, and utensils temporarily out of 
commission. Occasionally an elderly relative has her bed on 
the shelf, but this is unusual. 





The pit is the area in which women and children sit, 
work, cook, eat, and sleep, and men often take a seat on 
a cylindrical or mushroom-shaped block or stool. The 
hard earth floor is generally kept swept fairly clean, but most Yurok 
housewives are untidy, and cooked food, eatables in preparation, un- 
finished baskets, materials, implements temporarily laid aside, and a - 
variety of apparatus litter the cramped space, while from above half- 
cured slabs of salmon may drip grease, or gusts of rain drift in. 
No matter how old and worn a utensil, it is rarely destroyed or de- 
liberately thrown out; and an accumulation of property in good, 
poor, mediocre, and practically worthless condition cumbers most 
houses. Orderliness is found in individuals, but is not the rule. 


Wig. 4.—Yurok 
house ladder. 


3625 °—25———7 





80 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Before the door many houses have a pavement of flat river-worn 
stones, which provide a pleasant seat in the sun, and on which, when 
the weather permits, the main or evening meal is generally eaten. 

A hut was used by Yurok women in their periodic illnesses. This 
was a small and rude lean-to of a few planks, near the house or 
against its side. 

SWEAT HOUSES, 


The sweat house is smaller than the dwelling and dug out over its 
entire extent. The frontage is about 12 feet, the breadth 9 to 11, the 
ereatest height 6 or 7. The excavation is at 
least 4 feet. The longer sides are lined, but 
have no walls above ground; on the shorter 
ends, the planks rise 1 or 2 feet above soil level 
in the middle. From one to the other of these 
two little peaks runs a ridgepole, further sup- 
ported, not quite at its middle, by a square 
post. From the ridge, the roof planks, over- 
lapping along their edges, extend to the 
oround. ‘These planks are usually much less 
shaped than those which cover living houses. 
Evidently lumber is used for them which is 
too small or too irregular to span the roof 
spaces of the dwelling. The ridge itself is 
crowned with a split length of old canoe, 
which effectually sheds rain from the joint, 
but adds to the ragged appearance of what 
little of the structure is visible above ground. 
(Pls. 18, 14.) 

The interior is neatness itself. The floor 
bn —— fl is paved either with well-adzed planks which 
ma Allo LEE \bw,, years of contact with human bodies have 
Fic. 5.—-End plank of Polished, or with carefully selected and fitted 

panos eee house, with slabs of stone, often of considerable size. 

. There is no furniture about except a few block 
pillows, cut flat-faced out of redwood with concave top; perhaps a 
crotched stick or two on which an occupant has hung the net on which 
he was last working; and sometimes a little heap of firewood at the 
back. The floor is swept clean. Somewhat toward one end from the 
middle is the sacred post, toward the other end the fireplace, a cubical 
hole of a foot and a half, lined with flat stones. (PI. 10.) 

The door is in the middle of one of the long sides, and always faces 
the river or ocean. Itisa roundish, horizontal opening of about a foot 
and a half, provided with a cover; inside, a ladder with a few notched 






































































































































































































































































































steps leads down. It, too, is usually worn to dangerous slipperiness 





~~ eo ee ee 










BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 12 





SACRED HOUSE AND SWEAT HOUSE IN KAROK 
TOWN OF KATIMIN, WITH ISHIPISH! ACROSS 
TMS ANAS a 





CORNER OF YUROK HOUSE WITH CARVED 
DOOR PLANK, AT REKWOI 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN, 73, \PCA Tits 





CHILULA SWEAT HOUSE 





BOAT OF YUROK MANUFACTURE ON TRINITY RIVER AT HUPA 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 14 


Pied 3 
rag Po aie 


H 





HUPA WOMAN LIFTING STONE FROM FIRE TO 
HEAT BASKETFUL OF WATER TO LEACH MASS 
OF ACORN MEAL SPREAD OUT IN SAND PIT 





KAROK OLD MEN SUNNING ON STONE PLATFORM 
IN FRONT OF SWEAT-HOUSE ENTRANCE 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN £8.) PLATES 





ELK-ANTLER PURSE FOR DENTALIUM MONEY. YUROK 





CYLINDRICAL’ BOX. WITH LID AN PLACE. YUROK. )TRESBOxXES 
VARY FROM @g TO 4 FEET IN LENGTH 





ORNAMENT SET ON PROW OF BOAT. YUROK 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 81 


for all but bare feet. A second door, used only as exit, is at one of 
the small ends. This is a minute oval, often not more than 14 by 10 
inches, cut through the base of one of the two planks that support the 
ridgepole (Fig. 5). It is closed by a snugly fitting wooden plug. 
Many of these exits seem too small for even a medium man to squirm 
through, yet are habitually used by a little company of varied sizes, 
as well as their guests. But the bodies are all naked, of course, 
and supple with perspiration. The exit is some 4 feet below ground 
level; consequently a pit is dug outside the wall to receive the emerger. 
The sides of this pit are held by cobbles, in well fashion. After the 
regular evening and morning sweat, which has a distinctly ceremonial 
character, the exit is used, because, the Yurok say, those who have 
completed the purification from corpse contact emerge by the larger 
door. When a man retires to the sweat house to work, idle, meditate, 
sleep, or sulk—the latter his usual course when Wi owdenselta comes out 
by the main entrance. 

A considerable space in front of this entrance is stone paved, much 
like the “ porch” of the living house, but more invariably so. Here 
the old men are wont to sun themselves after the “ evening” or after- 
noon sweat, and at other times also. 

Firewood for the sweat house is not lightly or randomly gathered. 
The proper method is to ascend the ridge, often at some distance 
from the village, climb a tall fir, and cut the branches from near its 
top. There are many trees in the country of the Yurok and their 
neighbors which have been trimmed in this way and which when seen 
against the sky, even at long distances, present the appearance of a 


gigantic head and outstretched arms surmounting the body. The 


natives do not seem to be aware of their likeness to the human form. 
The wood is cut or broken into short lengths, and kindled in the 
stone pit. Entrance and exit are firmly closed, the former stuffed 
if necessary, and a small fire soon produces intense heat, besides 
volumes of smoke. The sweater lies low on the ground and avoids 
suffocation. When the fire has burned down or out, he opens the 
exit, wriggles forth, and plunges into the near-by creek, river, or 
ocean. ‘The smoke gathers in thick velvety soot on the lower side of 
the roof. The steam sweat bath is totally unknown to the Yurok 
and to all other California Indians, with the exception of a few 
groups in the notheastern portion of the State; and there recent in- 
fluences from the north may have been operative. 

All winter long, and often in summer, men and grown boys slept 


in the sweat house, and passed the evenings in talk and smoking. 


Seven sleeping places were recognized by name, and each of these was 
permanently occupied by the same inmate, except when he might 
yield it to a visitor, ‘The place of honor was in the middle of the 


82 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


end opposite the exit, the two worst by the entrance and in the middle 
of the opposite side (Fig. 6). 

Yurok information as.to the number of house and sweat house sites in 36 
river and coast villages for which statement appears to be trustworthy, yields 


°63 houses and 83 sweat houses, a proportion of about 8 to 1. This would make 


about 28 souls, or 6 to 7 adult males, per sweat house. The omission of 


slaves and bastards would not materially reduce the number. In other words, 
most sweat houses appear normally to have had an occupant for very nearly 
every one of their seven named berths. The actual floor space was great 
enough to accommodate two men in one place; and this arrangement was pre- 
sumably followed when necessary. 

These figures appear dependable—263 divided by 86 gives over 7 house sites 
per village. On allowance for inevitable omissions after the lapse of many 
years, the 7-+ would have to be raised to about 9; which, with the previously 
computed correction of one-third for house sites unoccupied at any given time, 
makes 6 ‘‘ live”’ houses per 
village—the correct num- 
ber, according to all avail- 
able data, and therefore a 
reasonable check on the 
sweat-house figures. 


BOATS. 


The Yurok type of 
canoe, which was made 
also by the Tolowa and 

Dia Wiyot and sold to the 
Fic. 6.—Plan of. sleeping places in Yurok sweat house. Hupa and Karok, is 
1 Alot; 2 tepolal) 3, ies; 4, Degen: 5 dug out of half a red: 
wood log, and is a 
clumsy but symmetrical and carefully finished vessel. It is used on 
the ocean, but is obviously a type devised for a rushing river full of 
rocks. Its square prow must be awkward in the surf, and is badly 
designed for cutting through waves or shedding spray. But the 
round belly of the boat and its gradually curving underside, without 
stem, allow a single stroke of the steersman’s paddle to swing it as 
on a pivot, and in the rapids many a rock is approached head on and 
then shot by so close that the hand could reach it. Upstream navi- 
gation is tedious. Still reaches can sometimes be paddled through, 
but over many parts progress is by pushing along the shore or from 
rock to rock, which requires at least two occupants, while in the hard- 
est places there is no recourse but towing. In every case the stream 
runs under the bottom of the boat and hfts it, and the square end 
meets no resistance. (PI. 13.) 

The paddle also is for river use. It is a combination of pushing 

and sweeping implement, a stout pole 6 to 8 feet long, spreading 





a 


KRORBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 83 


below to a narrow, heavy blade, and used by standing men. (PI. 
67, 2.) Only the seated helmsman holds a true canoeing paddle. 
(Pl. 67, f.) In quartering the river the front man always works on 
the current side, the steersman against him. This affords the latter 
the chance, by merely reversing his stroke, to turn the prow instantly 
with the stream, when his vessel is under fullest control. The worst 
rapids, at IXenek, can be shot at most stages of the river, but goods 
and passengers are often disembarked, since the passage can rarely 
be made without shipping considerable water. (PI. 5.) Other 
stretches contain dangerous spots for the boatman who is un- 
acquainted or unskillful. 

The redwood is the only canoe material, on account of its size, even- 
ness of grain, and softness under tools.. It was rarely felled, fallen or 
drift logs being cut into sections and spht. (PI.3.) The excavating 
was largely done by fire, the shaping with a stone-handled adze of mus- 
sel shell. The prow and stern rise a foot above the sides in a concave 
triangle. On them a wealthy man going on a visit sets a projecting 
cap, something like a huge yoke, which he calls the ears. (PI. 15.) 
The upper part of prow and stern, being cross-grained, are the weakest 
parts, and, unless a boat is split lengthwise on a rock, are usually the 
first to break out. Such damaged boats are kept for ferrying in com- 
paratively still water. At the top of the prow a sort of handle ex- 
tends backward, but the Yurok are careful not to grip this in draw- 
ing the boat ashore, since half the front is likely to come out with it. 
This hook is called the boat’s nose. The towing rope is fastened to 
a loop of stout grapevine or hazel, which, passing through holes in 
the sides, encircles the prow inside and out. This is the necklace. 
Gunwales extend the whole length, overhanging inward. They turn 
no wash, and must serve for strength only. At the stern a seat is left, 
and forward of this two foot braces, called by the same Yurok word as 
their house ladders. Toward the prow is a rounded knob, known as 
the heart, and of no apparent use, except that in recent days it is 
sometimes made to contain a socket in which a little mast is stepped 
to sail upstream before the afternoon wind for a favorable stretch 
here and there. Knot holes are plugged with pitch, cracks calked 
and pitched, or if threatening sometimes held together by lashings. 
Boats not in frequent use are carefully drawn high and dry under 
a bush or filled with leafy boughs, that the hot summer sun may not 
spht them. 

The Yurok canoes vary considerably in breadth and beam, and the largest 
must have three times the capacity of the smallest, but the length is standard at 
8 fathoms and a hand, about 18 feet. A longer boat would be disadvantageous 
among the rocks. Measurements of actual beams and inside depths are 51 by 
194, 47 by 19, 45 by 174, 40 by 18, and 344 by 104 inches. The draft is rather 
shallow, but attains about 6 inches and more in the middle if the boat is loaded. 


84. BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Ruin 78 


FOOD. 


The Yurok and their neighbors ate very largely of the acorn, 
the staple food of most Californians; but fish, that 1s, salmon, con- 
stituted a greater proportion of their food than was usual elsewhere. 
Small game is sufficiently scarce in their territory to make the tak- 
ing of salmon much more profitable, ordinarily. Deer were abundant 
and their flesh esteemed, but seem hardly to have formed part of 
the daily food supply. . Bulbs were dug in early summer; seeds were 
beaten off the open prairies on the ridges. Some varieties of the 
latter were eaten crushed and parched but uncooked, and were much 
relished for their flavor. Salt was furnished by a seaweed, Por- 
phyra perforata, which was dried in round blackish cakes. The 
people on the coast secured quantities of the large ocean mussel, 
whose shells make up a large part of the soil of their villages. The 
stranding of a whale was always a great occasion, sometimes pro- 
ductive of quarrels. The Yurok prized its flesh above all other food, 
and carried dried slabs of the meat inland, but never attempted to 
hunt the animal. Surf fish were the principal species taken along 
the ocean; there is practically no record of fishermen going out in 
boats. ‘The myths speak of canoe excursions only for mussels or 
sea lions. The food supply was unusually ample along both coast 
and river, and the Yurok ordinarily did not. have to condescend to 
the grasshoppers, angle-worms, and yellow-jacket larvae whose nour- 
ishing qualities other tribes of the State exploited. In time of 
stress, of course, they fell back on almost anything. The large 
yellow slug of California, which in the damp northwest grows to 
enormous size, would then be used. F'amines are scarcely alluded 
to in the myths, but must have occurred, as among every people 
primarily dependent on one seasonal or migratory animal. The 
average Californian clearly passed most of his life on a much closer 
food margin than the Yurok, but the minuteness and variety of his 
diet seem usually to have saved him from dire extremity. 

All reptiles and dogs were considered extremely poisonous by the 
Yurok. : 

The old custom was to eat only two meals a day and theory made 
these sparing. Only a poor fellow without control would glut him- 
self, and such a man would always be thriftless. Most men at least 
attempted to do their day’s labor, or much of it, before breakfast, 
which came late. Some old men still profess to be unable to work 
properly after they have eaten. The evening meal came toward 
sunset. 

FISH AND GAME, 


Salmon begin running in the Klamath in spring and in autumn. 
These are the periods of all the great ceremonies, whether or not these 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 85 


refer directly to the fish. The river carries so much water, however— 
more than any California drainage system except the Sacramento- 
San Joaquin—that there is scarcely a month in the year when some 
variety of salmon can not be taken. It may be added that the stream 
is of undiminished volume up to practically the head of the stretch 
of Yurok ownership. Fish were taken with dip nets, seines, set 
gill nets, and harpoons, but of these devices the first was the most 
usual. 


The dip net, or lifting net, as it may be called to distinguish it from a 
smaller instrument on an oval frame occasionally used by the Karok and other 
tribes to scoop boiling riffles and rapids (Pl. 6), was let down from a seaffold- 
ing built out over the water, almost invariably at some eddy or backwater. 
Here the fisherman sat on a block or little stool, holding the bone button of 
the string which closed the entrance to the pyramidal net stretched out in 
the current. This net was hung from the bottom of a long A-shaped frame 
with a bottom crossbar. The whole was hauled out as soon as a pull on the 
cord had inclosed a salmon, which was then struck on the head with a club. 
A single night’s vigil sometimes produced a hundred salmon, it is stated—a 
winter’s supply, as the Yurok say. At other times a man will sit for half a 
day without a stir. The old men are much inclined to this pursuit, which 
would be trying to our restless patience, but gives them opportunity for undis- 
turbed meditation or dreaming or mental idleness along with a sense of profit- 
able occupation. (Pls. 4, 7.) 

Lampreys, customarily known as eels, much prized by the Yurok for their 
rich greasiness, also ascend the river in great numbers, and sturgeon are not 
rare. Both species are taken much like the salmon, though of course with a 
different mesh. In the lower river eelpots were also set. Trout in the affluent 
creeks are too small to be much considered by a people frequently netting 20- 
pound salmon, 

Both salmon and lampreys were split for drying—the former with a wooden- 
handled knife (Pl. 16) of ‘‘ whale-colored ”’ flint, as the Yurok called it; the latter 
with a bone awl. A steel knife probably involves a different and perhaps a more 
precise handling, so that until a few years ago the old women clung to the 
aboriginal tools. Most of the fish was somewhat smoked and put away in old 
baskets as strips or slabs. The pulverized form convenient for packing, known 
also on the Columbia, was probably more prevalent among interior and _ less- 
settled tribes like the Shasta. Surf fish were often only sun dried whole and 
kept hung from poles in rows. They make a palatable food in this condition. 
Dried salmon is very hard and nearly tasteless, but rather satisfying and, of 
course, highly nourishing. 

A long net was sometimes set for sturgeon. One that was measured had 
a 6-inch mesh, a width of 3 feet, and a length of 85 feet, but in use was doubled 
to half the length and double the width. 

A measured salmon seine had a scant 38-inch mesh, a width of 384 feet, and 
a length of over 60 feet. 





Nets were made of a splendid two-ply cordage rolled without tools 
from fibers of the /ris macrosiphon leaf. The gathering of the leaves 
and extraction of two fine silky fibers from each by means of an 
artificial thumb-nail of mussel shell was the work of women, The 


86 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


string was usually twisted and the nets always knotted by men. The 
mesh spacer and netting shuttles were of elk antler; net weights were 
grooved, pierced, or naturally perforated stones. (Fig. 7.) 

The salmon harpoon, which could be more frequently used in the 
aboriginal period than now when mining renders the river opaque, 
had a slender shaft, sometimes more than 20 feet long. ‘To this 
were attached two slightly diverging fore-shafts, one a few inches 
the longer, on which were set the loose barbs of pitched and wrapped 
bone or horn. The lines were short and fastened to the main shaft, 
a pay line being unnecessary for prey of the size of a salmon. In 
fact, an untoggled barbed spear would have sufficed but for the op- 
portunity its resistance offers a heavy fish to tear itself free. This 
harpoon was made with no essential variation in practically all fish- 





Hig. 7.—Yurok net weights. 


able parts of California, and it is the only harpoon known, except 
for a heavier implement driven by the Yurok and Chumash into sea 
lions. 

Sea-lion hunters took station on rocks, disguised in bear or deer 
skins. When the animals clambered up, the hunters barked and 
twisted their bodies, attracting the sea-lions’ attention as they ap- 
proached, then leaped up and harpooned them. The toggle head 
had two barbs in a row; the line was fastened to the shaft. No at- 
tempt was made to hold the bulky prey, but it was followed by 
boat, the shaft regained, and then at first opportunity the victim was 
speared again. Sometimes a canoe was dragged out to sea for 
half a day before the animal was dispatched. [or this reason 
large males were not attacked late in the afternoon. 

Deer seem to have been snared more often than shot before the 
introduction of rifles, They were often driven with dogs. 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 87 
ACORNS. 


Acorns were gathered, dried, stored, cracked, pulverized, sifted, 
leached, and usually boiled with hot stones in a basket. This gruel, 
usually known as acorn soup or acorn mush, though it is thicker 
than the one and more fluid than the other—the Maidu mix it with 
ten or twelve times the quantity of water—was the chief daily food of 
more than three-fourths of native California. It is about as taste- 
less as wheat flour cooked in water would be, nearly as nourishing, 
but richer in starch, and, when prepared from certain species, per- 
ceptibly oily. 

In boiling, the hot stones must be stirred to insure cooking the 
contents equally and to prevent holes being burned through the 
containing basket. As in the greater part of California, a little 
paddle is used for this purpose by the Yurok. But they and their 
neighbors almost invariably carve the handle of this “ mush paddle ” 
into geometric ornaments, while among the average Californian 
tribe the instrument is wholly utilitarian and often short, rough, 
and unsymmetrical. The Yurok paddle is of madrofa, manzanita, 
oak, or other hard wood, and sometimes nearly 4 feet long and 
quite unwieldy for a seated woman. (PI. 17.) 

The mealing was done on a hard, smooth slab of rock with a stone 
pestle usually a foot long. Exceptional specimens reach nearly 2 
feet but were too highly treasured to be put into daily service. The 
better pestles have a raised ring or flange about a third of the way 
from the butt. (Pl. 16.) Thisis purely ornamental and makes a dis- 
tinctive local type, which is evidently well established, since it occurs 
in ancient examples from the region. Even the commonest work-a- 
day pestles are dressed rather symmetrically, whereas most of the 
Californians often contented themselves with a convenient cobble. 
The acorn fragments and meal were kept from scattering by a flaring 
hopper of basketry; a soap-root fiber brush swept together what 
escaped this container. The mortar was not used by the historic 
Yurok, although specimens are occasionally washed out or mined 
in their habitat. They are so ignorant of the purpose of the utensil 
that they conjecture it to have been a cook pot or the like. <A simi- 
lar change of custom as regards the acorn mortar has taken place be- 
tween prehistoric and recent times in a considerable part of Cali- 
fornia and constitutes one of the rare instances of a directly trace- 
able cultural change. 

The pestle is held near its upper end. Ag it is raised the wrist is turned 
until the stone is half horizontal; on the stroke it is twisted back and falls 
perpendicular. The wrist motion perhaps saves raising the pestle to its full 
height. The worker lays her legs over the rim of the hopper to hold it down 
and bring herself close to her labor, (Pl. 60,) 


88 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


Among acorns, the preference of the Hupa, and presumably of the Yurok, 
is for those of the tanbark oak, Quercus densiflora, but the species garryana, 
californica, and chrysolepis are used if needed. Acorns were stored, most fre- 
quently in the shell, in large baskets set around the sides of the house. Some 
of these baskets are loose or open work; others have their stitches closely set 
and are patterned. They are usually covered with an inverted burden basket. 
Occasionally they are made larger than the door, but are easily moved out 
if it becomes necessary through the lifting of some planks off the roof. 

Acorns were leached of their tannin in three ways. The commonest method 
was to pour hot water over the meal as it lay spread out in a basin of clean sand. 
(Pl. 14.) This is the usual Californian method. Cold water apparently also re- 
moves the bitterness if given time enough. ‘Thus, acorns buried for a year in 
swampy mud come out purplish and are ready to be roasted on coals. Again, 
they were sometimes shelled, set in a basket until moldy, and then dug into 
clean sand in the river. After some time they turned black, and were then 
in condition for roasting. 


TOBACCO. 


All the tobacco smoked by the Yurok was planted) by them—a 
strange custom for a nonagricultural people far from all farming 
contacts. The custom, which extends also to southwestern Oregon, 
and in the opposite direction probably to the Maidu, is clearly of local 
origin. Logs were burned on a hilltop, the seeds sown, and the 
plants nursed. Those who grew tobacco sold to those who did not. 
A woman’s cap full or not full was the quantity given for a den- 
talium shell, according as this was of second smallest or shortest 
length—a high price. Tobacco grows wild also, apparently of the 
same species as the planted, but is never usedi by the Yurok, who 
fear that it might be from a graveyard, or perhaps from seed pro- 
duced on a graveyard. The plant does seem to show predilection for 
such soil. Otherwise it sprouts chiefly along sandy bars close to the 
river; and this seems to have caused the choice of summits for the 
cultivated product. 

The pipe was tubular, as always in California. Its profile was 
concave, with the bowl flaring somewhat more than the mouth end. 
The average length was under 6 inches, but shamans’ and’ show pieces 
occasionally ran to more than a foot. The poorest pipes were of soft 
wood, from which it is not difficult to push the pith. Every man 
who thought well of himself had a pipe of manzanita or other hard 
wood, beautifully polished, probably with the scouring or horsetail 
rush, 'quisetum, which was kept in the house for smoothing arrows. 
The general shaping of the pipe seems to have been by the usual 
northwestern process of rubbing with sandstone rather than by 
cutting. ‘The bowl in these better pipes was faced with an inlay 
of soapstone, which would not burn out in many years. Sometimes 
pipes had bits of haliotis inlaid next the steatite; others were made 
wholly of the stone. The pipe was kept in a little case or pouch of 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 89 


deerskin. It could be filled by simply pressing it down into the 
tobacco at the bottom of the sack. Pouches have been found in Cali- 
fornia only among the northwestern tribes. Tobacco was stored in 
small globular baskets made for the purpose. These receptacles 
are also a localized type. (PI. 73, e.) 

A few old Yurok were passionate smokers, but the majority used 
tobacco moderately. Many seem never to have smoked until they 
retired to the sweat house for the night. Bedtime is the favorite 
occasion for smoking throughout California. The native Vicotianas 
are rank, pungent, and heady. They were used undiluted, and the 
natives frequently speak of them as inducing drowsiness. 


BOWS. 


The bow was of yew, short, broad, and so thin that only the sinew 
backing kept it from breaking at the first pull. The grip is some- 
what thicker, pinched in, and wrapped with a thong. The string is 
sinew. Only that side of the tree which faces away from the river was 
used for bow wood. The sinew backing is often painted with red 
and blue triangles; the pigment used before blue could be obtained 
from Americans is unknown. The usual length was 3 to 34 feet, 
the breadth 14 to 2 inches, and the thickness one-half inch, of which 
a considerable fraction was sinew, whose pull gave the unstrung bow 
a strong reverse curve. The following are some measurements in 
inches: 





WAPTQRREE OLE ENG (Se octal os Oe ei ets Feed Tae 1S eats 142 13 24 
Width of grip Se eee ole) hey dahedee Lee ce ois 13 
Greatest thickness _._.____._____ 3 4 4 Ts 15 18 
NOT oN gle See AR Seema Bel eee eh 324 854 364 389 40 j2 


The fourth specimen is a shaped but unsmoothed and unsinewed 
stave. It appears that breadth and thickness vary in inverse ratio, 
rather independently of length. 

Basically, this is the type of bow made throughout California as 
far as the Yokuts, at least for the nobler purposes of war and the 
deer hunt. But the extreme flatness is characteristic of the north- 
western tribes, who often shave the sides of their bows to a knife- 
edge. Elsewhere even the most elaborate pieces become somewhat 
longer, narrower, and thicker. It may be that the material, which 
among far tribes is rarely yew, has something to do with this dif- 
ference; or the northwestern extremity of form may be merely a 
trick of specialization. It is likely to have weakened rather than 
strengthened the weapon; but the workmanship commands admi- 
ration. | 

The arrow is of Philadelphus lewisii, a syringa, foreshafted 
with a hard wood, and tipped with stone. The length is about 31 


90 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


inches—from 28 to 32—or so much that the arrow could not be 
drawn to the head. (PI. 18.) The marking is in colored rings under 
the three feathers. The straightener is a little board or flattened stick 
perforated in the middle. The arrow shaft was bent through the 
hole. (PI. 16.) 

The usual arrow point was of whitish flint or obsidian. The 
former material was more abundant, but more difficult to work 
nicely. The points were small, slender, thin, and neat. Bone points 
were also known. ‘These were sharpened on sandstone. 

The quiver was a skin turned inside out. Otter and fisher fur 
made the most prized quivers, such as were worthy of gifts or of 
display in the brush dance. 


~~ 
BASKETRY. 


The basketry of the Yurok and their immediate neighbors is the 
finest ware made in a style that extended with only minute varia- 
tions south to the Wailaki, east as far as the Achomawi, and north 
at least to the Athabascan tribes on the Umpqua River, if not be- 
yond. If a number of specimens in the British Museum are repre- 
sentative, the ware of the Kalapuya in the Willamette Valley was 
similar. 

This type of basketry is unusually specialized in the rigid limi- 
tation of its processes. Coiling, wicker, checker, and twill work are 
all unknown. Substantially the only technique is simple twining, 
with patterns throughout in “facing,” that is, overlay. Three- 
strand twining is customary for starts and strengthening courses, 
and diagonal twining is known, but neither weave is regularly em- 
ployed for entire vessels. Wrapped twining and false embroidery 
are common farther north, and lattice twining and three-strand 
braiding are used to the south, but are never followed in the local 
area constituted by northwestern California and southwestern 
Oregon. 

The Yurok employ hazel shoots almost exclusively for their warps. The 
normal woofs are the split roots of conifers—pine, redwood, or spruce. For 
special purposes, such as the first courses of a basket or especially fine work, 
strands split from the roots of willows, grapevines, and other bushes are sub- 
stituted. The conifer roots are of a gray or buff color, which turns brown with 
age. Service baskets have their patterns made by facing certain woofs with 
glistening whitish strands of bear grass or squaw grass (Xerophyllum tenax), 
a material used along the Pacific coast for long distances to the north. Orna- 
mental baskets have the entire surface overlaid with this brilliant facing, 
except where it is replaced by patterns in glossy black maidenhair fern stems, 
Adiantum pedatum, or fibers of the giant fern, Woodwardia radicans, dyed red 
with chewed alder bark. Occasionally both colors are used on one basket, but 
this is uncommon except on caps. Rather infrequently yellow patterns are in- 
troduced, made by steeping Xerophyllum in boiled Hvernia vulpina lichen, and 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 16 





Yurok stone pestle; wooden arrow straightener; ‘‘whale colored’’ flint knife for dressing salmon, 
the wooden handle lashed with cord and pitched; salmon grease dish of steatite. 


SSHONI LE OL 496 ‘HLONAT “SHNOLS DNIWMOOO SHL HLIM 


LOVLNOO WOYS GSEYYVHO SONS AHL 


eA Neld) SoeeNE Ss Wiha 


SaAqgqgrLS wannabe NaOOV 


MOUNA 





ADOTONHLA NVOIYAWV SAO NVAUNE. 


rer 


= 


BULLETIN 78 PLATE 18 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 





IN WAR COSTUME OF ROD 


ARMOR AND HELMET 


KAROK 





KAROK DRAWING THE BOW 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 19 





a, Yurok stool of redwood; , c, stone-handled adzes, steel replacing the ancient blades of shell; d, e, 
mauls to drive horn wedges. 





KROBBEB] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 91 


still- more rarely porcupine quills are treated in the same manner and in- 
serted. The use of quills seems to have filtered down the river from the Kla- 
math and Modoc. The Yurok keep the overlay constantly toward the outside, 
~ so that no color shows on the interior of the basket except where strand edges 
peep through the interstices. More easterly tribes twist the warp with its fac- 
ing, so that the pattern is duplicated, though rather roughly, on the inner side. 
The materials mentioned are varied slightly by some tribes, but, on the whole, 
are employed without change as far as the type of basketry prevails. 


Some 20 forms of vessels are, or were, made in this technique 
by the Yurok. 


The cooking basket, used specially for acorn mush, is a bowl with vertical 
walls and usually a single band of rather light pattern. 

A smaller basket of the same kind is used by individuals to eat from, or some- 
times to cook in. 

A vessel like the cooking basket, but somewhat higher, and often faced solidly 
with Xerophyllum, serves as a general receptacle around the house. The decora- 
tion runs either vertically or in horizontal bands, sometimes diagonally. 

Large baskets, up to 3 feet or more in diameter and height, serve for storage. 
Vertical and diagonal patterns prevail. 

Similar baskets are made in coarse or open work,.often on multiple warps, 
naturally without decoration. 

Loads are carried in a conical basket, which hangs across the shoulders from 
a strap passing over the forehead. These baskets are made very neatly in a 
wide spaced but even openwork. The type is known throughout California as 
far south as Tehachapi. (PI. 9.) 

Similar baskets for gathering seeds are made somewhat smaller in close stitch, 
usually faced and patterned. 

The seeds are whipped in with a beater, a disk of coarse openwork on a 
handle. 

Similar disks, somewhat more hollowed and lacking handles, are plates 
for individual portions of fish; and large trays of the same type abound in 
every house. 

A close woven tray, faced and patterned either in bands or in radiating 
diagonals, is 14 or 2 feet in diameter, and serves to gather and shake acorn 
meal. 

This meal is sifted by the Yurok from a smaller, stiff, and entirely flat tray, 
which is tapped with a deer leg bone. The Hupa replace this sifter by one in 
the form of a very obtuse cone, which does not require tapping. 

Similar to the Hupa sifter is a water dipper, used by both tribes. It is 
usually unornamented. 

A very small bowl or tray, decorated inside, serves parched seed meal. 

The rumitsek is a more or less globular basket in openwork, hung about the 
house to hold spoons, awls, sinews, and odds and ends. It is sometimes made 
very prettily with courses of crossed or gathered warp and a pleasingly equal 
mesh. 

The tobacco basket is small, globular or deep, and sometimes provided with 
a cover of basketry or deerskin. It is overlaid, but commonly patterned 
simply. 

The hopper for the slab on which acorns are pounded is stiffly reinforced, 
and usually bears an elementary pattern of bars or dots. 

The dance basket serves for display only and has been described above. 


92 BUREAU OF AMERICAN BTHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 


The woman’s cap has already been mentioned. The finest and evenest work 
is best combined in this article. The disposition of the ornamentation is 
fundamentally banded, but the principal zone most often contains a series of 
alternate blocks of triangular pattern. Sometimes the blocks are rhomboids 
disposed diagonally. 

The cradle or baby carrier is a huge sort of slipper of openwork, 
stood on its toe or hung from the hoop which forms the heel. Some 
strands shut off the toe: on these the child is set and tied in, its feet 
hanging free. A more or less dangling round hood may be added 
to protect the face, but is commoner in specimens made to trade 
to Americans than in used pieces. This is a form of the “sitting 
cradle” that prevails in parts of northern California, as contrasted 
with the “lying cradle” that most Californians use. To the east- 
ward of the Yurok, as among the northern Wintun, a simpler shape 
is used, which is little more than an ovate tray with a handle at the 
small end. To the south, the Pomo, a people of great mastery of the 
textile art, have developed a somewhat different variety of the sitting 
cradle. (Pl. 35.) 


WOODEN IMPLEMENTS. 


The only box known to the Yurok was a more or less tapering cyl- 
inder of redwood, from 2 to 4 feet long, hollowed out from the top. 
A lid covered the opening and was lashed on. Occasionally a rec- 
tangular specimen is to be seen, but the usual old form is the cylinder. 
It is difficult to explain this peculiar shape, unless by a transfer of 
the canoe-making technique. ‘The boxes served to hold obsidians and 
other dance valuables and were normally transported by canoe; but 
a square receptacle would have lain on the round bottom of the boat 
substantially as well: as the round form. (PI. 15.) 

Rectangular platters or trays for deer meat, and huge finger 
bowls carefully used after a repast of the same, were made of wood. 
The former are often white with hardened fat and black with smoke 
and dirt. 

From redwood or other lumber were also made the only two 
movable articles of furniture ever reported from aboriginal Califor- 
nia: a round block stool, from 3 to 9 inches high and somewhat flaring 
(pl. 19), of which several stood in every better house, and a pillow for 
the sweat house (pl. 10). The latter had somewhat the shape and size 
of a brick stood on edge with the ends a little spread and the top side 
hollowed. The stool, although in the living house, was used chiefly 
by men, who among the Yurok rarely follow the general Californian 
custom of sitting on the ground. Even outdoors they look about for 
a log or stone, and in default, kneel, squat, lean, or stand. ‘This 
little habit is a powerful indication of a well-settled mode of life. 


KROBEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 93 


In the Southwest it sharply marks off the town-dwelling Pueblos 
from their nomadic neighbors. In neither region does the custom 
extend to women. . 

The standard fire drill was made—both “man” and ‘“ woman,” 
as the Yurok call the two parts—of willow root. (PI. 77. 


66 


UTENSILS OF ELK HORN. 


Elk horn was used for the point of the flint flaker, for mesh spacers, 
and shuttles; sometimes for arrow straighteners, for spoons, and 
for purses. The spoon is truly such, not a ladle, with a rather 
flat, cross-grained bowl. The handle always bears some decoration, 
and often is. worked into fairly elaborate zigzags and _ notches. 
Sometimes it is cut through longitudinally. One extremely inter- 
esting specimen has a thread winding around the handle. Unfor- 
tunately there is nothing to prove whether this device is aboriginal 
or suggested by an American screw. The spoon served for eating 
acorn gruel, but women contented themselves with a mussel shell or 
the top of a deer skull. Rich houses kept a store of fine spoons to 
bring out when they entertained dance guests (pl 20). Modern 
spoons are made of wood, but these are likely to be imitations, devised 
when the supply of antler was no longer obtainable. Most Cali- 
fornians licked their daily gruel from the crooked index and middle 
fingers, but this does not seem to have been good Yurok manners. 

The purse or money box was of the same shape as the large wooden 
box for dance valuables. It averaged 6 to 7 inches in length. Deer- 
horn specimens were smaller and less used. Several strings of 
dentalia could be folded back and forth into an elk-antler purse. 
The ld was then sprung on under a projection at one end and held 
in place by a thong wrapping. Now and then a different purse was 
made from the antler where it forks. This type was triangular. All 
the horn purses were usually incised with the triangles or zigzags 
which are the basis of almost all Yurok decoration. (PI. 15.) 

There must have been a needle, since rush mats were made by sew- 
ing a cord through the stems; but whether the instrument was of 
wood, horn, or bone, is not known. The mats were sat. and slept on 
by women in the living house. 


RECEPTACLES. 


A curious receptacle, known only to the northwestern tribes, was a 
piece of deer hide, folded hair side out, and with a stick fastened 
along each edge to spring it closed. The whole somewhat resembled 
a quiver in outline, but was flat and opened along one edge. It was 
conveniently carried clamped under the upper arm. 


94. BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


A network sack, with mesh small enough to hold acorns, was much 
used to carry little objects, from food to money. The shape was 
trapezoidal, with a deerskin strap. This type was known over most 
of California, and was chiefly if not wholly man’s paraphernalia. 

Loose feathers and the like were rolled on a sort of mat of herb 
stems on which the leaves were allowed to remain and which were 
twined with string. The object is so shaped as to belly out some- 
what when rolled up. 

A similar mat case of tules was sometimes made for obsidians. 

A small skin of soft fur, spread out flat, often had dentalia rolled 
up init. At one end a thong was stitched on, which was tied around 
the bundle. 


TOOLS. 


The Yurok were tolerable workmen, but possessed few tools. 

Logs and planks were split with wedges of elk horn from a few 
inches to a foot and a half in length. Some of these were nearly fiat, 
others sharply curved, according to the intended use. The edge was 
produced by rubbing on stone. 

The wedges were driven with pear-shaped mauls, 6 to 8 inches in 
height, of basalt or mottled metamorphic rock. They are usually 
quite symmetrical and sometimes beautifully finished. Most Cali- 
fornia tribes were content with convenient stones. These mauls were 
one of two kinds of tools on which the Yurok bestowed much care. 
P93) 

The other was the stone handle of the adze. The blade of this is 
declared to have been of heavy mussel shell. The handle was 6 to 10 
inches long, curved up at the end, sometimes with a taper that seems 
almost too delicate for use. The other end was cut away to receive 
the butt of the blade, which was lashed on. (PI. 19.) Most pieces 
bear two or three ridges or grooves to hold the lashings from slipping. 
Sometimes the handle end curls but shghtly or is blunt and straight; 
but such pieces have probably been worked over after a break. Steel 
very early replaced the shell blades, but the stone handles continued in 
use as long as any members of the generation of discovery remained 
alive. This implement is restricted to the region in which the Yurok 
type of culture prevailed, but, ike most of the distinctive utensils 
that withstand time, existed there in prehistoric times. 

It is doubtful with what the Yurok did their finer wood carving, 
as on the acorn mush stirrers. Elk-horn spoons had their designs 
rubbed into form with sandstone. Purses, of the same material but 
hollow, must have been gouged with a sharper tool. The method of 
boring pipes of hard wood and stone is also unascertained. 

The old skin-dressing tools were quickly superseded by steel blades. 
It does not seem that there were well-formed implements for this 


OO SS eae 





BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 20 





CARVED ELK ANTLER SPOONS FOR ACORN GRUEL. YUROK 





BUERLE TING Si PCAg Ea 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 


ie eremeieteng gs 


Sg ce 
Fi cape Ele: 





KAROK MAN 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 95 


purpose, else at least the handles would have been preserved. It is 
rather likely that a rock was broken to convenient shape, or a bone 
rubbed down. The Hupa tell somewhat indefinitely of scrapers of 
stone and deer rib. The only part of the aboriginal technique that has 
survived is the rubbing of deer brains into the hide. These are pre- 
served in cakes of moss, which are soaked before use. The process 
softens the skin. True tanning was, of course, unknown, 


MUSIC. 


Music, like art, is difficult to characterize without a special vocalu- 
lary that has grown up around it. Such vocabularies do not exist 
for most primitive arts because their essential qualities are too for- 
eign from our own. Usually it is only certain incidental features 
of an alien art that have any meaning in our thinking and feeling. 
We detach these aspects of expression from their roots and describe 
them in terms which seem significant but are of real meaning only 
as they refer to our own schemes. It is only the individual en- 
dowed with exceptional sympathy or sensibility that can under- 
stand any primitive art without a long acquaintance; and since most 
people have not the interest to familiarize themselves with the art 
of their own civilization they are wholly incapable of knowing 
what a remote foreign one is about. Hence they prefer Indian 
baskets with bastard European patterns; and though they may find 
something vaguely pleasing In many primitive works of decora- 
tion—if seen sufficiently rarely—the quality which appeals is that 
of strangeness and the grotesque. 

It is the same with music. ‘The first impression of a native song 
is one of funny noises, grunts, deflected intonations; and the almost 
invariable report is of plaintiveness, wailing monotony, minor wist- 
fulness—emotions which the hopeful lover, the religious devotee, 
the community celebrating a victory certainly were not trying to 
render when they uttered the song. A few examples in our inade- 
quate notation convey but a terribly distorted impression. The 
music must be heard and heard and heard by those both willing and 
able to listen to it before it can be understood. 

Nevertheless the most casual can discern with ease a distinctive- 
ness in northwestern music. Hear again and again any half dozen 
songs of the Yurok, the Yana, the Pomo, and the Yokuts. Then 
listen to a new song from one of the latter three nations. Only a 
fairly proficient musician would venture its definite attribution to 
one of the three peoples: their range of stylistic peculiarity is slight. 
But let the additional song be from the Yurok, and even the novice 
could usually place it with confidence. It should be added that the 


8 





9eORr? om 
3625 —25 


96 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Yurok themselves can not distinguish their own music from that of 
the Hupa and Karok, and in many cases from that of other near-by 
tribes. But the difference of northwestern songs from those of cen- 
tral California in mass is considerable. 

A few external traits can be mentioned. The northwesterner, 
particularly in the music of his great dances, loves to leap upward 
an octave or more to a long, powerful note, and then sink back from 
this by a series of slides, often of a continuous tonal transition. 
The accompanists at times chant a rhythmic bass pulse without 
definite melodic relation to the strain. The levels and climaxes 
vary enormously in pitch, in rhythm, in intensity of intonation. 
Central Californian music moves more uniformly in a narrower 
range of smaller intervals. 

These are inadequate hints; but they reveal the rich and unex- 
plored field that hes cultivable for understanding to him with 
sympathy, patience, and a catholic musical sense. For centuries 
hundreds of thousands of human beings in California have been 
forming a style, a variety of styles, according to nation and occa- 
sion, in which they expressed some of their profoundest feelings; 
and we can not yet make a single exact and intelligible remark 
about their accomplishments. 


MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. 


In instruments the Yurok are remarkable for their paucity. The 
sole one was the flute, an open tube of elder wood with three or 
four equally spaced holes. It was blown diagonally across one end. 
If a man could sniff a melody into it with his nose, he was rated 
a virtuoso. Many did not even learn to play it with the mouth. 
The flute was associated with young men’s courtship or unexpressed 
desires; but it was also played by their elders as they sat on sunny 
afternoons before the sweat house in idle meditation. The instru- 
ment is incapable of accompanying the voice. A bone whistle used 
in the Deerskin dance produces only a monotonous blast. 

The northwestern tribes of to-day cover a cracker box with horse- 
hide. This makes an effective drum to go with the songs that in- 
tensify gambling. But the device is not aboriginal. The Yurok 
say that anciently their sole drum was a convenient plank, preferably 
of seasoned white cedar, thumped with a stick. If a passer-by 
wished to join in, he brought his paddle up with him from the 
boat. 

No sort of rattle was used by the Yurok, though several types are 
known from their nearest neighbors. The musical bow and the 
rhythmic rasp of other parts of California were also unrepresented. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 97 


This extreme poverty of instruments among a people not deficient 
in technical devices suggests a strong stylicization of their vocal 
music. 

. CONCLUSION. 


In addition to the many sorts of baskets and a considerable number 
of dance paraphernalia, nearly 100 different kinds of implements of 
Yurok manufacture have been preserved in museums. Adding those 
which went out of use before they could be collected, it is safe to say 
that the group made at least 150, and perhaps 200, distinct types of 
utensils. ‘This is evidence of a fairly rich civilization. 


Here ends the description of the Yurok. The next account will be 
of the Karok, a group so similar to the Yurok in everything but 
speech that their separate consideration will scarcely be necessary 
except as their life is conditioned by their geography; and of two 
smaller peoples, the Wiyot and Chimariko. Next in order are the 
Calfornian members of the great Athabascan family, in some ten 
divisions. The nearest. of these, the Tolowa and Hupa, partake 
wholly of the Yurok type of civilization. From them southward a 
transition can be followed, from group to group, until with the 
Wailaki, and especially the ultimate Kato, another culture, that of 
north-central California, is wholly entered. The Yuki and Pomo 
and a branch of the Miwok come next in sequence along the coast as 
far as the Bay of San Francisco. Here the review leaps northward 
again to the Shasta, neighbors, through the Karok, to the Yurok, 
and participants in their civilization, although in modified and often 
diminished state. Beyond the Shasta the central Californian type of 
culture predominates once more. Some considerable traces of the 
northwestern civilization are still discernible among the Modoc, the 
Achomawi, the northerly Wintun, and even certain of the Maidu, 
but they become fainter and finally fade out. 

The relations, intrinsic and distributional, of the northwestern 
culture to the others in California can thus be set forth with some 
distinctness. ‘The bonds that lnk it northward with the cultures of 
Oregon can not yet be adequately portrayed, intimate as they appear 
to be. In comparisons in this direction lies the chief avenue to a 
broader understanding of this peculiar civilization, 


CHAPTER 5D. 


THE KAROK. 


National relations, 98; settlements, 99; numbers, 101; new year ceremonies, 102; 
rites at Katimin, 108; rites at Panamenik and Inam, 104; rites at Amaikiara, 
104; general character of the rites, 105; girls’ adolescence ceremony, 106; 
scope of religion, 106; names, 107; conclusion, 108. 


NATIONAL RELATIONS. 


The Karok (PI. 21) are the up-river neighbors of the Yurok. The 
two peoples are indistinguishable-in appearance and customs, except 
for certain minutie; but they differ totally in speech. In language, 
the Yurok are a remote western offshoot of the great Algonquian 
family, of which the bulk resided east of the Mississippi and even on 
the Atlantic coast; the Karok, one of the northernmost members of 
the scattered Hokan group, which reaches south to Tehuantepec. The 
nearest kinsmen of the Yurok are the Wiyot, on their south and 
west; of the IXarok, the Chimariko and Shasta, southward and east- 
ward. In spite of the indicated total separateness of origin, the 
two groups are wholly assimilated culturally. 

Kixcept for a few transient bands of Hudson Bay Co. voyagers, 
the Karok knew nothing of the existence of white men until a 
swarm of miners and packers burst in upon them in 1850 and 1851. 
The usual friction, thefts, ambushing, and slaughters followed in 
spots. The two sacred villages near the mouth of the Salmon, and 
no doubt others, were burned by the whites in 1852; and a third, at 
Orleans, was made into a county seat. There were, however, no 
formal wars; in a few years the small richer placers were worked 
out; the tide flowed away, leaving behind only some remnants; and 
the Karok returned to what was left of their shattered existence. 
Permanent settlers never came into their land in numbers; the Gov- 
ernment established no reservation and left them to their own de- 
vices; and they yielded their old customs and their numbers much 
more slowly than the majority of Californian natives. 

The term “ Karok,” properly karuk, means merely “ up-stream ” in 
the language of the Karok. It is an adverb, not a designation of a 
group of people. The Karok have no ethnic name for themselves, 
contenting themselves, in general Californian custom, by calling 
themselves “ people,” agrara, They will sometimes speak of them- 


98 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 99 


selves as Karuk-w-arara in distinction from the Yuruk-w-arara, the 
“ downstreamers ” or “ Yurok”; but this denomination seems wholly 
relative. In thinking of the Shasta above them on the Klamath, they 
would probably name themselves Yuruk-w-arara. 

Karok designations for their neighbors are as follows, -arara or 
-ara denoting “ people,” and -Az, “ speech”: 

Kakamichwi-arara, the Shasta of Klamath River. This term may refer 
to the residents of one village. The speech seems to be called Karakuka or 
Karakuha. Shammai is mentioned as a village. 

Tishra-w-arara, the Shasta of Scott River. 

Mashu-arara, Mashu-hi, the Konomihu and New River Shasta; from Mashu- 
ashay, Salmon River. Shamnam is the Konomihu village at the forks, and 
Hashuruk one below. 

Kasha-arara, Kasha-hara-hi, the Wintun and probably the Chimariko of 
Trinity River; possibly also the tribes on the Sacramento. 

Kishake-w-arara, the Hupa on the lower Trinity. 

Yuruk-w-arara, Yu-hi, the Yurok. 

Sufip-arara, the Yurok of Rekwoi, probably also the Coast Yurok. 

Waiyat-hi, the Wiyot. 

Yuh-ara-hi, the Tolowa. Yuhanak seems to be a Tolowa village. 


SETTLEMENTS. 


Knowledge of the Karok settlements is still involved in confusion. 
It is clear that there were three principal clusters of towns: at the 
mouths of Camp Creek, Salmon River, and Clear Creek. Other 
stretches of the river held smaller villages, and in parts even these 
appear to have been few. 


The farthest Yurok settlement upstream was near the mouth of Bluff Creek, 
the lowest downstream of the Karok was Wopum, Yurok Opegoi, Hupa Hai- 
wochitding, opposite Red Cap Creek, a considerable village. Between these two 
towns a steep peak stands on the south or east bank of the Klamath. This cone 
may be regarded as the boundary between the two peoples, although the In- 
dians, always thinking in terms of individuals or collections of individuals 
and their personal rights, and rarely in terms of groups as such, almost cer- 
tainly did not so regard the mountain. Then, until the vicinity of Camp 
Creek was reached, followed several minor settlements of which for the most 
part only the Yurok names are recorded: Aranimokw, Tui, Oler, Segoashkwu. 
Above Tu’i was a village called Shavuram or Sahwuram by the Karok, and 
Operger by the Yurok. Chiniki and Sanipa were also in this region. 

In the Orleans district there were, in order upstream, Chamikininich, Yurok 
Oketur, on the south or east bank; Tachanak, Yurok Olege’l, Hupa Dacha- 
chitding, on the opposite side at the mouth of Camp Creek; Panamenik, Yurok 
Ko’omen, Hupa Nilchwingakading, on the flat at Orleans; and, once more on 
the east bank, Katipiara, Yurok Tsano, Hupa Killaikyading. Then followed 
Chinits, at Sims Ferry, and Tsofkaram or Tasofkaram at Pearch. The Yurok 
mention Wetsitsiko or Witsigo in this region. 

About a mile below the mouth of the Salmon the Klamath tumbles down a 
low fall, which was a famous fishing station (Pl. 6). Directly at the fall, on the > 
east side, was Ashanamkarak, Yurok Ikwanek. Opposite, a few hundred 
yards below, was the sacred town of Amaikiara, Hupa Djeloding, The Yurok 


100 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


ealled this Enek, but distinguished the upstream portion of the settlement as 
Tumitl. (Pl. 7%.) Directly at the mouth of the Salmon, on its lower side, 
and well known as the spot on which the sacred Jumping dance of Amaikiara 
concluded, was a little flat, uninhabited in the historic period, called Asha- 
pipmam by the Karok and Kworatem by the Yurok. The latter name seems 
to be the source of the designation ‘ Quoratean,” which an artificial system 
of priority and synonymy in nomenclature for a time affixed to the Karok 
nation. 

Just above the mouth of the Salmon rises an isolated little peak, cut out 
between the Klamath and an old channel, which can not fail to impress every 
imagination: A’uich. Adjoining it, on a bluff that overlooks a shallow rapids 
in which the river ceaselessly roars among its rocks, lay the most sacred spot 
of the Karok, the center of their world, isivsanen ach, Katimin. Strictly, 
there was Yutimin, ‘‘ the lower dam,” as well as Katimin, ‘ the upper,” and 
the Yurok distinguished Segwu’ and Apyu. Opposite lay Ishipishi, Yurok 
Kepar, of which Yutuirup was a neighbor or suburb. (PI. 22.) 

Tishrawa, Unharik, Kaus, Inoftak, Iwatak, and Akoteli are villages or parts 
of villages that can not be exactly located, but which seem to have stood in 
the vicinity of the mouth of‘the Salmon. 

From this district up villages and information become scanter. A few miles 
above Katimin was Ashipak, ‘in the basket,’ Yurok Hohkutsor; 10 or 12 
miles farther, Ahoeptini and Ti. Aftaram, mentioned as rich, may have been 
in the same vicinity. For 20 or more miles, nothing is known, except Ayis, 
Yurok Rayoik, and a village called Kumawer by the Yurok. Then, at the _ 
mouth of Clear Creek, Inam is reached: a large town, as shown by its boast- 
ing a Deerskin dance, and famous even to the Yurok as Okonile’l. Some 8 
miles above, at the mouth of Indian Creek, at Happy Camp, was Asisufunuk, 
the last large Karok village, at which a fish weir was sometimes thrown across 
the river. The Shasta mention in this region Nupatsu, below Happy Camp, 
Aukni above it, and Ussini at the mouth of China Creek, beyond which, at 
Thompson Creek, their own villages commenced. The three words are prob- 
ably Shasta equivalents of Karok names.’ 


The land of the Karok is substantially defined by this array of 
villages along the Klamath. There were few permanent settlements 
on any affluents. All of these were owned by the Karok, and more 
or less used as hunting and food gathering territories to their heads; 
so that technically their national boundary followed the watersheds 
bordering the Klamath. The only exception was in the case of 
the largest tributary, the Salmon, about whose forks, a dozen miles 
up, were the Shastan Konomihu. The Karok seem to, have had 
rights along this stream about halfway up to the forks. 

Since the American settlement, the Karok have emigrated in some 
numbers, until now they form the sole Indian population on Salmon 
River, and are rather numerously mixed among the Shasta. 

The dialect of the uppermost Karok was somewhat differentiated, 
but speech was substantially uniform. 

1 Recent unpublished statements obtained from several Karok put their boundary 


against the Shasta much farther upstream, nearly at Hamburg Bar, and claim Shamai, 
Seiad Valley, as Karok. If this is correct, the map (pl. 1) must be considerably altered. 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 101 


Of the wars and feuds of the Karok, little is known, except that the 
Tolowa sometimes crossed the high southern spur of the Siskiyous 
to attack villages in the Clear Creek and Salmon River districts, and 
that the Karok probably reciprocated. Toward the Hupa and Yurok 
friendly feelings generally prevailed. There no doubt were feuds 
between individual villages, but there is no record of these ever in- 
volving the nations as a whole. 


NUMBERS. 


The population of the Karok did not exceed 2,000 at the time of dis- 
- covery, and would unquestionably be put at about 1,500 were it not for 
the considerable number of survivors. The Federal census of 1910 
reckons 775, which makes them one of the largest surviving tribes, 
and even stocks, in California. This figure seems open to some doubt. 
Five years before, with a rather high mortality prevailing in the in- 
terim, an official investigator, whose statistics everywhere else are 
more exhaustive than those of the general census, reported only two- 
thirds as many, distributed as follows: 





Pie item Oren patlisitictens = eee Fle! eee 8 178 
Cpe Wee bat PASE a eae ta ig eg BES] a ig Gy ce et) EMER Ses Uk Sane Aainey OE Se aio aller 192 
Tita mr Allen reOreek )CGistricts eae as et Or sere es ees 160 
ne salmonl (Rivers re rey Se ere eer wy ste wool 46 

TRGTC We eee Re Sede PAAR Paley, Ses Ae ee hea epee 576 


To this total would have to be added a number now resident in ancient 
Shasta territory; but quarter bloods, many of whom now live among the 
Americans and would be reckoned as whites by the ordinary census enumerator, 
are included. 

The last figures are of particular value because they show the population of 
the three districts to have been fairly balanced, with some preponderance in 
the middle one. The circumstances of contact with the whites were much the 
same in the three regions. Now, an early resident, observant and in unusual 
relation with the Indians, estimates 425 for the Panamenik district, and for 
the two above, with part of which he was less intimately acquainted, 1,500. 
His 425 would rather yield 1,500 for the whole nation. 

The official reconnaissance of 1851 reports 250 souls up to Katimin and 600 
to 700 for the stock. But these figures are unquestionably too low. 


The number of houses noted by the expedition of 1851 is a better 
index: 37 in and below the Panamenik district, 69 in the region of 
the mouth of the Salmon, total 106 for very nearly two-thirds of the 
stock. ‘The maximum number of houses that can be attributed to 
the Karok is therefore 200; and at the inhabitant ratio of 74 deter- 
mined for the Yurok, the population of the stock would be 1,500. 
This figure seems the most likely; yet, even if it be stretched some- 
what, it is clear that the Karok were less numerous than the Yurok, 
but outnumbered the Hupa. 


102 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


It may be added that on the basis of 40 to 50 inhabitants per town, 
as among the Yurok, this population implied something like 30 or 
40 Karok villages, which is about the number for which names are 
recorded. 

It is also clear that the populational loss of the Karok in the past 
65 years has been relatively mild, possibly not exceeding one-halt. 


NEW YEAR CEREMONIES, 


The Karok brought out more clearly than the Yurok the esoteric 
first fruits or new year’s element that underlies all the great dances 
of the northwestern tribes. They named the ceremonies “ world 
making.” But they reckoned their neighbors’ celebrations as equiva- 
lent to theirs and visited them regularly. A Karok said that there 
were 10 of these ceremonies and lsted them in geographical order 
as follows—actually he mentioned only 9: 





Pd yee SP De Pe Ee eee Katroke te Pakimitidin soy 1) event se Hupa. 
ca Fim) tiers pe a a a aa ey Karoly) sKRepeb 92-38 eee Sere Yurok. 
AMAIA Tat ere See Karok,. |. Pekwan______ ae AO eS Yurok, 
PaHaHenI Kit eee eee wikarok. a Rekwoiee Se ae eee Yurok 
Weitspusi. (2 aie 2 OE eee Yurok. 


Among all three nations the ceremonies were mostly held in early 
autumn, the remainder in spring, and undoubtedly all bave reference 
either to the beginning of the acorn crop or the run of summer 
salmon. Among the Karok, that at Amaikiara came about April. 
Late in August the autumn series commenced at Inam. Some weeks 
later came Panamenik, and two days subsequently Katimin. The sea- 
son of these last is close to that of the Takimitlding acorn feast 
and the Weitspus Deerskin dance; but, so far as evidence goes, 
conflicts did not take place. A great man could not bring his prop- 
erty to two dances at once; therefore the sequence was, no doubt, 
nicely adjusted, although the Indians, of course, mention ancient 
spirit ordainment as the cause. They probably reason that the gods 
wished the wealth of the rich to be displayed at as many gorgeous 
dances as possible. The formula speaker at Panamenik, at any rate, 
began his 10 days’ rites in the waning moon, timed so as to conclude 
with its death. That afternoon and the next day the dancers ex- 
hibited their deerskins; and then, as the new moon appeared, visitors 
and residents alike moved up to Katimin, where the local priest, 
notified of the start at Panamenik, had so gauged the beginning of 
his fast that the multitude was present for its ending. Then the 
Deerskin dance was made for five days. The Inam ceremony having 
come a month or so earlier, everyone had time to attend, return 
home from this remote spot, and prepare for the two subsequent 
ceremonies. At Inam they also danced with white deerskins, but 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 108 


only about a day and a half as at Panamenik. The Amaikiara rite 
falling in spring, had no competition except for the Salmon cere- 
mony and spring Jumping dance in Hupa, and possibly the similar 
Yurok ceremony at the far-away mouth of the river. It was followed 
by the Jumping dance, which the Karok made only at this place. 

It seems that the choice of seasons for the ceremonies may also 
have been determined in part by the climate. September is sfill 
normally dry and sunny, and the regalia become lttle exposed to 
rain. It is true that the Indians do not cease a dance if it begins 
to rain; but they do break it off or materially shorten it for a 
downpour or a storm. Moreover, as visitors can not begin to be ac- 
commodated in the houses of the town, and sleep in the open or under 
the rudest of brush coverings, the rainy season would be very un- 
favorable for a 2 or 5 or 10 days’ dance. It is true that there is 
still considerable rain at the time of the spring ceremonies; but 
these are less numerous, and, while of no smaller religious import, 
are, on the whole, attended by less sumptuous dancing. Al] the 
surviving Deerskin dances, among Yurok and Hupa as well as 
Karok, come in autumn. In central California, where elaborate 
regalia are again encountered, the Kuksu dances fall during the 
rainy season; but they are definitely held in the dry and roomy 
earth house. Southern California is so nearly arid that ceremonies 
could be held in a roofless inclosure and their time determined other 
than by the weather. 

The esoteric portions of their four great dances were gone through 
with in full by the Karok priests each year, as is only proper for rites 
that renew and establish the world. So far as actual records go, 
however, the Deerskin dances were made only in alternate years, al- 
though those of Panamenik and Katimin came in the same year. 
Biennially the war dance was substituted for them. This calls for 
no display of wealth and is likely, therefore, to have drawn visitors 
only from nearer towns, thus lessening the burden of entertain- 
ment on the rich men of the home village. Whether the great dances 
were made biennially or annually before the American intruded is 
not certain. 


RITES AT KATIMIN. 


At Katimin the old man in charge of the ceremony sleeps for 10 nights in the 
sacred sweat house there. This, at least in its present form, is not a true sweat 
house, but a squarer and higher structure, not slept in at other times, (PI. 12.) 
During the days he isin the sacred living house; but each day he visits a different 
rock or spot in the hills and speaks to it the requisite part of his long formula. 
It it said that this formula was not treated as private property—that is, not 
sold or inherited outright—but that the old man would teach it to a younger one 
who evinced memory, interest, and concentration. This might often be his 


104 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


assistant, it may be assumed, or, if not, then a son or nephew. It does not 
seem likely that a Karok would allow so important a possession as this knowl- 
edge to pass to any other than a kinsman in some degree. 

Besides his assistant the priest is accompanied by two virgins, or perhaps 
girls not yet adolescent, who seem to gather wood for his fire in the living house 
and to cook the light portions of acorn gruel on which alone he subsists. For 
the same 10 days he speaks to no person, does not turn his head to look or listen, 
and is addressed by no one. On each visit to a sacred spot he is followed by a 
band of young men, who shoot at marks and play along the way. Meanwhile 
visitors begin to arrive and camp on the sand bar by the river. 

The 10 days come to a climax on the last night at the yuhpit, a foot-high 
hillock of clean sand near a large pepper tree at the edge of the bluff on which 
Katimin stands. (PI. 22.) The two maidens clean this of any rubbish that may 
have accumulated and add to it each year one basketful of clean sand from the 
river. They descend to this, cook acorn gruel at the water’s edge, and, carrying 
it up to the yuhpit, give it to the young men who have accompanied the priest 
on his daily journeyings. In the evening the old man brings out a sacred stool 
or seat from the sweat house, sets it on the sand pile, and, with his drill, 
kindles new fire before the assembled people. As he throws something on and 
the blaze burns up he calls out, and all except he cover their faces until he orders 
them to cease. Whoever looked would be bitten by a snake during the year. 
For the remainder of the night he sits or stands on his holy seat, perhaps recit- 
ing prayer or formula at times, and the people, or some of them, remain about, 
“helping him to keep awake” by their jests and laughter. 

The combination of the use of sand in the yuhpit and of the fact that the 
Karok name for the world which is established by the rite is isivsanen, has 
led to strange reports that this is a “‘ sift sand ’’ ceremony. 

The next day begins the Deerskin dance. The priest is still attended by 
the two girls, and daily mutters his story while casting angelica root into 
the fire before the dancers commence. For the last day’s dance they line up 
between the yuhpit and the pepperwood. Two parties, representing Aftaram 
and Katimin, compete in the dance. In old days there may have been more. 


RITES AT PANAMENIK AND INAM, 


At Orleans the course of the ceremony is similar. Its central feature, the 
kindling of a fire which may not be looked at, is called wilela’o by the Yurok. 
Whether there is anything corresponding to the yuhpit is not known. Elements 
of this kind are often local among the northwestern tribes. There is some 
doubt whether the ceremony begins in the Panamenik or Tachanak sweat 
house. The dance is at Chamikininich, concluding at a spot on the opposite 
western shore called Tishanishunukich. 

Of the Inam ceremony nothing is known except that it is called irahivi. 
It and the two foregoing esoteric rites, as well as public dances, are Said to 
have been instituted by the same ikhareya or ancient spirit as he traveled 
downstream. The formulas are, however, distinct, although no doubt of 
Similar tenor. 

RITES AT AMATKIARA, 


The Amaikiara new year ceremony also centers about a fire that mortals 
may not see; but this is made during the day, and there is a ritualistic eating 
of the first salmon of the season. The priest or formula reciter is called 
fatawenan, and with his assistant has fasted—that is, subsisted on thin acorn 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 105 


mush—for “many days,” probably 10. Early on the morning of the great day 
the men who have been with him in the Amaikiara sweat house emerge and 
shout to the people of the town and of Ashanamkarak across the river to 
leave. Everybody packs up his food and starts uphill. No one may eat until 
the summit of the ridge is reached. There they feast, play, and shoot at a 
mark, but never look back, for whoever saw the sacred smoke arising would 
sicken before long. 

A womanb assistant is ferried across the river to Ashanamkarak. Going 
uphill, she cuts down a small madrofia tree, splits the whole of it into kindling, 
and carries the load down to the river’s edge at Ashanamkarak, after which 
she returns to Amaikiara and spends the remainder of the day fasting in the 
sacred house wenaram. 

Toward noon the priest and his assistant leave the sweat house, bathe, paint 
themselves, and cross to AsShanamkarak. Here, in a small cleared space among 
the tumbled rocks, stands an altar (Pl. 6), a rude cube of stone about a foot 
high, the only instance known in California of a true altar, unless the southern 
California ground paintings be so reckoned. This the assistant repairs, then 
starts a fire near it with the madronia wood. He also cooks and eats a 
salmon. How and when this is taken, and whether it is caught at the spot, 
which is noted for its fish eddies, are not certain. The priest himself merely 
deposits tobacco to the deities, directs by signs, and speaks his formula 
“inside ”’—that is, thinks or mumbles it. He utters no word and is in too holy 
a state to perform any act. Later in the afternoon the pair return to 
Amaikiara, where they are received in the sweat house by the men who have 
remained within, to the same song to whose strains they left it. Toward 
evening these men come out and shout to the people to return. 

For 10 days more the fatawenan and his assistant remain seated in the 
wenaram and sleep in the sacred sweat house. The people, however, make the 
Jumping dance at Ashatak, opposite the mouth of the Salmon, and conclude the 
last day by dancing at Ashapipmam, while those of Katimin come down and 
dance simultaneously across the mouth at Itiwuntunuta. In the Jumping dance 
the Karok use eight long poles, dhuvareiktin, painted red and black, which 
afterwards the young men try to take from one another and break. This is a 
feature not known from the Yurok and Hupa, except for an incident in the 
customs of the former when they build the dam at Kepel. 


GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE RITES, 


The ceremonies described are all unquestionably of “new year” 
type, and have calendrical association with the moon. Yet, to judge 
by Yurok analogy, the Karok year, or reckoning of the moons, began 
at the winter solstice, when there were no public rites. The concept 
of a renewal or reestablishing of the world for another round of the 
seasons was, however, strong in all four of the ceremonies, each of 
which was believed to contribute an indispensable part to this end. 
The new fire element, which is so marked, has not yet been discovered 
in any part of California other than the northwest; some form of 
first salmon rite appears to have been in use in nearly all those parts 
of the State in which the fish abounded. 


106 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


GIRLS’ ADOLESCENCE CEREMONY. 


Like the Hupa, but unlike the Yurok, the Karok made a dance 
for adolescent girls. Contrary to the usual Californian custom, this 
dance was performed chiefly by men—a distinctly northwestern atti- 
tude. The opening was especially reminiscent of the Deerskin dance: 
men stood in line, the singer in the middle, the girl danced back and 
forth before them. Then followed a round dance such as is most 
common in the ceremony elsewhere in California. A ring of men 
surrounded the maiden, a circle of women stood outside, and both re- 
volved dextrally. One by one the men took the girl from behind 
and danced with her. Finally the war or defiance dance was made, 
apparently by the men only, lined up abreast. No one wore regalia 
of much moment. The girl herself had on a little visor of jay 
feathers, and carried a rattle of deer hoofs, an implement used in 
this dance by almost all groups of California. Neither object is em- 
ployed by the Yurok. 

The dance was made at night to keep the girl awake; she herself 
shook the rattle. For 10 days she ate no flesh and drank no water, 
might not look at the sun or sky, could not touch water to her face. 
Each morning she carried to the house 10 loads of wood cut by a 
female relative. On the last day she emerged early and ran back and 
forth 10 times, motioning at the morning star as if to catch it, and 
asking it to give her long life and many dentalia. The entire observ- 
ance was repeated twice subsequently. 


SCOPE OF RELIGION. 


Some of the present-day Karok state that they, the Shasta, and 
more easterly tribes excelled the Hupa in able shamans as well as 
powerful wizards, but that the Hupa formula for purification from 
a corpse was longer and more exacting. This belief is probably 
significant. The formulas are a more specialized development than 
belief in guardian spirits and poisons. They should therefore be 
worked out more fully at the center of the area in which they pre- 
vail, the generalized practices rather in the marginal and surround- 
ing regions. | 

The following religious vocabulary may be of interest: 

em, supernatural power, such as a shaman possesses, 

em-yav, “ good shaman.” 

patunukot, sucking shaman, 

maharav, clairvoyance. 

anav, a sacred formula. 

anava-kiavan, one who knows formulas, either to cure sickness with 
herbs or for any other purpose. 

ara-tanwa, “person die,” a pain, 7. e., disease object. 


KROBBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 107 


apuruwan, an “Indian devil,” 7. €., a person secretly possessing a 
magical object that produces death; also apparently the object it- 
self. 

yumara, ghost, spirit of a dead human being. 

ikhareya, ancient spirit, 7. e., member of the race of beings that pre- 
ceded mankind. Yurok woge, Hupa kihunai. 

yash-arara, “real person,’ a human. being; also, a true man, one of 
wealth and authority, a ‘‘ chief.” 

kemish, any monster; also poison; also wickediy fearless. 

ipshanmaskarav, poison. 

pikship, ** shadow,” soul. 

imya, breath, life. 

ikhareya-kupa, ordained by the former spirit race, sacredly established. 

pikuah, myths. 

ih, to dance; th-an, dancer. 

ih-uk, girl’s adolescence dance. 

hapish, to make the “brush” or curing dance. 

wuwuhina, any great dance, either the Jumping or the Deerskin dance; 
wuwuhansh, those who make or provide for such a dance, 

ishkaship, ‘“‘leap up,” the Jumping dance. 

isivsanen pikiavish, “ making the world,” the ‘‘new year’s” ceremonies 
at Katimin, Amaikiara, etc. 

isivsanen pikiavan, ‘world maker,” the old man who recites the for- 
mula for this rite. 

fata-wen-an, another name for him at Amaikiara. 

sharuk-iruhishrihan, “down hill he eats salmon,” or sharuk-amavan, 
“down hill he leaves salmon,” the assistant in the Amaikiara cere- 
mony. 

ahup-pikiavan, *“* wood maker,” the woman assistant who cuts firewood; 
there are two at Katimin. 

imushan, the male assistant at Katimin. 

wen-aram, the sacred house at Amaikiara associated with the “new 
year’s” rite. 

kimachiram iship, the sacred ‘sweat house” of the corresponding 
Katimin ceremony. 

iswwsanen iktatik, ‘‘ makes firm the world,” a sacred stone kept in this 
house. 


NAMES. 


Children were named only after they had attained several years; 
as the Karok say, so that, “if they died young, they would not be 
thought of by their names.” People will not tell their own names, 
and are exceedingly reluctant to mention those of their kinsmen and 
friends, even if the latter are not present to be embarrassed. It is a 
penalized offense to speak the name of a dead person and the height 
of bad manners to use that of a living person to his face, unless the 
closest intimacy exists. Even in reference to living people clumsy 
circumlocutions spring up, such as Panamenik-wapu, “born at (or 
belonging to) Orleans,” or designations by allusion to the particular 
house inhabited. This feeling causes even derogatory nicknames, 


108 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


such as Pihnefich, “ coyote,” to be preferred to the real name. In ad- 
dress, terms such as “ old man,” “ Hupa man,” “ widower,” “ married 
woman,” “widow,” are very frequent. Most of the personal names 
seem to us very trivial, when they are not based on some peculiarity of 
habit; but in the case of girls there appears some inclination to be- 
stow names that are pretty. Perhaps these are secondary pet names, 
just as the designations by occupation or characteristic are probably 
not true personal names. A few examples are: Akuni-hashki, ‘“ shoots 
swiftly ”; Kemhisem, “roamer” or “ traveler”; Anifakich, “ walks 
down hill slowly”; Ma’ikiviripuni, “runs down from up the hill”; 
Sichakutvaratiha, “ wide belt”; Taharatan, “ flint flaker” or “ bullet 
molder”; and for girls, Vniwach, “dripping water”; Hatimnin, 
“butterfly.” : 


CONCLUSION. 


Beaver-teeth dice are attributed to the Karok in one or two museum 
collections. This is an Oregonian form of game, and may have 
reached the Karok only since the American occupation. It is true 
that the upper Karok are geographically nearer to tribes like the 
Klamath and Modoc than to the mussel-gathering Yurok of the coast ; 
but their culture as a whole being so thoroughly northwestern, and 
showing so little eastward leaning, raises a generic presumption 
against any eastern practices that are not definitely corroborated. 

Data are scarcely available for a fuller sketch of Karok culture. 
Nor is such an account necessary in the present connection. In at 
least ninety-five institutions out of every hundred, all that has been 
said of the Yurok or is on record concerning the Hupa apples identi- 
cally to the Karok. Here nothing further has been attempted than to 
depict their relation to their land and to note some of the minor 
peculiarities of their culture and its departure from the most integral 
form of northwestern civilization. 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BU EEE IRING 7 Sele Abn een 





THE KAROK CENTER OF THE WORLD: SACRED TOWN OF KATIMIN ON LEFT BANK 
OF KLAMATH; ISHIPISHI ON OPPOSITE SIDE ACROSS RAPIDS; AUICH PEAK 
BELOW, HIDING THE MOUTH OF SALMON RIVER; AND BEYOND, THE RIDGE 
UP WHICH GO THE SOULS OF THE DEAD 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLE TINGE / 8 se BA tee 





“ee ae 


WIYOT BASKETS 


For eating (a), carrying (6), and cooking (c). 





CHAPTER 6. 
THE CHIMARIKO AND WIYOT. 


THE CHIMARIKO, 109; THE Wiyot, 112; habitat and affiliations, 112; settlements, 
115; numbers, 116; place names, 116; material culture, 117; shamanism, 
117; ethics, 118; ceremonials, 118; beliefs, 119. 


Tuer CHIMARIKO. 


The Chimariko were one of the smallest distinct tribes in one of 
the smallest countries in America. They are now known to be an 
offshoot from the large and scattered Hokan stock, but as long as 
they passed as an independent family they and the Esselen served 
ethnologists as extreme examples of the degree to which aboriginal 
speech diversification had been carried in California. 

Two related and equally minute nations were neighbors of the 
Chimariko: the New River Shasta and the Konomihu. The language 
of these clearly shows them to be offshoots from the Shasta. But 
Chimariko is so different from both, and from Shasta as well, that 
it must be reckoned as a branch of equal age and independence as 
Shasta, which deviated from the original Hokan stem in very ancient 
times. It seems likely that Chimariko has preserved its words and 
constructions as near their original form as any Hokan language; 
better than Shasta, which is much altered, or Pomo, which is worn 
down. 

The entire territory of the Chimariko in historic times was a 20- 
mile stretch of the canyon of Trinity River from above the mouth 
of South Fork to French Creek (Fig. 8). Here lay their half dozen 
hamlets, Tsudamdadji at Burnt Ranch being the largest. In 1849 
the whole population of the Chimariko was perhaps 250. In 1906 
there remained a toothless old woman and a crazy old man. Except 
for a few mixed bloods, the tribe is now utterly extinct. 

The details of the fighting between the Chimariko and the miners 
in the sixties of the last century have not been recorded, and perhaps 
well so; but the struggle must have been bitter and was evidently the 
chief cause of the rapid diminution of the little tribe. 

Since known to the Americans, the Chimariko have been hostile to 
the Hupa downstream, but friendly with the Wintun upriver from 
them. Yet their location, with reference to that of the latter people 
and the other Penutians, makes it possible that at some former time 


109 


110 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 


the Chimariko were crowded down the Trinity River by these same 
Wintun. 

The Chimariko called themselves Chimariko or Chimaliko, from 
chimar, person. The Hupa they called Hichhu; the Wintun, Pach- 
huai—perhaps from pachhu, “ willow ”; the Konomihu, Hunomichu— 
possibly from hunoi-da, “north”; the Hyampom Wintun, Maitro- 
ktada—from maitra, “flat, river bench”; the Wiyot, Aka-traiduwa- 


















HP 
+ < 
aft 
r > 
A ~~ As 
Ne ny f nernes if Salmon ~ 
(V O fac ugidji 
4 K OND MA 1 s8) 
As focumville 
2 7 Maidjahuchula Sa 
eitchpec 
x ) 
re ( = (Cecilvill 
; ecilville 
ug Amitsi ij \ <u {Maid achudj 
: hedji : . J ji 
ewRiver City 
c S LY Kdiomeniwinda Y 2 ; 
 ~— HovetadjiNo Haumtadji a& ‘ cdi tw 
Y Hoopaagency alfotoud)i 
homed Cady “ ai ¥ 
— 2 = , Trinity Center, 
y p--~DUREpka of NewRisjer 
Willow Creek, S Le ; ay rhalyausmud)i 
Hitutaidji » ye was othe \ i 
Shi Seer a Maidjasore 4 0 
Fie eee \ ee A 
Hachugidj? Mamsuid)! y Pattérson yf . Pe) : 
Paytunadyi ( Os NJ 
Hawking Bar ( Cree ‘ Re 
Hamai Raat " Hieeohccit a} \ 
Se rue hi v. : ‘ 
\ 3. Si \ 
BarntRanch 
+ Tsubamad:z aii * : yy Taylor¥Flat’ ke 
Chic han m a’ 
Cc QdarFlat’ ‘ Pe 
“=? Qdinakchohody a! a North Fork 
g A (on nse 4 Pes 
zg \O- Ch Cr Sea 4 Bi : Bé4 ‘ «Junction. veaverville nN 
x oe ~ City te 
A > 
x . 
al rb 
NG aes ) os 
>. Fas = Douglas City 
eos 
a\¥ 
=\ 4 
‘S 
The Chimariko 
s Villages 
e Places 


o Places inAlien Territory 





WicG. 8.—Chimariko land, towns, and neighbors. 


ktada,—perhaps from aka, “water.” Djalitasum was New River, 
probably so called from a spot at its mouth. They translated into 
their own language the names of the Hupa villages, which indicates 
that distrust and enmity did not suppress all intercourse or inter- 
marriage. T a eran the “ acorn-feast-place,” they called Hope- 
tadji, from hopeu, “acorn soup”; Medilding, “ boat-place,” was 
Mutuma-dji, from mutwma, “canoe.” The Hupa knew the Chimar- 
iko as TVomitta-hoi. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 111 


The customs of the Chimariko were patterned after those of the 
Yurok and Hupa in the degree that a poor man’s habits may imitate 
those of his more prosperous neighbor. Their river was too small 
and rough for canoes, so they waded or swam it. They used Van-- 
couver Island dentalium shells for money, when they could get them ; 
but were scarcely wealthy enough to acquire slaves, and too few to 
hold or sell fishing places as individual property. Their dress and 
tattooing were those of the downstream tribes; their basketry was 
similar, but the specializations and refinements of industry of the 
Hupa, the soapstone dishes, wooden trunks, curved stone-handled 
adzes, elaborately carved soup stirrers and spoons, and rod armor, 
they went without, except as sporadic pieces might reach them in 
barter. 

With all their rudeness they had, however, the outlook on life of 
the other northwestern tribes—a sort of poor relation’s pride. Thus 
they would not touch the grasshoppers and angleworms which are 
sufficiently nutritious to commend themselves as food to the un- 
sophisticated Wintun and tribes farther inland, but which the 
prouder Hupa and Yurok disdained. The only custom in which the 
Chimariko are known to have followed Wintun instead of Hupa 
precedent—though there may have been other instances which have 
not been recorded—was their manner of playing the guessing game, 
in which they hid a single short stick or bone in one of two bundles 
of grass, instead of mingling one marked rod among 50 unmarked 
ones. 

The Chimariko house illustrates their imperfect carrying out of 
the completer civilization of their neighbors. It had walls of verti- 
cal slabs, a ridgepole, and a laid roof with no earth covering. These 
points show it to be descended from the same fundamental type of 
all wood dwelling which prevails, in gradually simplifying form, 
from Alaska to the Yurok. But walls and roof were of fir bark 
instead of split planks. The length was 4 or 5 yards as against 7 
on the Klamath River, the central excavation correspondingly shal- 
low. ‘The corners were rounded. <A draft hole and food passage 
broke the wall opposite the door where the Yurok or Hupa would 
only take out a corpse. And the single ridgepole gave only two 
pitches to the roof—a construction known also to the lower tribes, but 
officially designated by them as marking the “ poor man’s house,” 
the superior width of their normal dwelling requiring two ridge 
poles and three slants of roof. 

Chimariko religion was a similar abridged copy. Sickness, and, 
on the other hand, the medicine woman’s power to cure it, were 
caused by the presence in the body of “ pains,” small double-pointed 
animate objects, which disappeared in the extracting doctor’s palm. 


3625 °—25——_9 





ry BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The fast and uncleanness after contact with the dead lasted five days, 
and had to be washed away. Such more elementary beliefs and 
ritual practices for the individual the Chimariko shared with the 
‘other northwestern tribes. But the great national dances of the 
Yurok, Karok, and Hupa, held at spots hallowed by myth, colored 
by songs of a distinctive character, dignified by the display of 
treasures of native wealth, and connected with sacred first-fruit or 
even world-renewal ceremonies, these more momentous rituals the 
Chimariko lacked even the pretense of, nor did they often visit their 
neighbors to see them. They were a little people in its declining old 
age when civilization found and cut them off, 


Tue Wryor. 


HABITAT AND AFFILIATIONS. 


The Wiyot, a small body of shore-dwelling people, join with the 
adjacent Yurok to constitute the Algonkins of California. <A certain 
resemblance between the two languages was noted on first ac- 
quaintance, and their ultimate affinity suspected. Fuller data re- 
vealed a great difference. When a beginning of analysis was finally 
possible, the structure of the two idioms was seen to be very similar; 
after which comparison showed: a certain number of common stems. 
They were then united as the single Ritwan stock; but renewed ex- 
amination established this as but a member and distant outpost on 
the Pacific of the great Algonquian family of central and eastern 
North America (Fig. 9). 

Wiyot territory fell into three natural divisions: lower Mad River, 
Humboldt Bay, and lower Eel River. The natives had a name for 
each district: Batawat, Wiki, and Wiyot. The people of each region 
were called by names formed from these words by the suffixion of 
the element -daredalil. Wiyot, while thus properly only the name 
of a district, was used for the entire stock by most of the neighboring 
groups: the Yurok say Weyet or Weyot, the Karok Waiyat. The 
Athabascan Sinkyone, up Kel River, are more correct in restricting the 
term to the country, and call the inhabitants Dilwishne, which they 
explain as an onomatopoetic word descriptive of the strange sound 
of Wiyot speech. As the stock has no name for itself as a body, the 
designation Wiyot is perhaps as appropriate as can be found, 
Wishosk, which for a time was in vogue in the books, is a misap- 
plication of the Wiyot denotation of their Athabascan neighbors: 
Wishashk. Their own language the Wiyot call Sulatelak. The 
ending of this word is also found in Wishi-lak, Athabascan language. 


The Mad River Wiyot associated considerably with the Coast Yurok and 
were tolerably acquainted with their language. This fact has led to con- 


KROPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA i138 


flicting statements as to the northern boundary of Wiyot holdings. As nearly 
as can be ascertained, this lay just south of Little River, at whose mouth 
stood the Yurok town of Metskwo. The upper part of Little River was Chilula 
hunting ground. On Mad River, Blue Lake, near the forks, was still Wiyot. 
The main stream from here up was Whilkut, that is, Athabascan. The North 
Fork was without villages and is in doubt. The Wiyot owned at least the 
lower portion; and on Map 10 the whole of its drainage has been assigned to 





Fic. 9.—Wiyot and Yurok in relation to the Algonkin family. 


them. From Mad River south to Eel River Wiyot territory extended to the 
first range inland. Jacoby, Freshwater, and Salmon Creeks, Elk River, and 
Boynton Prairie were thus Wiyot; Kneeland Prairie and Lawrence Creek, 
Whilkut and Nongatl Athabascan. On Eel River the boundary came at Eagle 
Prairie, near Riodell. Southwest of Eel River, the Bear River mountains 
separated the Wiyot from another Athabascan division, the Mattole. The 


spurs of this range reach the sea at Cape Fortunas, between Guthrie Creek 
and Oil Creek. 


114 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The greatest extension of Wiyot territory is only about 35 miles, 
the greatest breadth barely 15. Their ocean frontage is low and 
sandy, as compared with the precipitous and rocky coast for long 
cistances on both sides. Three or four miles north of their boundary 


« Villages 
..-_Irai 
~~~. Redwood Forest 


Humboldt 


; Kneeland 
: Prairie 
1 


x, 
a Cro, C 
ie > 
OLOLETA oi 


FERNDALEO 


rte Cr 


MATTOLE 


Sear Loy, 
?> 


Cane Mendocino 





Vic. 10.—Wiyot towns and territory. 


is Trinidad Head; 5 or 6 south, Cape Mendocino; both conspicuous 
headlands. The greater part of Wiyot territory was heavy forest, 
mainly of redwood. The balance was sand dunes, tidal marsh, or 
open prairie. Every Wiyot settlement lay on a stream or bay; the 
majority on tidewater. 


KROFBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 115 
SETTLEMENTS. 


The Wiyot towns are known only in part. For the plurality the 
Yurok names are recorded with more certainty than the proper 
Wiyot designations. On the Kel River section information is par- 
ticularly scant; most of the entries in Figure 10 may be only place 
names. Mad River is also likely to have been settled farther up than 
Osok; and it is not clear whether Kumaidada was a settlement or an 
uninhabited spot.? 


WIYOT VILLAGES. 

















Designation in Fig. 10. Wiyot name. Yurok name. 
eMeereE, TAkGe eS. 6 Sere ak. a lok toh a einiAt aoe yam bye tum © Ma’awor. 
TS a ee Ae me ah eee Tabagaukwa (?)............---] Tegwol. 
LS Say A ee ee eee Wide oO eee tere re een. Ti Erlerw. 
Bees oct ce inks piwS Kas ek Kachewinach (?).........-----.| Sepola. 
Poe ak 2 Te ae PR cae er ok irae oe eo Ra (ra Osok. 

Ce A Og ERs eS AP ee oe, Se Tabayat; Witki (?)............| Teuhpo. 

f° ALTE SR te PA ae SPE Seen ae Be Liou Fy ok AP Pera, Me aeleel = pee Erterker. 

(SB eigen 27. Vaan eae ey Tokelomigimitl (?).........-.-- Eni’ koletl. 

SS A. at dus whee x, Jas wh 2 t's Des PULA WG tet cen aoa ts Olog. 

ge La eee eee ae Potitlik, Cherokigechk, | Oknutl. 
Pletswak (?). 

Tew 2 | ARS UR ee en Say ry Yachwanawach:....-:........ Lumatl. 

“nd. gs ec Me Pe oe Doeresiets yi tees eee os ar oe Leptlen. 

UE 6 to Bo: a a ee ee TRUITT Coit ts eee ee eal eee Pimin. 

na a ae Dakduwaka: Hiluwitl (?).-..-.. Ayo. 

So HRI Rl ae Se ae op ema ra VEG ROW Gs ce ot eet eee 

A Re MA LEAN Watbilor te ane ge sts 

SS ee ee Dakwagerawakw (?)......-..-- 

SREP AE eae Wateavenqith (i \ise.s. 22056 s 

Pe ere Ne ont. cc oe | Sone Ak ere tye ese oo 

ct NN Geers ae Kuprrdatiag ye24 4 2-4. shes. Hikets. 





The names of the villages from Salmon Creek to the South Spit (K to N) 
may be confused. 











t1QLoud, Ethnogeography and Archaeology of the Wiyot Territory, 1918 (see _ bibliog- 
raphy), gives a map with nearly 200 sites, 32 of them the principal settlements in 
1850: 10 on Mad River, 14 on Humboldt Bay, 8 on Hel River. A number of these 
identify with the sites in Figure 10, but in most cases under different names (pp. 258-272, 
286-296). 


116 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


NUMBERS. 


The five named towns on Mad River are credited with the follow- 
ing numbers of houses, according to two Yurok sources: 





Ma’awo0r 25252 sur tities Peters Go ot ae ee. eee f 4 
DOS WO) easter gle eS ee eee 3 
Hrlerwek 3 355 8 Se Seg eS Sak he ee oe, eee 20 
MeDOlA ltr shce eae ee ee LF pa od Ma Agee ee ee ra 15 10 
OSOR rican ap ae a ee ere ee te 5 4 


This gives averages of 9 and 6 houses per village. The latter figure 
is that obtaining among the Yurok and probably higher than that 
for the Chilula, and is more likely to be correct. At this rate, the 
population of the five settlements would have been a little over 200; 
and the entire Wiyot population would have amounted to perhaps 
800, or not over 1,000. An 1853 estimate set the former figure. The 
1910 census yielded over 150, but classed half of them as of mixed 
blood. : 

The following estimates are of interest: 























| Wiyot. Yurok. Karok. Hupa. Chilula. 
Miles of river navigable to a canoe. ..... 25 50 | 60 Hearth ASO (30) 
Population <..22.- ee ea: 500} 1,800; 1,500) 1,000 600 
Ber mil@ aye eo ein te ree eg ee 20 30 25 30 20 
Miles of ocean, bay, or lagoon shore .... 50 50 ence 2. Soho cee 
Populations:: 2.0 so tees ee ee te 500 700 4.5 82 eset eee ee 
Pernille sy. ek a ee ee ae 10 1D At 3222 eileen eee 














It is clear that streams were more sought as habitations than the 
coast in this part of California. Furthermore, practically all of the 
coast settlements, among the Tolowa and Yurok as well as the 
Wiyot, lay on bays, lagoons, or the mouths of streams rather than on 
the ocean shore itself. 


PLACE NAMES. 


These are Wiyot names for foreign places: Datogak, Oil Creek; Chware- 
gadachitl, Bear River; Tsekiot, Cape Mendocino; Wecharitl, south of the mouth 
of Mattole River. These are in Mattole territory. Wiyot “ Metol” may be the 
source of this name, or merely taken ‘over from the Americans. 

Yurok places: Pletkatlshamalitl, Little River; Dakachawayawik, Trinidad 
village, Yurok Tsurau; Ktlonechk, Trinidad Head; Chirokwan, Patrick Point; 
Ri’tsap, a village on Big Lagoon; Tsi’push, Stone Lagoon, Yurok Tsahpekw ; 
Hapsh, Redwood Creek, Yurok Orekw; Chugichechwelage, Redding Rock; 
IKishkapsh, Gold Bluff, Yurok Espau; Katkadalitl, Requa, Yurok Rekwoi; Ikti’n, 
the Klamath River; Dalitlrukiwar, Wilson Creek, Yurok, O’men; Takeluwalitl, 
Weitchpec, Yurok Weitspus, also the Trinity River. 

The Karok village of Panamenik at Orleans was Gatsewinas. 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 117 


In Athabasean territory: Kawa’tlakw, on Redwood Creek, below Bair; 
Tanataptlagerawakw, at Bair; Dalekwuta’tl, Berry, on the same stream; 
Wameriwauk, upstream; Talawulitskilik, Bald Hills, between Redwood Creek 
end the Klamath; Dat-hanetkek, Murphy; Pletalauleli’n, Three Cabins; Plet- 
kukach, Mad River Gap, or near it; Gukech, Kneeland Prairie. 

Wiyot names of tribes: All Athabascans, Wishashk; Yurok (the language), 
Denakwate-lak; Karok, Guradalitl, the speech, Guradalitl-rakwe-lak; Tolowa, 
Dalawa; Hupa, Haptana; Wintun or Chimariko of the upper Trinity, Deiwin. 

It appears from several of the foregoing examples that the Wiyot and Yurok 
did not always follow the regional practice of translating or making anew each 
other’s village names, but occasionally took them over with merely phonetic 
alteration. 


MATERIAL CULTURE. 


In their industries the Wiyot were mates of the Yurok. Their 
habitat supphed certain distinctive materials and now and then 
favored a minor degree of specialization. Clams largely took the 
place of mussels, salt-water fishing was practicable but hunting of 
little consequence, slightly different basketry woof fibers were avail- 
able than in the interior, and so on. But the endeavors and methods 
of the culture are those of Yurok culture; and that on the social as 
well as the tangible side. Houses, baskets (pl. 23), dentalium money, 
and a hundred other objects were the same and were used and valued 
alike, apparently. Together with the lower Yurok and the Tolowa, 
the Wiyot were the makers of the canoe of northwestern type, whose 
manufacture can only be carried on where the redwood grows close 
to the water. 


SHAMANISM. 


Shamans were chiefly women, and acquired their powers on moun- 
tain tops at night. Some people, too, were pitied by powerful lake 
spirits, and became physically strong and brave. Shamans in prac- 
ticing wore a headband from which hung two long strings of feathers 
(Fig. 11, c), and shoved condor feathers into their stomachs. There 
were those who only diagnosed while dancing and singing and others 
who also sucked out disease objects and blood. The disease “ pains ” 
were minute, wormlike, self-moving, soft, and transparent. They 
were sometimes sucked through the tobacco pipe (Fig. 11, a4), which 
was a standard unit of the shaman’s equipment. The pains were 
‘alled stlak. This word recalls the disease-causing apparatus that 
the Maidu name s¢/a. 

Dikwa means “spirit” or “supernatural.” The word is applied to the 
Americans and also denotes magical poison. A woman’s monthly condition is 


ealled dikwa-laketl, and the helpers of shamans were wishi-dikwa, ‘“ inland 
spirits,” from their inhabiting the hills. 


118 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


ETHICS. 


Bodily and social self-restraint in daily life was as much incul- 
eated by the Wiyot as by the Yurok. It was only through this 
quality that a man could be anything in the world. Only through 
its exercise could he retain his riches and become wealthier. Self- 
control marked the rich man and was the evidence as well as the 
cause of his standing. The poor man was inherently inferior. He 
did not gravely and naturally hold himself in, because he could not. 
It was impossible that he should ever kill a white deer or have any 
other great piece of fortune. The psychic influence of these beliefs 






Ss 
x = —— x, 
Sg ay 
SF S> 12 | as 
SDs 


cF, 
as 


(SS RS 
RESET SAL = 
72S ora’ = 
er = i 
CAAA Ya! . 


BRL 
HAASE ES 





é fi 
C 
Vig. 11.—Wiyot shaman’s outfit. a, Pipe; b, condor feather; c, headdress; d, elk-skin 
belt. 


must have been profound, so that in large measure they must have 
justified themselves in experience. 


CEREMONIALS. 


The Wiyot did not make the White Deerskin dance. They made 
the Jumping dance only at or near. the village of Shepola on Mad 
River, apparently much as the Yurok made it, and with many visitors 
from the Coast Yurok. 

A dance of somewhat different type, but reckoned as equivalent to 
the Deerskin dance, was made at Hieratgak, on the North Spit of 
Wumboldt Bay. This was held in a house for five days. A woman 
stood in the middle of the line of dancers, some of whom wore ob- 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 119 


sidian blades hanging from the neck, instead of carrying them as 
among the other northwestern tribes. A Yurok account puts this 
dance at Olog and has it neon by the more southerly of the Coast 
Yurok. 

The dance on Eel River is entirely unknown. 

The adolescence ceremony for girls was well developed. For 
5 or 10 days the maiden sat covered in the house fasting. Each night 
the people danced. At the conclusion she was taken by a number of 
women into still sait water. They stood waist deep facing the shore 
in a line and bent forward in unison to the song, sending a miniature 
breaker up the beach with each sway. 


BELIEFS. 


Wiyot mythology is of interest because it consists of the usual 
northwestern ideas to which a strange element has been added which 
can only have come from central California, through the Athabascan 
groups to the south. The narrative formulas by which the Hupa and 
Yurok believed they existed were in full force. Gatswokwire or 
Rakshuatlaketl is the exact equivalent of the Yurok Wohpekumeu. 
He wandered over the earth satisfying an unquenchable erotic im- 
pulse, but also did good. He obtained for the world the salmon that 
were jealously hidden away by their owner; he made children to be 
born without killing their mothers. He instituted dances and many 
other human practices, the formulas necessary for which go back to 
his actions. Sometimes his amativeness brought him into trouble, as 
when the Skate woman lay on the beach to attract him and carried 
him across the ocean; but he was never permanently vanquished. 

With Gudatrigakwitl, “above old man,” we encounter a conception 
of which there is no trace among the Yurok. He existed before the 
earth, he made it, made the first man Chkekowik or Wat the haliotis, 
made all human beings, animals, acorns, boats, string, other utensils, 
the weather, even dances. He used no materials and no tools. He 
merely thought, or joined and spread apart his hands, and things 
were. He lives now and will exist as long as the world. 

It is possible that this deity has been given increased prominence 
by the modern generation of Wiyot if the Ghost dance of 1872 
reached them, but he is introduced into too many ideas that are an- 
cient and general in northwestern belief to allow his being ascribed in 
any large measure to that new and passing doctrine. Moreover, the 
concept of a supreme god and outright creator is found among many 
Californian tribes: the southern Ra neeiAne. the Yuki, the Wintnn, 


the Maidu. 


120 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Another peculiarity of Wiyot mythology is its fondness for ani- 
mal characters. This is a generic Californian rather than a central 
Californian trait; but it is a deviation from the specialized north- 
western type of myth as revealed in its extreme Yurok or Hupa form. 

The story of the origin of death shows northwestern and central 
motives. Spinagaralu, locust larva, or sand cricket, was responsible. 
According to one account he disputed with and prevailed over Above 
old man, who had intended people to be reborn or regenerated 10 
times. In another tale, more distinctly central Californian, Spina- 
garalu refuses to let Frog’s dead child come back to hfe. When his 
own perishes, he wishes to restore the old order, but Frog is now 
obdurate. 

It is clear that the Wiyot are northwesterners; wholly so in insti- 
tutions and material accomplishments, but with some first traces of 
the much wider spread central Californian culture appearing in their 
religion. 


CHAPTER 7. 
ATHABASCANS: THE, TOLOWA. 


THE ATHABASCANS OF CALIFORNIA: Origin and movements, 121; classification, 
122; landward outlook, 123. ° THr Totowa: Territory, 123; settlements, 
124; limits and numbers, 125; feuds, 126; cultural position, 126. 


Tue ATHABASCANS OF CALIFORNIA. 


ORIGIN AND MOVEMENTS. 


The peculiar conservative genius that pervades all Athabascan 
tongues rendered the early recognition of those on the Pacific coast 
easy, in spite of the great distances that separate these tongues from 
their congeners in the northwestern tundras and forests and in the 
arid highlands of New Mexico. The origin of the vastly distributed 
family is, however, as obscure as its coherence is obvious. This is 
a problem involving an understanding of all ancient North America, 
and the fragments of the stock in California can contribute only a 
minute quota to the solution. It is superficially probable, as a glance 
at a map of the continent will sustain, that the Pacific coast can 
scarcely have been the first home of the family when it was still 
united. The Pacific coast Athabascans were therefore immigrants of 
some remote period; and for those of California, their extreme south- 
erly position makes it probable that they drifted into their present 
seats from the north. 

This movement must not be underestimated as recent; and there 
must have been many crowdings and rollings about, perhaps even 
refluxes. On the map, for instance, the Kato look as if they 
were invaders who had nearly spht the Yuki in two and might 
have made the division complete if the white man had left them 
alone a few more generations. But such an assumption is pure 
speculation. It is not beyond the limits of possibility that the Kato 
have been in their present seats for a very long time, and that in 
recent centuries it has been the Yuki who gradually confined and 
nearly surrounded them. Any hypothesis on these points is as yet 
only a guess. 

Two things argue against any rapid conquering march of the 
Athabascans southward: their assimilation to their linguistically 
alien neighbors in culture, and in bodily form. The Hupa are as 


121 


Le? BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


wholly and integrally a part of the hearth of the northwestern 
civilization as are the Algonkin Yurok or the Hokan Karok. The 
Lassik show Wintun influences. The Wailaki were similar to the 
Yuki. And the Kato were substantially one in customs and beliefs 
with the Coast Yuki. Within the short distance of less than 100 
miles, therefore, there were Athabascans of entirely northwestern 
and of entirely central culture: a situation which could have arisen 
only among long sessile populations of contracted outlook. 

In northwestern California, as in southwestern Oregon, a single 
physical type is the predominant one among the multitudinous tribes: 
a tallish stature with round head. These are also the traits of the 
Athabascans in the northwest and the southwest of the continent. 

It is therefore quite possible that the prevalence of this type in 
the region where California and Oregon adjoin is due to a sustained 
and abundant infusion of Athabascan blood. But as Athabascans 
and non-Athabascans are indistinguishable, a considerable period 
must be allowed for this assimilation of the once separate and pre- 
sumably different races that now are blended. 

In the extreme south the result has been the reverse, but the proc- 
ess the same. The Wailaki have taken on the narrow-headed, stumpy- 
bodied type of the Yuki—a markedly localized type, by the way. 


CLASSIFICATION. 


The Athabascan dialects of California fall into four groups: the 
Tolowa, which is connected with the Oregonian tongues of Chetco 
and Rogue Rivers; the Hupa group; the small and undiversified 
Mattole, whose distinctness is not readily explainable either by the 
topography of their habitat or by a juxtaposition to alien neighbors, 
and therefore indicates the operation of an unknown historical 
factor—unless Mattole shall prove to be a subdivision of Hupa; 
and the Southern or Kineste or Kuneste or Wailaki group, the most 
widely spread of the four. 

For the sake of exactness a fifth group might be added, that of the 
Rogue River people, to whom a narrow strip along the northern edge 
of the State, in contact with the Shasta, and another adjacent to the 
Tolowa, have been assigned on the map. Both these belts are only 
a few miles wide and high up in the mountains. They may have 
been visited and hunted in; they were certainly not settled. They 
represent a little marginal fringe which nominally laps into the 
present consideration only because the artificial State lines that set 
a boundary to this study do not coincide exactly with the barriers set 
by nature. : 


KROEBER] - HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 128 


The Athabascans were a hill people, and most of them inhabited 
their permanent homes by the side of rivers only during a part of 
each year. But their territories coincide almost as exactly with 
stream drainages as if a systematist had planned their ditribution. 
This relation appears in the following tabulation: 











AW es .ROUP oo a Smith River drainage. 
Biiee EOE eS AM: Trinity-Redwood-Mad drainage. 
BE ok peed he Lower Trinity River. 
OUCEUC PP ea ape eee oes Lower Redwood Creek. 
pel 31) eenksies | ae aT Mad River (and upper Redwood drainage.) 
WAPTOLIC GROUP 273645 Mattole and Bear River drainages (and a short 
(Distinctness doubtful.) stretch of Lower Eel River). 
SOUTHERN GROUP_____-_- All Eel River drainage from the first forks up, 
except for the headwaters which were Yuki. 
WoOneA TS Pet yy ead: Yager, Van Dusen, and Larrabee Creeks (and 
upper Mad River). 
[RASS etl ote _._... Main Eel River in the vicinity of Dobbins Creek. 
Wailaki__ = _~._._. Main Eel River in the vicinity of the North Fork. 
Sinkyone____ Lower reaches of the South Fork of Eel River. 
Rare ee ee bo ee oe Headwaters of the South Fork of Kel River. 


LANDWARD OUTLOOK. 


It is a remarkable fact that with all the immense range of the 
Athabascan family as a whole—probably the greatest, in mere miles, 
of any stock represented on the continent—they approach the sea 
in an endless number of places, but actually held its shores over 
only three or four brief frontages. Two of these le in California; 
but even here the strange impulse toward the interior is manifest. 
The inland range of the California Athabascans has double the 
length of their coastal distribution. Yurok, Wiyot, and Yukian 
territories lie between the ocean and an Athabascan hinterland. 
Not one of the 10 Athabascan groups just enumerated is more than 
30 miles from the boom of the surf. Yet only 3 of the 10 hold a 
foot of beach. It may have been the play of historical accident and 
nothing more, but it is hard to rid the mind of the thought that in 
this perverse distribution we may be face to face with something 
basal that has persisted through the wanderings of thousands of 
years and the repeated reshapings of whole cultures. 


Tuer Totowa. 
TERRITORY. 


The Tolowa, whose speech constitutes the first and most northerly 
Athabascan dialect group in California, are the Indians of Del 
Norte County, in the northwestern corner of the State. The lowest 
dozen miles of the Klamath River are, it is true, in the same county, 


14. BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY _ [BULL 78 


according to one of the arbitrary delimitations to which the Ameri- 
can is addicted, and there were and are nearly as many Yurok on 
this stretch of stream as the remainder of the county held Atha- 
bascans. But the connections and outlook of these Yurok were up 
their river or southward along the coast, toward their more numer- 
ous kinsmen in what the white man calls Humboldt County. Eth- 
nologically, the Tolowa were the people of Smith River and the 
adjacent ocean frontage. 

Tolowa, like so many California designations of a pseudo-tribal 
nature, 1s a name alien to the people to whom it applies. It is of 
Yurok origin. These people say né-tolowo, “I speak Athabascan 
of the Tolowa variety,” but no-mimohsigo, “1 speak Athabascan of 
the Hupa-Chilula-Whilkut variety.” As the two groups are sepa- 
rated by the Algonkin Yurok, their distinction by these people is 
natural, and the considerable differentiation of the two forms of 
speech is easily intelligible. 


SETTLEMENTS. 


The names and locations of the Tolowa towns as given by them- 
selves have not been recorded. Some 8 or 10 are known under their 
Yurok designations, and as many under the names which the Rogue 
River Athabascans of Oregon applied to them. These two lists, 
which unfortunately can not be very definitely connected, probably 
include all the more important villages of the Tolowa without ex- 
hausting the total of their settlements. 


The Yurok mention Nororpek, on the coast north of Smith River; Hinei, at 
the mouth of Smith River; Loginotl, up this stream, where it was customary to 
construct a salmon dam; Tolokwe, near Earl Lake or lagoon, of which Tolokwe- 
wonekwu, “ uphill from Tolokwe,” on the Pond ranch, may have been a suburb; 
Itrertl, south of Tolokwe, but on the same body of water; Kna’awi, where the 
waves dash against a bluff, probably Point St. George; Kohpei, near Crescent 
City; and an unnamed village on the coast south of this town. There was also 
Espau, north of Crescent City, and with the same name as a Yurok village at 
Gold Bluff 40 miles south on the same coast; and Hineihir, “above Hinei,” 
which might mean upstream from it on Smith River or “ upstream” along the 
coast as the Yurok reckon, that is, south. Pekwutsu is a large rock a dozen 
miles from Crescent City where sea lions were hunted, and not a village. This 
is likely to be Northwest Seal Rock, where the lighthouse now stands. 

The Oregon Athabascans know Huwunkut (compare the Hupa village of the 
same name) at the mouth of Smith River, and Hosa or Hwasa at one of the 
forks of the stream. The former is almost certainly Hinei, the latter may be 
Loginotl. South of Smith River, that is probably on Lake Earl, were Atakut, 
whence perhaps the American “ Yontocketts;” Chestlish; and Echulit or Ches- 
hanme. “Above Crescent City”? was Tahinga, perhaps Yurok Kna’awi. Cres- 
cent City was Tatin, while to the south, on the coast, lay Mestetl, Tata or Tatla, 
and Tlusme or Tlitsusme. | 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 125 


The Yurok word Tolowo is apparently connected with the town name Tolok- 
we. “ Henaggi” and “ Tataten,’ sometimes cited as Tolowa subtribes, are only 
Hinei and “ Tata people.” * 

A paternal gentile system that has been alleged for the Tolowa is 
a misconception derived from imputing to them a social organization 
that was proper to certain tribes in the central United States, and of 
which the Tolowa, and their Oregonian neighbors, did not possess a 
trace. The supposed clans are villages of the kind that form the 
basis of native society throughout California. In fact, far from being 
gentile subdivisions of a Tolowa “ tribe,” the villages were the ulti- 
mate and only political units in the Indians’ consciousness; and 
“'Tolowa,” for which the bearers of the name appear to have had no 
specific word of their own, was nothing more than a term denoting a 
certain speech and implying perhaps certain customs—as nonpolitical 
in significance as “ Anglo-Saxon.” 


LIMITS AND NUMBERS. 


On the coast to the north, the Tolowa boundary must have been 
close to the Oregon line. On the south it is not exactly known. The 
Yurok had settlements at the mouth of Wilson Creek, 6 miles north 
of the mouth of the Klamath, and claimed whales that stranded on the 
shore as much as 3 miles beyond. It is likely that this is where Yurok 
and Tolowa territorial rights met; but it seems to have been 6 or 8 
miles more to the first village of the latter. Inland, Tolowa suzerainty 
was probably coextensive with the drainage of their principal stream, 
a high range of the Siskiyous shutting them off from the Karok of 
the middle Klamath. Most of this interior tract was, however, little 
used except for hunting, it appears, and the habits of the group were 
essentially those of a coastal people. 

The census of 1910 gave the Tolowa 120 souls, one-third of whom 
were reckoned as part white. The number at the time of settlement 
may be guessed at well under 1,000. 


1The Tolowa towns have recently been determined by T. T. Waterman. Nororpek 
appears to be in Oregon and was not counted as their own by the Tolowa. On the north 
side of the mouth of Smith River, at Siesta Peak, was Hawinwet (cf. Huwunkut, above), 
“on the mountain side,’ Yurok Hinei. On Smith River, at the mouth of Bucket Creek, 
was Hatsahoto"tne, ‘‘ receptacle below,’ probably Yurok Loginotl. Farther upstream, 
where Bear Creek comes in, lay Melishenten, ‘‘ close to hill.’ South from the mouth of 
Smith River, somewhat inland, at Yontucket, toward Lake Earl, was Yo*takit, ‘ east 
high,’’ Yurok Tolakwe. In order southward there followed Echulet, Yurok Ertl, on a point 
projecting northward into Lake Earl; Tagia"te, “‘ pointing seaward,” Yurok Kna’awi, at 
Point St, George; Tati®ti®, a little beyond; Metetlting, ‘‘ covered,’’ Yurok Sasoi, at Pebble 
Beach; Seninghat, ‘ flat rock,’’ Yurok Kohpei, at Crescent City; and Shinyatlchi, ‘ sum- 
mer fishing,”’ Yurok Neket] with reference to the ending of the beach, at Nickel Creek. 
Assuming the number to be complete, 10 towns, at the Yurok rate, would make the 
Tolowa population 450, 


126 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 
FEUDS. 


What may be called wars were indulged in between Tolowa towns 
as readily as between them and alien villages, though it is likely 
that in the former case each side was likely to be limited to kinsmen, 
while an expedition for revenge against a Yurok or Karok settle- 
ment might. unite inhabitants of a number of towns. 


In the seventies there was a feud between the Crescent City village and 
one or more of those on Earl Lake. 

Apparently before this was a war between Hinei and Rekwoi, the Tolowa 
and Yurok villages at the entrance to Smith and Klamath Rivers. Blood 
relatives of the inhabitants, in other towns, no doubt took part; but it is 
Significant that the other Tolowa villages, though in intermediate position, 
remained neutral as towns. In one encounter, each party lost three men; in 
another, five were killed on one side, probably the Yurok one. The occasion 
of this war was an old woman at Rekwoi, who by her magic stopped the salmon 
from going up Smith River. Now that the quarrel is long since over, the 
Yurok appear to take the truth of the Hinei charge for granted—the old lady 
must have done so, or the Tolowa would not have become angry. Moreover, 
she had lost relatives in former fighting against Hinei, and though this had 
been formally ended by money settlements for every one slain or injured, she 
was believed to cherish continued resentment in secret. 

Rekwoi, and the still more northerly Yurok settlement of O’men, were, how- 
ever, infiltrated with Tolowa blood, and reciprocally there were not a few 
Tolowa with Yurok wives, mothers, or grandmothers. In the war between 
Rekwoi and Takimitlding village in Hupa, about 1880 or 1840, the greatest 
war of which the Yurok have recollection, allies from the lagoon and Smith 
River, that is, probably, Tolokwe and Hinei, sided with the Yurok against 
the Athabascan Hupa and Chilula. 

The Karok about the mouth of Salmon River also have recollections of a 
war carried on between them and the Tolowa by surprise attacks across the 
Siskiyous, but hostile as well as friendly intercourse between these two peoples 
was infrequent. 


CULTURAL POSITION. 


From all that is on record in print, as well as from many state- 
ments of the Yurok, it is plain that the customs, institutions, and 
implements of the Tolowa were similar to those of the better known 
Yurok and Hupa except in minor points. The Tolowa must have 
served as the principal purveyors to these Indians of the dentalium 
shells that formed the standard currency of the region and which, 
in Tolowa hands, must have been near the end of their slow and 
fluctuating drift from the source of supply in the vicinity of 
Vancouver Island to their final resting place in northwestern Cali- 
fornia. The Yurok regard the Tolowa as rich, a distinction they 
accord to few others of the people known to them. 

A Tolowa redwood canoe of the type prevailing in the region, but 
42 feet long and 8 feet wide—that is, twice the ordinary size—has 
been described as made on Smith River and used for traffic on Hum- 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 17 


boldt Bay. If this account is unexaggerated, the boat must have been 
made for the transport of American freight by hired Indians. For 
native purposes, which involved beaching, crossing dangerous bars, 
shooting around rocks in rapids, and dragging loads upstream, a 
vessel of this size would have been not only useless but impracticable; 
besides which it is doubtful if the Tolowa ever visited the Wiyot. 

The Tolowa held the Deerskin dance that was made by the 
wealthier and more populous tribes of the region; and a reference to a 
“salmon dance” on Smith River is probably to be interpreted as 
evidence of one of the highly sacred and esoteric “new year” cere- 
monies that underlie the major dances of the Yurok, Hupa, and 
Karok. The doctor-making dance is like that of the Yurok; the 
war dance probably the same; but in the girl’s adolescence ceremony 
and dance, in which a deer-hoof rattle is shaken, the Tolowa possess 
a ritual that is wanting or obsolescent among the Yurok but which 
they share with the remoter Karok and Hupa. 

The most specific features of the northwestern California culture 
in its intensive form, such as the Deerskin dance, no doubt reached 
only to the Tolowa, perhaps in part faded out among them as among 
the Wiyot to the south; but the general basis of this civilization, its 
houses, typical canoes, basketry, tools, and social attitudes, extended 
with but little change beyond them into Oregon, at least along the 
coast. It is unfortunate that the early and rapid disintegration of the 
old life of the Oregon Indians makes it impossible to trace, without 
laborious technical studies, and then only imperfectly, the interesting 
connections that must have existed between the specialized little civi- 
lization that flourished around the junction of the Klamath and the 
Trinity, and the remarkable culture of the long North Pacific coast, 
of which at bottom that of northwest California is but the southern- 
most extension and a modification. 


8625°—25——10 


CHAPTER 8. 
ATHABASCANS: THE HUPA, CHILULA, AND WHILKUT. 


THE Hupa: Territory, nationality, and settlements, 128; numbers, 1380; com- 
merce, 182; plan of society, 182; daily life, 133; divinities, 134; great 
dances, 134; girl’s adolescence dance, 1385; wizards and shamans, 136. THE 
CHILULA, 187. THE WHILKUT, 141. 


THe el uPA 
TERRITORY, NATIONALITY, AND SETTLEMENTS. 


The Hupa, with the Chilula and the Whilkut, formed a close 
linguistic unit, considerably divergent from the other dialect groups 
of California Athabascans. They differed from their two nearer 
bodies of kinsmen largely in consequence of their habitat on a 
greater stream, in some fashion navigable for canoes even in summer, 
and flowing in a wider, sunnier valley. Their population was there- 
fore more concentrated, at least over the favorable stretches, and 
their wealth greater. They were at all points the equals of the 
Yurok whom they adjoined where their river debouches into the 
Klamath, and of the Karok whose towns began a few miles above; 
whereas the Chilula, although reckoned by the Hupa as almost of 
themselves, remained a less settled and poorer hill people; while the 
Whilkut, in the eyes of all three of the more cultured nations, were 
a sort of wild Thracians of the mountains. 

Most of the Hupa villages, or at least the larger ones, were in 
Hupa (or Hoopa) valley, a beautiful stretch of 8 miles, containing 
a greater extent of level land than can be aggregated for long dis- 
tances about. Below or north of the valley the Trinity flows through 


a magnificent rocky canyon to Weitchpec, Yurok Weitspus. In 
spite of the proximity of a group of populous Yurok settlements at 


this confluence, the canyon, or nearly all of it, belonged to the Hupa, 
who now and then seem even to have built individual houses at two 
or three points along its course. Perhaps these belonged to men 
whom quarrels or feuds drove from intercourse with their fellows. 


128 


KROPBER] MANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 129 


The towns in Hupa Valley, in order upstream, and with designa- 
tion of their situation on the east or the west bank of the Trinity, 
are as follows: 


EK. Honsading. Yurok: Oknutl. 

W. Dakis-hankut. 

EK. Kinchuhwikut. Yurok: Merpernertl. 

W. Cheindekotding. Unoccupied in 1850. Yurok: Kererwer. 

E. Miskut (Meskut). Yurok: Ergerits. 

E. Takimitlding (Hostler). Yurok: Oplego. Wiyot: Talalawilu or 
Talawatewu. Chimariko: Hope-ta-dji. See plat in Figure 12. 

EK. Tsewenalding (Senalton). Yurok: Olepotl. 

W. Totitsasding. Unoccupied in 1850. Yurok: Erlern. 

EK. Medilding (Matilton). Yurok: Kahtetl. Wiyot: Haluwi-talaleyutl. 
Chimariko: Mutuma-dji. 

W. Howunkut (Kentuck). Yurok: Pia’getl Wiyot: Tapotse. 

E. Djishtangading (Tishtangatang). 

EH. Haslinding (Horse-Linto). Yurok: Yati. 


It is characteristic that while there is more level land on the west- 
ern than on the eastern side of Hupa Valley, all the principal vil- 
lages, in fact practically all settlements in occupation when the 








8 Old Houses 

® Doors «platforms 

CModern houses barns “H_]} 

Old House pits 
123 Cemeteries 

aod, en ee hat 
5 Qweat House “yu y é 
6 Place of Jumping Dance Takimi ding Village ) Hupa, 1901 


7 Tree 








Vig. 12.—Plan of Hupa town of Takimitiding. 


Americans arrived except Howunkut, were on the eastern side of the 
river, with exposure to the warm afternoon sun. 

Above Hupa Valley is the small “ Sugar Bowl,’ whose bottom 
harbored the little village of Haslinding. Some miles farther up 
begins a string of patches of valley to where Willow Creek comes 
in. Here there were two permanent settlements, Kachwunding and 
Mingkutme.. Sehachpeya, Waugullewatl, Aheltah, Sokeakeit, and 
Tashuanta are mentioned in early sources as being in this region: 
most of these names seem to be Yurok. And still farther, at South 


130 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (nui. 78 


Fork, where the river branches, was the town of Tlelding—whence 
the “ Kelta tribe ”—with subsidiary settlements about or above it. 
The farthest of these was Tl’okame, 5 miles up the South Fork. 
These southerly Hupa were almost out of touch with the Yurok, 
and held intercourse with the Wintun and Chimariko. Their out- 
look on the world must have been quite different, and it is known 
that their religious practices were distinctive. In implements, 
mode of life, regulation of society, and speech they were, however, 
substantially identical with the better known people of Hupa Valley. 
And the Yurok knew Tlelding, which they called, with reference to 
its situation at the forks. by the same name as their own town of 
Weitspekw. 

The Hupa derive their name from Yurok Hupo, the name of the valley. 
The people the Yurok knew as Hupo-la, their speech as Omimoas. The Hupa 
called themselves Natinnoh-hoi, after Natinnoh, the Trinity River. Other 
tribes designated them as follows: The Wiyot, Haptana; the Karok, Kisha- 
kewara; the Chimariko, Hichhu; the Shasta, Chaparahihu. The Hupa in 
turn used these terms: For the Yurok, Kinne, or Yidachin, ‘from down- 
stream ”; the Karok were the Kinnus; the Shasta, the Kiintah; the Chimariko, 
the Tl’omitta-hoi, the “prairie people’; the Wintun of the south fork of the 
Trinity, the Yinachin, “from upstream”; the Wiyot of lower Mad River, Taike ; 
the Whilkut, Hoilkut-hoi; the Tolowa language was Yitde-dinning-hunneuhw, 
“downstream sloping speech.” 


That something of an ethnic sense existed is shown by a gender 
in the Hupa language. One category included only adult persons 
speaking the tongue or readily intelligible Athabascan dialects. 
Babbling children, dignified aliens, and all other human beings and 
animals formed a second “ sex.” 


NUMBERS. 


The population of the Hupa as far as the South Fork of the Trin- 
ity may be estimated at barely 1,000 before the discovery. There do 
not appear to have been much more than 600 Indians in the valley 
proper. Even this gives a higher average per village than holds 
through the region. The first agent in 1866 reported 650. In 1903, a 
careful estimate yielded 450. The Federal census of 1910 reckons 
over 600, but probably includes all the children of diverse tribal 
affiliation brought to the Government school in the valley. In any 
event, the proportion of survivors is one of the highest in California. 
This may be ascribed to three causes: the inaccessibility of the re- 
gion and its comparative poverty in placer gold; the establishment | 
of a reservation which allowed the Hupa uninterrupted occupancy 
of their ancestral dwellings; and an absence of the lamentable laxity 
of administration characteristic for many years of the other Indian 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 131 


reservations of California; which fortunate circumstance is probably 
due in the main to this reservation having been long in charge of 
military officers. 

In 1851 the Yurok listed to the Government officials 99 Hupa 
houses, distributed as follows: 











SLUG SE Ty ane le cea om eral B dyad heft? db jd NR A SI Li NB TAA DA 9 
ial jal eee eek se Piyediace GP er aay < ORL Pe ST Bee | AOR OK re PO 6 
SEEM STAR TOI a eet Ee 20 
Tsewenalding_________ wh ai An lh Et il. 2 Ra pl SR AS 10 
Medilding iy-b no Bs E: Pig 2" on puede Ae ieee ely y's 

5 other villages in and above Hupa valley, not positively 
Peis tie yeh ets keteedt 8 > can 5 op aetar, salons Btn ecindnnne A Le tpabele baa Aateliidhhss Sa 23 
JEST bi Ecce Gees erie ge ale AF AS RS oe ta 3 Tn ol a ea Ie ee aint ae bee aa 3 
(EE aes Bee Py ee) a EY EYES 282 Oe A ek bed ee | ERS 99 





The enumeration may not have been complete—it would yield 
only 750 Hupa; but even a liberal allowance for omission of small 
settlements would keep the entire group within the 1,000 mark. 

The following report of the population in 1870 is of interest: 


Males. Females. 


Rie es aba Cap DIR SLC! Bat ieee 5 a get Sn a, ak + nian ed ae 25 30 
BAMACISEREY TD SUP Meltt tty Destiny oe Or ed tpame iit. 32 49 
SPACE CLAN) Oe ees ee eh eR 2 eh ad yi tad 51 74 
SECO S [oar PRG) ie Wes Sanit Sea ee ee PP ee he 7 eee ween eee Bot 14 31 
RES Lge Pa Riars AGRS 2 BPRS Ey Tae Se oe ke a nakl seen Ses Peoria 75 100 
LE RELE NLA pa ae Oe Sires tute oll arte Lael Mel wcll eC 31 39 
Resa aliie tenes pene eee ee Dee 14 36 
Seay PTL Pe peste aye) yee Ye SY Ye ees aie 16 24 














Total Hupa age LA ee ar Ee, ee a 641 
ee Ona tle VLOG Clin.) reat ht tay 4 ticles oes — Senter: 233 
874 


These figures may not be taken with too much reliance. There is 
nothing that has so great an illusory accuracy as the census of an 
Indian reservation as it has been customary to make them. In the 
same year another agent reported only 649 Indians on the reserva- 
tion—301 males and 348 females. But the figures, like those that 
precede, give some conception of the relative importance of the vil- 
lages, with Takimitlding and Medilding, the religious centers of 
the two halves of the valley, far in the lead. And they indicate that 
20 years of contact with the Americans had been heavily disastrous 
only to the Hupa men. Bullets, not disease, killed in these first years. 

But native practices also contributed. About the late sixties a feud arose 


between Takimitlding and Tsewenalding. A woman of the latter place was 
assaulted by an American soldier and stabbed him. Not long after, either in 


leap BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


resentment or for some other cause, soldiers killed a Takimitlding youth. The 
Takimitlding people could not or dared not revenge themselves on the military, 
but holding the woman ultimately responsible for the loss of their man, sought 
reprisals among her relatives of Tsewenalding. In the “ war” that followed 
the people of the smaller village suffered heavily. The aggregate losses of 
both sides were about 20. The towns belonged to the same division and stood a 
scant mile apart on the same side of the river. 


Dams were built across the river to catch salmon in alternate 
summers at Takimitlding and Medilding. There is in this arrange- 
ment a wise adjustment between the two largest and most sacred 
towns and the rights of the upper and lower halves of the valley. 


COMMERCE, 


The Hupa traded chiefly with the Yurok. Irom them they re- 
ceived their canoes, which their own lack of redwood prevented them 
from manufacturing; and dried sea foods, especially surf fish, mus- 
sels, and salty seaweed. Most of their dentalia probably reached 
them through the same channel; although this money, however 
hoarded, must have fluctuated back and forth from tribe to tribe and 
village to village for generations. The articles returned are less 
definitely known, but seem to have consisted of inland foods and per- 
haps skins. With the Karok the Hupa were in general friendly, but 
the products of the two groups were too similar to allow of much 
barter. The Tolowa seem to have been met at Yurok dances. The 
Chilula were close friends; the Whilkut disliked. There was very 
httle intercourse with the Wiyot, Nongatl, or Wintun, evidently be- 
cause other tribes intervened. 


PLAN OF SOCIETY. 


The following account of Hupa society also applies to all the 
northwestern tribes. 


A typical family consisted of the man and his sons, the wife or wives of the 
man, the unmarried or half-married daughters, the wives of the sons, and the 
grandchildren. To these may be added unmarried or widowed brothers or 
sisters of the man and his wife. The women of the first generation are called 
by the same term of relationship by the third generation whether they are 
great-aunts or grandmothers. So, too, the old men of the family were all called 
grandfathers. All the children born in the same house called each other 
brothers and sisters, whether they were children of the same parents or not. 


The ultimate basis of this life is obviously blood kinship, but the 
immediately controlling factor is the association of common resi- 
dence; in a word, the house. 

Continuing, with omissions: 


The next unit above the family was the village. These varied greatly in 
size. Where a man was born there he died and was buried. On the other 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 138 


hand, the women went to other villages when they married and usually re- 
mained there all their lives. The inhabitants of a village were reluted to 
each other, for the most part, on the side of the males. They had other rela- 
tives scattered through different villages where their daughters and sisters 
had married. 

Each village had a headman who was richest there. Besides riches he had 
hunting and fishing rights, and certain lands where his women might gather 
acorns and seeds. The men of the village obeyed him because from him they 
received food in time of scarcity. If they were involved in trouble they looked 
to him to settle the dispute with money. As long as they obeyed whatever 
he had was theirs in time of need. His power descended to his son at his 
death if his property also so descended. 

The villages south of and including Medilding were associated in matters 
of religion. There was no organization or council. The richest man was the 
leader in matters of the dances, and in war, if the division were at war as a 
unit. All to the north of Medilding constituted another division. The head- 
man of the northern division because of his great wealth was the headman 
for the whole lower Trinity River. He was the leader when the tribe, as a 
tribe, made war. This power was the result of his wealth and passed with 
the dissipation of his property. He was the leader because he could, with his 
wealth, terminate hostilities by settling for all those killed by his warriors. 
There seem to have been no formalities in the government of the village or 
tribe. Formal councils were unknown, although the chief often took the advice 
of his men in a collected body. 


There are here male ownership, patrilinear descent, and well- 
defined laws. There is no trace of exogamous clans, of hereditary 
power as a part of society, of political machinery. The stage seems 
all set for these institutions. A slight increment and we can imagine 
them developing te luxuriance. But the growth would have in- 
volved a total change in outlook—the sort of change that comes 
slowly and which affects at once the subtlest and deepest values of 
a culture. 

DAILY LIFE. 


The daily life, not only of the Hupa but of all the northwestern 
tribes, has been well described in the following passage: 


At daybreak the woman arose and Went to the river for a complete bath. 
She then took the burden basket and brought a load of wood for the house fire. 
She was expected to have finished her bath before the men were astir. They 
too were early risers. The dawn was looked upon as a maiden. She would 
say: “I like that man. I wish he will live to be old; he always looks at me.” 
The men always bathed in the river on rising. A light breakfast was eaten by 
the family in the house and each went to his day’s task. The older men pre- 
ferred to do most of their work before this meal. In the afternoon, the old 
men, and the religiously inclined young men, took a sweat in the sweat-house, 
followed by a plunge in the river. After the bath they sat in the shelter of the 
Sweat-house and sunned themselves. As they sat there they engaged in medita- 
tion and prayer. In the evening the principal meal was served. The men ate 
very slowly, looking about and talking after each spoonful of acorn soup. The 
women sat in silence without caps and with hidden feet, that they might show 


134 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


great respect to the men. A basket of water was passed after the meal that 
the men might wash their hands. When they were through they retired to the 
sweat-house, where they spent several hours in converse. 


DIVINITIES. 


The greatest divinity of the Hupa is Yimantuwingyai, “the one 
lost (to us) across (the ocean) ,” also known as Yimankyuwinghoiyan, 
“old man over across,” believed to have come into being at the Yurok 
village of Kenek. He is a sort of establisher of the order and condi- 
tion of the world and leader of the kihunai, or preceding race; a real 
creator is as unknown to the Hupa as to the Yurok and Karok. They 
can not conceive the world as ever different from now except in in- 
numerable details. Yimantuwingyai seems to be a combination of 
the tricky and erotic Wohpekumeu and the more heroic Pulekuk- 
werek of the Yurok. 

A suggestion of the latter god is found in the Hupa Yidetuwingyai, 
“the one lost downstream.” A myth concerning him tells of the time 
when the sun and earth alone existed. From them were born twins, 
Yidetuwingyai and the ground on which men live. This sort of 
cosmogony has not been found among the Yurok or Karok and may 
be supposed to have reached the Hupa through the influence of more 
southerly tribes. 

Yinukatsisdai, “upstream he lives,” is the Yurok Megwomets, a 
smal] long-bearded boy who passes unseen with a load of acorns and 
controls or withholds the supply of vegetable food. 


GREAT DANCES. 


The Hupa made two ceremonies of the new year or first fruits 
type, both, of course, with the recitation of a mythological for- 
mula as the central esoteric element. One of these was performed 
at Haslinding by the people of the Medilding division in spring 
at the commencement. of the salmon run. The first salmon of the 
season was caught and eaten. In autumn, when the acorns first be- 
gan to fall freely, a ceremony for the new crop was made for the 
northern division at Takimitlding, “acorn-ceremony place.” The 
reciting formulist took the place of the divinity Yinukatsisdai. 
The new acorns were eaten by the assembled people. The stones 
used in cooking the gruel were put in a heap that has attained a 
volume of 200 cubic feet and must be adjudged to have been at 
least as many years in accumulating, or more if tradition is true 
that the river once swept the pile away. A lamprey eel ceremony 
was also enacted at the northern end of the valley by a Takimitl- 
ding man each year. It was a close parallel of the salmon “new 
year,” but much less important. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 185 


The Hupa held two Jumping dances and one Deerskin dance; 
in former times annually, they say; in more recent years biennially. 
These are all associated with Takimitlding, and at least one if not 
two are connected with the first acorn ceremony there. 


The Deerskin dance, honsitichitdilya, ‘““summer dance,” or hunkachitdilya, 
“along the river dance,” came about September. The formula was spoken 
at Takimitlding, it appears, or begun there. The dancers then went upstream 
in canoes, and on 10 successive afternoons and evenings danced at Howun- 
kut, below Takimitlding, at Miskut, below Kinchuhwikut, upstream again op- 
posite Cheindekotding, then at the foot of the valley, and finally at Nitltukalai, 
on the slope of the mountain overlooking the valley from the north. On the 
fourth day, at Miskut, the dance was made in three large canoes abreast, 
which ten times approached the shore. This spectacular performance, with its 
peculiar song, recalled to the old people their dead who formerly witnessed 
the dance with them, and they were wont to weep, deeply affected. 

A Jumping dance, tunkehiidilya, “ autumn dance,’ was held, also for 10 or 
more days, half a month or so later, before a board fence or hut erected near 
the sacred sweat house at Takimitlding. At least on the last day, the Medilding 
danced against the Takimitlding division, that is, in turn and in a competition 
as to excellence of song and step and particularly as to sumptuousness and value 
of the regalia displayed. 

Another Jumping dance, haichitdilya, “ winter dance,’ seems to have come in 
spring. It was not associated with any first-fruits ceremony, but seems to have 
had as its purpose the driving away of sickness. Its season, however, is that 
of the first salmon rites of Medilding and of the Karok, and it is not unlikely 
that the dance once rested upon a similar ceremony made at Takimitlding. For 
10 nights the dance went on in the “ great” or sacred dwelling house which was 
believed to have stood in that village since the days of the kihunai. Then fol- 
lowed 10 days of open-air dancing at Miskut. The apparel and conduct were 
the same as in the autumn Jumping dance. 


GIRL’S ADOLESCENCE DANCE. 


The Hupa stand one slight grade lower than the Yurok in the scale 
of civilization by one test that holds through most of California: the 
attention bestowed on the recurring physiological functions of 
women. The influence of their hill neighbors may be responsible. 
At a girl’s adolescence, when she was called kinatldang, 10 days’ 
observances were undergone by her which are very similar to those 
followed by the Yurok. In addition, there was a‘nightly dance in the 
dwelling house which the Yurok did not practice, although they knew 
it among the Hupa, and similar rites were followed among the Karok, 
Tolowa, and Wiyot. A number of men wearing feather-tipped caps 
of buckskin from which a flap falls down the back entered several 
times a night to sing about the blanket-covered girl. They vibrated 
long rattles which are a modification of the clap stick that is used 
in dances throughout central California. The end of the Hupa stick 
is whittled into five or six slender and flexible rods. ‘These rattles 
were not used by the Yurok. One dancer wore a headdress belonging 


136 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


to the Deerskin dance; another, one from the Jumping dance; both 
carried small thin boards cut and painted into a rude suggestion of 
the human figure. In the intervals, seated women sang and tapped 
the girl with the rattles. After the tenth night, the girl finally threw 
off her blanket, went outside, and looked into two haliotis shells held 
to the south and north of her, seeing therein the two celestial worlds, 


WIZARDS AND SHAMANS. 


Tt is in keeping with the peculiar form which shamanism assumes 
in northwestern California that the doctor and the witch are more 
clearly separated in the native mind than in the remainder of 
California. Disease was caused by the breaking of some observance 
of magic, perhaps sometimes was thought to occur spontaneously, 
or was brought on by people who had become kitdonghoi, in Hupa 
terminology. These were not shamans of avowed training, but men 
of secret evil proclivities. They did not control animate “ pains” 
or spirits, but operated through material objects possessing magic 
powers. ‘These objects were also called kitdonghoi. A favorite in- 
strument was a bow made of a human rib with cord of wrist sinews. 
From this, after the proper mythic formula had been recited—the 
Hupa or Yurok can imagine nothing of real consequence being 
done successfully without a formula—a mysterious little arrow was 
shot which caused almost certain death. These devices, or the knowl- 
edge of them, were secretly bought by resentful and malicious people 
from men suspected of possessing the unnatural powers. The /zé- 
donghoti might sometimes be seen at night as something rushing about 
and throwing out sparks. His instrument enabled him to travel at 
enormous speed, and to turn himself into a wolf or bear in his 
journeys. This is the only faint suggestion in northwestern Cali- 
fornia of the bear shaman beliefs that are so prevalent everywhere 
to the south. 

It is evident that the northwesterner distinguishes black magic 
and curative doctoring rather plainly—much as superstitious Kuro- 
peans might, in fact. The central and southern Californian, it 
will be seen hereafter, deals essentially in undifferentiated shaman- 
ism, which can be equally beneficent or evil. This contrast is con- 
nected with several peculiarities of northwestern culture. The 
Yurok and Hupa are far more addicted to magic in the narrower 
sense of the word, especially imitative magic, than the unsophisti- 
cated central Californians. The formulas with which they meet all 
crises rest essentially on this concept; and there are literally hun- 
dreds if not thousands of things that are constantly done or not 
done in everyday life from some motive colored by ideas that are 
imitatively magical. Though the world is full of deities and spirits, 





KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 137 


these also are approached by the avenue of magic, by the perform- 
ance of an action which they hke and which compels their aid, 
rather than by any direct communication as of person with person. 
As already said of the Yurok, the idea that the shaman owns 
guardian spirits and operates through communications with them, 
is feebly developed and expressed only indirectly. Shamans work 
primarily through “pains”; and these, although alive, are mate- 
rial objects. A true “bear doctor,” as the Yuki and Yokuts know 
him, is therefore an impossibility among the Hupa. Finally, it is 
no doubt significant in this connection that the professional shaman 
in the northwest is normally a woman, the kitdonghoi or uma’a 
more often a man. 

The Hupa distinguished the téntachinwunawa, the dancing or sing- 
ing doctor, who diagnoses by clairvoyance or dream, and the kitetau 
or sucking doctor, who removes the disease object. Often the same 
shaman performed both operations, but there were dancing doctors 
who never attempted to extract a “pain.” This differentiation of 
function has been reported from groups in several other parts of 
northern California. The dancing doctor sometimes used a deer- 
hoof rattle. 

Illness is also treated by kimauchitlchwe, people who know formu- 
las that they have been taught by an older relative. In connection 
with such a recitation an herb is invariably employed, although al- 
most always in such a minute quantity or so indirectly or externally 
applied that its physiological effect must be insignificant. Pregnancy 
and childbirth were always so treated, but of actual diseases ap- 
parently only a few, of chronic and annoying rather than alarming 
character. 

THE CHILULA. 


The Chilula, who constitute one larger ethnic group with the Hupa 
and Whilkut, are almost indistinguishable from the Hupa in speech, and 
were allied with them in hostility toward the Teswan or Coast Yurok 
and in frequent distrust of the Yurok, Wiyot, and Whilkut, and dif- 
fered from them in customs only in such matters as were the result 
of habitat in an adjacent and smaller stream valley. Like all the 
Indians of the region, they lacked a specific designation of them- 
selves asa group. Chilula is American for Yurok Tsulu-la, people of 
Tsulu, the Bald Hills that stretch between Redwood Creek and the 
parallel Klamath-Trinity Valley. Locally they have always been 
known as the Bald Hills Indians. 

The Chilula villages lay on or near lower Redwood Creek from 
near the inland edge of the heavy redwood belt to a few miles above 
Minor Creek. All but one were on the northeastern side of the stream, 
on which the hillsides receive more sun and the timber is lighter. A 
few were as much as a mile or more from the creek, but the majority 


138 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


conformed to the invariable Hupa, Yurok, and Karok practice of 
standing close to the stream. In summer the Chilula left their per- 
manent homes, near which they fished, and dwelt chiefly on the 
upper prarielike reaches of the Bald Hills ridge, where seeds as well 
as bulbs abounded and hunting was convenient. This is a much more 
distinctively central than northwestern Californian practice. Some of 
these summer camps were on the Klamath or Yurok side of the range, 
so that in this rather unusual case the boundary between the two 
eroups was neither a watershed nor a stream. In autumn the Chilula 
either continued their residence in the Bald Hills or crossed Red- 
wood Creek to gather acorns on the shadier hillsides that slope down 
to their stream from the west. 

Eighteen of their former villages are known. These are placed in 
Figure 13. The towns there designated as A to # were, in order, 
Howunakut, Noleding, Tlochime, Kingkyolai, Kingyukyomunga, 
Yisining’aikut, Tsinsilading, Tondinunding, Yinukanomitseding, 
Hontetlme, Tlocheke, Hlichuhwinauhwding, Kailuhwtahding, Kai- 
luhwchengetlding, Sikingchwungmitahding, Kinahontahding, Misme, © 
Kahustahding. 

Five of the principal Chilula settlements are reported to have been 
called Cherr’hquuh, Ottepetl, Ohnah, Ohpah, and Roquechoh by . 
the Yurok. From these names Cherhkwer, Otepetl, Ono, Opau, and 
Roktso can be reconstructed as the approximate original forms. 

On the site of six of the identified settlements, 17, 7, 4, 2, 4, and 8 
house pits, respectively, have been counted. This ratio would give 
the Chilula a total of 125 homes, or about 900 souls. As Hupa and 
Yurok villages, owing to all house sites not being occupied con- 
temporaneously, regularly contain more pits than houses, and the 
same ratio probably applied to the Chilula, or if anything a heavier 
one, the figures arrived at must be reduced by about. a third. This 
would make the Chilula population when the white man appeared 
some 500 to 600, and the average strength of each settlement about 
30 persons. This is less for the group than for the neighboring ones, 
and less, too, for the size of each village; as is only natural for 
dwellers on a smaller stream. 

The trails from Trinidad and Humboldt Bay to the gold districts 
on the Klamath in the early fifties led across the Bald Hills, and the 
Chilula had hardly seen white men before they found themselves in 
hostilities with packers and miners. Volunteer companies of Ameri- 
cans took part, and desultory and intermittent fighting went on for 
a dozen years. Part of the Chilula were placed at Hupa, others cap- 
tured and sent to distant Fort Bragg. These attempted to steal 
home, but were massacred by the Lassik on the way. The Chilula 
remaining in their old seats and at Hupa avenged their relatives 
by several successful raids into the territory of their new Indian foes. 


139 


CALIFORNIA 


OF 


OF INDIANS 


HANDBOOK 


KROEBER | 








wy ly 


CURVY) 


tlk 


M,* 


* sgn 


eo \ 


ost 


NY, 


“ 
AN 


«) 








THE CHILULA RANGE 


Villages 


Temporary Camps. Hie % Si. 
Boundary OF Ter°ritory..—~=— 


© Miles 


Scale 
ae 


2 


° 











(After Goddard. ) 


—Chilula land and towns. 


Fie. 13. 


140 BUREAU OF AMERIGAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


On one of these parties, they still mustered, with their Hupa and 
Whilkut connections, 70 men. Nongatl Indians closely related to the 
Lassik also once were confined on Hupa Reservation, which led to 
further troubles. Other fights took place with certain Yurok vil- 
lages. Thus the Chilula wasted away. Asa tribe they are long since 
gone. Only two or three households remain in their old seats, while 
a few families at Hupa have become merged among their kinsmen 
of this tribe, in the reckoning of the white man, and practically in 
their own consciousness. 

A Chilula who had killed a Hupa, or who was held responsible because his 
kinsmen were involved in the killing, attended a brush dance at the Yurok 
town of Kenek after the American was in the land. His foes attacked, and 
while his hosts apparently scattered to keep out of the way of harm to them- 
selves and possible claims arising from participation, he resisted. He was 
shot, but evidently only after a little battle, since several bullets were 
found where he had put them in his piled-up hair ready for quick loading. 
He had no doubt come to the celebration prepared for a possible attempt on 
his life. His companions were probably outnumbered and ran off. The next 
day word was sent from his village that he should be buried at Kenek and 
payment would be made for the favor. The risk of ambush to the party bear- 
ing his corpse home was seemingly considered too great to brave. This was 
a private or family feud, such as would now and then occur among the Hupa 
themselves, and was hardly likely to disturb the amicable relations between 
other members of the two groups. The scale of the affair was probably typical 
of most of the ‘‘ wars” of the region, except when most of the embittered 
Chilula stood desperately together for a season against the American and the 
native foes instigated by him. 


The Chilula built the typical northwestern plank house and small 
square sweat house in their permanent villages. (P1. 13.) They were 
the most southerly Athabascan tribe to use this type of sweat house. 
In addition, two villages contained large round dance houses of 
the kind characteristic of the region to the south, but not otherwise 
known in northwestern California. It is conceivable that these may 
have been built only after the white man indiscriminately com- 
mingled northern and southern tribes, or after the ghost dance of 
the early seventies. While the Yurok and Tolowa received this 
revivalistic cult from the east, it spread also northward from the 
Wintun, Pomo, Yuki, and southern Athabascan groups, and may 
have penetrated to the Chilula. When the Chilula camped in the 
hills they erected square but unexcavated houses of bark slabs of 
the type used for permanent dwellings by the Whilkut. They knew 
or occasionally attempted the art of sewing headbands of yellow-ham- 
mer quills, such as are used by the central Californian tribes. (Fig. 
20, d.) Thus, as compared with the Hupa and Yurok, some first 
approaches to southerly customs are seen among the Chilula. 

Their lack of the redwood canoe proves less, as their stream would 
have been unnavigable except in times of torrential flood. There is a 


KROPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 141 


tradition that they once practiced the Deerskin dance, but neither 
the form of the ceremony nor the spot at which it was held is 
known. They no doubt participated, as guests and contributors of 
regalia, in the Hupa dances, as they do now; and possibly also in 
those of the Yurok at some villages, though many of the Yurok have 
been their enemies both before and since the arrival of the American. 


Tor WHILKUT. 


The Whilkut are the third division of the Athabascang speaking 
dialects of the Hupa type. They held Redwood Creek, above the 
kindred Chilula, to its head; and Mad River, except in its lowest 
course, up to the vicinity of Iaqua Butte. They also had a settle- 
ment or two on Grouse Creek, over the divide to the east in Trinity 
River drainage. To the south they adjoined Athabascans of a 
quite different speech group, the Nongatl. On the west and east they 
were wedged in between the Wiyot and Wintun. 

Those of the Whilkut on Redwood Creek almost merged into the 
Chilula on the same stream, but that there must have been a con- 
sciousness of difference is proved by the Hupa regarding the latter as 
kinsmen and the Whilkut at least as potential foes. 

The Whilkut are practically unknown. ‘The general basis of their 
culture must have been northwestern, but they lacked some of the 
specific features, and probably replaced them by customs of central 
Californian type. Their houses were of bark slabs instead of planks, 
and without a pit, and must therefore have been smaller and poorer 
than those of the Chilula, Hupa, and Yurok. They also did not dig 
out the small, rectangular, board-covered sweat houses of these 
northern neighbors, but, at least since the American is in the land, 
held indoor ceremonies in round structures, erected for the purpose 
and presumably dirt-covered. This is the central Californian earth 
lodge or dance house. 

A very few coiled baskets have been found among them. These 
may have been acquired, or the art learned in the alien contacts en- 
forced on them by the Americans. If coiling was an old technique 
among the Whilkut, it was followed only sporadically. 

As to former population, villages, and the size of the latter, we 
are also in ignorance. In spite of a considerable extent of territory, 
the Whilkut can not have been very numerous—perhaps 500. The 
Government census of 1910 reports about 50 full-blood Whilkut, be- 
sides some mixed bloods; but Chilula and members of other tribes 
may have been included in these figures. The Whilkut suffered heav- 
ily in the same struggles with the whites which caused the Chilula 
to melt away; and similar attempts were made to settle them on the 
Hupa Reservation, but without permanent success. Their name is 
of Hupa origin: Hoilkut-hoi. 


CHAPTER 9. 
ATHABASCANS: SOUTHERN GROUPS. 


THE MATTOLE, 142. THE Nonaati, 143. THE Lassrk, 1438. Tur SINKYONE: 
Land and settlements, 145; customs, 146; houses and boats, 146; baskets, 
147; other manufactures, 147; ritual, 148: shamanism, 149; other religious 
items, 150; recent condition, 150. THE WarmAxKi: Territory, 151; mode of 
life, 151; enemies, 152; textile art, 153; cultural relations, 154; numbers, 
154. THe Kato: The nation, 154; numbers, 155; myths, 155; traits shared 
with other groups, 155; wars with the Yuki, 156. 


THe MArroue. 


The Mattole or Mattoal are one of the rare Athabascan coastal 
tribes. Cape Mendocino was in their territory. They held the 
Bear River andi Mattole River drainages; also a few miles of Eel 
River and its Van Dusen Fork immediately above the Wiyot. How 
far the sites of their villages were divided between the banks of these 
streams and actual ocean frontage is not known, but the climate and 
topography of the region indicate inland settlements as predominat- 
ing. The origin of their name is not clear. The Wiyot call them 
Metol or Medol, but this may be a designation taken by the Wiyot 
from the white man. Originally the word Mattole may have been 
only the name of a village. 

In speech the Mattole differ considerably from all nearby Athabas- 
cans except possibly the Hupa—sufliciently, it appears, to consti- 
tute them one of the primary divisions of that family in California. 
They lhe somewhat on one side of the main north and south axis of 
Athabascan territory in the State; yet there is nothing in their 
location or in the nature of their habitat to suggest any very com- 
pelling cause for their rather high degree of dialectic specialization. 
They may have been influenced by a long contact with the Wiyot. In 
certain phonetic traits their speech resembles the Hupa group of 
dialects. 

Not a single concrete item of ethnology is on record regarding 
the Mattole, other than the statement that they burned their dead; 
which, if true, carries this funeral-mode considerably farther north 
in the coast region than all other knowledge would lead one to 
anticipate. More likely, some settler has reported the exceptional 
funeral of natives shot by his friends. 


142 


KROPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 148 


There may be half a dozen full-blood Mattole scattered in and 
near their ancient land. The Government census of 1910 gives 10, 
with two or three times as many mixed bloods; but these figures 
may refer in part to Athabascans of other divisions, who here and 
there have drifted into the district. The Mattole had their share 
of fighting with the whites, the memory of which is even obscurer 
than the little history of most such pitiful events. Attempts were 
also made to herd them onto the reservations of Humboldt and Men- 
docino Counties. But like most of the endeavors of this sort in the 
early days of American California, these round-ups were almost as 
inefficient and unpersisted in as they were totally ill judged in plan 
and heartless in intent, and all they accomplished was the violent 
dispersal, disintegration, and wasting away of the suffering tribes 
subjected to the process. 


Tur NoNGATUL. 


The Nongatl or “ Noankakhl” or Saia are the northernmost of 
five bodies of people into whom the Athabascans of the southern 
dialect group, whose habitat is in Kel River drainage, appear natu- 
rally to divide. The Nongatl territory is that drained by three 
right-hand affluents of Kel River: Yager Creek, Van Dusen Fork, 
and Larrabee Creek; also the upper waters of Mad River. They 
are scarcely to be distinguished from the Lassik, except for their 
adjacent range and perhaps some consciousness of their own sepa- 
rateness. Saia is not a group name, but a descriptive epithet taken 
by the Americans from the Hupa: it means “ far off.” It is prob- 
able that the Hupa knew the Nongatl] but dimly if at all before the 
whites forcibly planted some remnants of the latter in Hupa. Valley 
in the sixties, after first having placed them on a reserve in Del 
Norte County. The survivors now live in their old haunts, but 
number a mere handful. The census of 1910 enumerated just 6: 
there can be but few more. 


Tue LasstrK. 


The Lassik are little better known than their close kinsmen the 
Nongatl, whom they adjoin on the south. They occupied a stretch 
of Eel River, from a few miles above the mouth of the South Fork 
not quite to Kekawaka Creek; also Dobbins Creek, an eastern af- 
fluent of the main stream, and Soldier Basin at the head of the 
tortuous North Fork, another eastern affluent. To the east, they 
extended to the head of Mad River. This stream, and with it the 
uppermost Van Dusen, may have been Lassik as far as Lassik Peak, 
rather than to the point shown in Plate 1. Still farther east, over 


3625°—25 11 





144 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


another of the endless parallel ridges, was the uppermost course 
of the South Fork of the Trinity, which may have been hunting 
territory of the Lassik or of the Wintun. Claims of the latter are 
likely to have preponderated, but the tract was probably not settled. 

The Lassik appear to have had some intercourse with the Wintun 
and have in consequence sometimes been erroneously designated as 
Wintun. Their own name is not known, if indeed they had one. 
Their current designation is taken from that of a chief, whose name 
survives also attached to a prominent peak. This man was part 
Wintun in ancestry. Direct Wintun influence is visible in Lassik 
mourning ceremonies; they practiced a burning of property at death 
to which the Wintun and Pomo were addicted, but which was not 
followed by the tribes to the north. Their basketry is of the north- 
western variety, but roughly made (Pl. 24); their houses are mere 
conical lean-tos of fir bark slabs—a central Californian type. They 
seem to have had neither the northwestern rectangular sweat house 
nor the central round dance house. A legitimate inference is that 
their ceremonies were simple. Eel River and its tributaries ran with 
salmon in winter, when the Lassik lived close to the streams; but in 
summer they moved up into the hills, where Lrodiwa bulbs, seeds, 
acorns, small game, and deer were within convenient distance. 

A few ethnographic facts can be extracted from their recorded 
traditions. Two forms of war dance are mentioned: that of prepara- 
tion for revenge, and that of triumph over scalps. It is rather 
strange to find among one people, even though an intermediate one, 
these respectively northwestern and central Californian institutions, 
which usually replace each other. Somewhat analogously, the den- 
talia of the north and the disk beads of the south are referred to in 
conjunction. Moccasins are spoken of as if put on only for journeys. 
Two interesting hunting methods are alluded to: running down elk 
on foot by ceaselessness rather than speed of pursuit; and driving 
deer into a corral of logs and brush provided with a gate. Itis true 
that the latter achievement is performed by mythical heroes through 
the use of magical songs. But the concept of the enclosure for 
game is likely to have had some foundation in fact. 

The Lassik, inhabiting a tract that is still thorough backwoods 
and in early days was completely beyond the control of organized 
government, suffered severely at the hands of self-reliant but preju- 
diced settlers. They also lived far enough south to be within range 
of the slave traffic in Indian children that seems to have been insti- 
tuted by the Mexicans of Sonoma County and developed by the more 
enterprising Americans of Mendocino. There are scarcely as many 
Lassik living to-day as they once possessed villages, to judge by the 
house-pit marked sites the survivors can point out. 


——_. 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 


BULLETIN 73) PEATE ee 





LASSIK BASKETRY 


a, Mortar hopper; 6, seed beater; c, for cooking; d, for gathering seeds. 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78) PLAT Ee2s 





Pomo Woman, half Northern Wintun, quarter Klamath 
Lake, quarter Northern Paiute 





Modoc Huchnom 


NORTH CENTRAL CALIFORNIAN TYPES 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 145 
THE SINKYONE. 
LAND AND SETTLEMENTS. 


The Sinkyone are those Athabascans of the southern group who 
live on Sinkyoko, the South Fork of Eel River. They held the 
whole of this stream and its tributaries except the headwaters, which 
were Kato range; and in addition they occupied the adjacent coast 
from above Shelter Cove to a point between Usal and Rockport, where 
they met the Coast Yuki. 

Those of the Sinkyone on lower South Fork have sometimes been 
known as Lolonko or Flonko; but this word, properly Lo’langko, 
is the name of Bull Creek or a settlement at its mouth, not of the 
group of people. The Wailaki are said to call them and the Mattole 
jointly Tulbush, a term which recalls the Sinkyone appellation for 
the Wiyot: Dilwish-ne. 

The coast Sinkyone are called by those inland Mankya or Bankya, from 
mancho, ocean. By Americans they have sometimes been named Usal. This 
word seems to be from Pomo Yoshol, denoting either the Coast Yuki or the 
Mankya, both of whom are north of the Pomo; but yo is “south” and shol 
“eastward ” in that language. 

Sinkyone place names are: Tangating, Shelter Cove; Kileting, Needle Rock; 
Chelehdang, Bear Harbor; Djokniki, Usal; Sititsitako, Uantsintyoko, Tan- 
tangaiko, Tewitltsintastangko, Kyintigesolko, a series of tributaries of the 
South Fork between Bull Creek and Salmon Creek; Shahena’ko, Salmon Creek. 

Outside of their own territory were Tatyi, Mattole River; Djangko, Bear 
River; Hatyo, Eel River proper; Setlbaiko, Yager Creek; Kyineko, Van Dusen 
York; Gitel, Bridgeville; Silangko, Larrabee Creek; Djetenang and Koshkatinik, 
near Blocksburg; Kohtinik, Mad River; Natinik, Trinity River. The stream 
names, it is likely, are extensions of designations of the places at their mouths. 


The narrow horizon of many of the Californian tribes is illustrated 
by the travels of an old Sinkyone, who was born and lived and died 
at the mouth of Bull Creek. He recited that in the course of his 
years he had been downstream to the Wiyot boundary, upstream to 
one of the South Fork tributaries still in Sinkyone territory, coast- 
ward to the Mattole River, and inland to the ridge beyond which 
lies the Van Dusen Fork. A circle with a 20-mile radius around 
Dyerville would more than include this little world of his lfe’s ex- 
perience. 

Like most of the surrounding groups, the Sinkyone were quite 
definite in the habit of occupying their permanent villages in the 
stream valleys only in the winter half of the year, while in summer 
they dwelt on the more open mountain sides and hilltops. Thus the 
Bull Creek people spent the dry season at a variety of places in the 
hills, living on game and vegetable food. After the first rains, when 
Kel River and the South Fork began to rise, they came down to 
them to fish. After these large streams were swollen, the smaller 


146 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 78 


water courses appear to have offered better facilities for taking 
salmon, and the heart of winter was spent in the home villages on 
Bull Creek. With this dependence on the food in the hills during a 
large part of each year, it seems that the limits of the territory of each 
little local group must have been accurately observed upland, as 
well as along the streams, and that the fixed boundaries must have 
given something akin to political cohesion to the people of each unit. 


CUSTOMS. 


What is known of the customs of the Sinkyone puts them ethnically 
halfway between the tribes of distinctive northwestern type and 
those of central Californian character. In short, they shared some 
cultural traits with the Yurok and Hupa, others with the Yuki and 
Pomo; while if they possessed any of their own, these were few and 
rude. They remained backwoodsmen, like their American dispos- 
sessors, 

The women’s tattooing was a superimposing of the horizontal 
cheek lines favored by the Yuki upon the solid chin ornamentation of 
the Hupa. (Tig. 45, d.) 

Dentalia served as money, but they were the broken, fathom- 
strung shells which the Yurok class as beads, not the long and ac- 
curately measured pieces which alone they treat as standard cur- 
rency. The price of a man was from 5 to 15 strings—nomuinally 
the same as among the Yurok and Hupa—but in their estimation 
the actual value handed over would have been far too little. The 
price of a wife was also smaller, and perhaps rather in the nature 
of a gift to be partly reciprocated than a formal purchase payment. 
The Hupa both bought and gave at a marriage, but the buying 
was in conformity with law, the donations a matter of custom. 
Illegitimate children were paid for by the Sinkyone as by their 
northern kinsmen, but they took no debt slaves. Feuds and wars 
were closed only on payment for every life lost. 

The regular disposal of the dead was by burial, as on the Klamath, 
but central influences appear in the habit of cremating those slain 
in battle, or dying at a distance from home or under circumstances 
imposing haste. It has already been noted that the statement that 
the Mattole cremated may rest upon the testimony of whites who 
noted Indian funerals chiefly after a slaughter. 


HOUSES AND BOATS. 


The Sinkyone house was of central Californian type. It was 
unexcavated, and the material was slabs of redwood bark. Wooden 
planks may also have been used, but there is nothing in the struc- 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OT CALIFORNIA 147 


ture of the edifices to require this more laborious material. There 
were two forms. The yi-kyiso or bang-kyiso was a conical lean-to. 
The yz-tas/ai or min-taslai was wedge-shaped, of pieces of bark 
leaned against a pole resting in two upright forks, the front nearly 
vertical, the combined back and roof gently sloping. The north- 
western rectangular sweat house was not built. Dances were held 
in larger conical or circular structures, but these were primarily 
dance houses, as farther south, and not sweat houses. 

The Sinkyone used the northern redwood canoe so far as the 
streams in their habitat rendered the employment feasible. They 
declare that the Mattole, whose inland watercourses are small, did 
not use the canoe, even on the ocean. The southern limit of this 
cultural element, which, of course, is only a local form of the canoes 





Wig. 14.—Sinkyone ring-and-pin game of salmon vertebrae. 


of British Columbia and Alaska, can therefore be set definitely at 
Cape Mendocino on the coast, and near the confluence of Kel River 
with its South Fork in the interior. 


BASKETS. 


The basketry is also of pure northern kind: wholly twined; pat- 
terns in overlay; and made of hazel shoots and redwood root fibers, 
with Xerophyllum and maidenhair fern and alder-dyed brake for 
the decoration. The technique is much less finished than.among the 
Yurok, and the ornamentation simpler. Minor distinctions, such as 
a somewhat greater depth of flat baskets, the occurrence of four 
vertical dyed stripes on conical burden baskets, and some tendency 
toward a zigzag pattern arrangement, do not obscure the complete 
adhesion to the fundamental type, which in fact persists without 
essential modification to its southern limit among the Wailaki. 


OTHER MANUFACTURES. 


The elk-horn spoons of the north were used by the Sinkyone, but 
not the elk-horn money boxes. Their lengths of little dentalia were 
rolled in mink skins. The smoking pipe was northern, but unskilled 
workers sometimes contented themselves with an instrument of 
knobbed shape at the bowl end—a Yuki-Pomo type. The acorn- 


148 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


grinding pestle also varied to approximate both the Yurok and the 
Pomo form. String was of iris fiber, as in the northwest. On the 
main rivers, the principal net for salmon was a deep bag flowing 
from the base of a triangle of poles held by the fisherman from a 
scaffolding over the stream. This is the typical Yurok net. When 
the water muddied, a shallower net on longer poles was held nearly 
horizontally from shore. This is probably a form with central affini- 
ties. Suckers and small fish in the creeks were taken with a net 
fastened to a stick whose bent ends were held together by a string, 
while a bisecting pole served as handle. This is a distinctively cen- 
tral type, being found as far away as among the Yana and Maidu. 





re a ne 8 ee SSO arg Oey Si a 
a — a = 
oT a oe Se I ay SS Cy AP OR" a ae ~ 
eos 2 Sh oa 


A To wad —F RQ 


ic————— 





Fig. 15.—Acorn buzzer toys. a, Sinkyone; b, Pomo;.c, Miwok. 


The games were those of the northwestern tribes: The bundle of 
slender sticks with one marked ace, the mussel-shell dice, the cup and 
ball of salmon vertebre. (Figs. 14, 15.) 


RITUAL. 


Sinkyone ceremonies were few and simple. The specific dance 
cults of the Yurok and Hupa and those of the Pomo and Yuki were 
both lacking. The only ceremonies were those of the underlying 
undifferentiated California culture: The puberty dance for girls; 
the doctor dance, in which older shamans helped the novice to fortify 
himself in his profession; the war dance for incitement and perhaps 
celebration; and the nadelos, made at night, outdoors, around a fire, 
by men, women, and children, probably with a religious basis, but 
largely serving social pleasures. The fighting dance was northern 
in form: Armed men stood abreast in a row, with one or two dancing 
back and forth before them. The puberty dance was made twice for 
five nights for each girl, She was made to dance by a woman who 


KROPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 149 


held her from behind, while the seated singers struck their hands 
with stick rattles of the form used in this ceremony by the Hupa. 
The usual restrictions were imposed on the girl: She fasted, kept 
awake, and kept her hair over her face in order not to blast the world 
with her disastrously potent glance. A new shaman fasted and 
danced at nights for a period of some duration in a conical house 
erected or reserved for the occasion, while more experienced col- 
leagues accompanied him, interpreting his symptoms and advising 
him in the gradual acquisition of mastery over the difficulties of his 
involuntary art. 

All of these ceremonies can be found in almost identical form 
among any of the remoter border or hill tribes of northern cen- 
tral California: The Chimariko, the Konomihu, the Shasta, the Yana, 
the northeastern Maidu, the Achomawi, and probably the Wintun of 
out-of-the-way headwaters. 

Ritual apparatus is as significant as ceremonial practices of the 
origin of a people’s religion. The Sinkyone lacked all the dance 
paraphernalia characteristic of the northwest. ‘They used the yellow- 
hammer quill headbands of central California (Fig. 20; Pl. 71); 
twisted fur strips tied above the eyes; and in these were set dart- 
like sticks ornamented with feathers or with little banners of yellow- 
hammer quills (Fig. 21). These are a familiar central California 
dance object. The split stick and cocoon clappers of the Yuki and 
Pomo were not Sinkyone, nor the deer-hoof rattle of the Tolowa, 
Chilula, and Wailaki. They were a people that got along with little, 
that little the common stock of themselves and their neighbors, and 
as impartially the neighbors on one side as the other. 


SHAMANISM. 


The incipient Sinkyone shaman did not seek supernatural power, 
but began to dream of a dead relative or of the condor or other pow- 
erful spirits in the sky; or he would meet with a terrifying experi- 
ence in a desolate place. 


One man, for instance, returned from hunting with bleeding nose and mouth 
after a delay that had caused his family to fear for his safety. Converging 
deer trails led him to a house in the rocks, he recounted, with deer hair and 
dung lying deep. When he faced two condors with red-striped breasts and 
spread wings, he fell unconscious and lay until night. He sang with reference 
to this experience until a dance house was erected for him and older colleagues 
made him into a skillful medicine man. His success was equal at curing sick- 
ness, affecting the weather, succeeding in the hunt, winning at play, and fore- 
telling the future. When he was shot to death in the brush, he caused his 
body and bones to be undiscoverable, and brought on a tremendous flood next 
winter. His secret died with him, for he always evaded leading anyone to the 
place of his supernatural encounter, 


150 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


Another shaman was without avail against illness, but could predict the 
exact success of a hunting party, foretell rain, and put an end to a storm by 
singing. When he lay groaning and singing of nights, he saw the waters of the 
sky flowing past a displaced stick in the row of stakes that held them back and 
knew that rain was at hand. His luck in hunting was bound up with a trans- 
parent disk that had come to him from the sky, and vanished after his death. 

Ordinary disease was cured by sucking out of the body the sinsing 
or material “pains”; but against a rattlesnake bite this remedy 
proved futile. The afflicted person must have ashes thrown in his 
face and be requested to die, in order to recover. 

The malevolent pain objects, the shaman’s beginning with a dream 
of the dead, his graduation in a dance made for him, are features 
common to a wide array of tribes in northeastern as well as north- 
western California. The vision in the lonely place, the suddenly re- 
vealed sitters in a cave, the connection of the condor and the sky 
with deer hunting, and the acquisition of definite spirits—the sun, 
the eagle, or other animals—are traits pointing to specific Yuki- 
Wailaki influences. 

OTHER RELIGIOUS ITEMS. 


Formulas or prayers similar to those of the Hupa were spoken 
for purification by girls at the close of their puberty ceremonials 
and by men who had buried a corpse. 

The ritualistic number of the Sinkyone was five. 

A woman at her periods kept apart, and touched no deer meat, 
but did not occupy a special hut. There seems also to have been some 
laxity, in that venison was allowed to remain in the house with her, 
and her husband did not necessarily refrain from hunting. 

Sinkyone mythology knows a creator called Kyoi, “spirit.” The 
name applied also to the un-Indian and therefore nonhuman whites. 
More specifically, he was known as Nagaicho, “ great traveler,” as 
among the Kato. Compare the Yuki Taikomol, “ he who goes alone.” 
This creator made the earth and men. Coyote was present at the 
former act, and assisted in the establishment of the world, but is also 
responsible for death and much that is wrong in the scheme of things. 
These are all standard central Californian beliefs. 


RECENT CONDITION. 


Between dispossession, ill-managed confinement on badly chosen 
reservations, and occasional fighting, the Sinkyone suffered the same 
at the hands of the whites as the neighboring groups. They are so 
scattered to-day that they are not recognized by either the Govern- 
ment census or the Indian Office. Including half-breeds, their num- 
ber may be estimated at two or three dozen at the most. 


KROPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 151 
THe WaAILAKI. 


TERRITORY. 


Wailaki is a Wintun word meaning “north language,” and is 
applied by some of the Wintun to certain other Wintun divisions as 
well as to several neighboring groups of aliens. By what group of 
Wintun it was used for the Athabascan division to whom the desig- 
nation has become fastened in American nomenclature, and why it 
was employed when the Wailaki are west and not north of the 
Wintun in general, has not been recorded. The Wailaki are said 
to have known themselves as Kenesti, and to have been called 
Kakwits, “north people,” by the Yuki; but the more general Yuki 
appellation was Ko’il, “Athabascan.” 

The Wailaki were the uppermost Athabascan tribe on Eel River, 
which they held to the Big Bend, from where on all its tributaries 
were Yuki. They owned also several affluents on the western side, 
Kekawaka Creek on the eastern, and the whole of the North Fork 
except the head, where the Lassik lapped over.! 


MODE OF LIFE. 


Like the other Athabascans of the region, they were fishermen in 
the winter, when the streams carried enough water for the salmon 
to run, and when their permanent houses in the villages along the 
river banks were more comfortable than the wind-swept mountains 
and dripping timber. As spring came on, they moved into the hills, 
digging bulbs, beating the prairies for grass and Composite seeds, 
and garnering acorns as the summer wore into autumn. They were 
hunters, and, like the Lassik, took deer and elk by running them 





1P, E. Goddard, The Habitat of the Wailaki (see bibliography), lists the “ subtribes” 
of the Wailaki, which evidently correspond to the political units or ‘village com- 
munities *’’ of the Yuki and Pomo discussed below, and were named after inhabited sites. 
The number of separate settlements per subtribe, as identified by explanation on the 
ground with natives, varied from 1 or 2 to 8 or 10: 66 settled sites in 13 communities. 
The communities on main Hel River were: the Sehlgaikyo-kaiya, east side, Big Bend 
Creek to McDonald Creek, only settlement Sehlgaichodang; Ninkannich-kaiya, opposite; 
Nehlchikyo-kaiya, east side downstream to mouth of North Fork; Sehlchikyo-kaiya, east 
side, downstream; Tatisho-kaiya, west side, opposite mouth of North Fork; Bas-kaiya, 
east, below Sehlchikyo-kaiya; Sla-kaiya, east, below last; Chisko-kaiya, east, below last; 
Seta-kaiya, west, below Tatisho-kaiya; Kaikiche-kaiya, west, below last; Dahlso-kaiya, 
Set’ahlchicho-kaiya, K’andang-kaiya, in order downstream, west side; Ihlkodang-kaiya, 
west side below Chisko-kaiya; Kasnaikot-kaiya, east side, mouth of Kekawaka Creek. 
Beyond were the Lassik. As compared with these 15 groups on main Wel River, the 
lower part of North Fork held 3: The Setandong-kiyahang, the Secho-kiyahang, and the 
Kaiye-kiyahang, in order upstream, with) settlements chiefly on the north side. Farther 
up North Fork (same author, Habitat of the Pitch Indians, MS, in press) were the 
“Pitch” or “ Salt”? Wailaki, with four community groups: The T’odannang-kiyahang, 
on the North Fork below Hull Creek; the T’okyah-kiyahang, upstream on North Fork; 
the Chokot-kiyahang, on and above Red Mountain Creek; and the Ch’i’ankot-kiyahang, on 
Jesus Creek. These spoke Yuki as well as their native Wailaki, much as the Yuki ad- 
joining the Sehlgaikyo-kaiya farthest upstream on main Eel River mostly knew Wailaki 
in addition to Yuki, 


152 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Buty 78 


down. This, of course, does not mean that they outsped them, 
but that in a relentless pursuit they wore down the endurance of 
the game, until, unable to feed and perhaps overcome by pyschic 
depression, it succumbed. In fishing, too, they did well. Whether 
because of better opportunities or more skillful use of them, they 
surpassed the Yuki, and the latter buy, and perhaps formerly bought, 
nets and harpoons from them. 


ENEMIES. 


They fought the Yuki, at least along the Eel River, but also married among 
them and incruded their customs. The Ta’no’m Yuki obsidian dance and initia- 
tion is, if not wholly of Wailaki origin, at least largely developed under Wailaki 
influence. Not long before 1850 the two tribes united and engaged in a bitter 
quarrel with the Kato. Before this, the Wailaki seem to have been on good 
terms With the Kato and their friends the Coast Yuki, and thus to have been 
able occasionally to visit the ocean shore, from which the Yuki were shut off 
by feuds. 

The Yuki have a story of a young Wailaki, whom they call Imichshotsi, who 
boasted of his ability to dodge the slow Yuki arrows. His people warned him 
that the Yuki shafts might be short and thick and their own long and slender, 
but that the foes’ arrows came too thickly to dodge with safety, and that they 
penetrated bitingly. He offered to prove his contention, and the party set out, 
Imichshotsi demanding to meet the cowardly Yuki whom his people proclaimed 
to be always ready to meet them in battle. On the slope of Imtomol, where 
the dividing line between Yuki and Wailaki ran eastward up from Eel River, 
they met the enemy in three parties, probably the Ta’no’m and their allies. 
The Yuki shouted in challenge. Imichshotsi took the lead, urging his com- 
panions to follow him if they wished to see how arrows could be evaded. As 
they approached the first band, the Yuki began to shoot, and soon the Wailaki 
were giving ground around the hill. Then Imichshotsi commenced to feel weak, 
and took refuge behind a Wailaki, who, ineased in a long elk-skin armor, stood 
a tower of strength. But even here the arrows, though many fell dead from 
the unpierceable front of the wearer, came too thickly to make a longer holding 
of his post safe for naked Imichshotsi behind. He prepared to leap away, 
but as he crouched for the spring that would launch his retreat an arrow 
entered his hip and came out at the groin. The Yuki ceased shooting, and the 
Wailaki carried their fallen champion off to his death. His own father went 
ahead, calling in mockery that Imichshotsi was cutting off Yuki heads; he alone 
had a powerful bowstring; the Yuki could not shoot, and were all being killed 
at Imtomol. When the youth breathed his last, the party stopped and mourned 
over his body, but the old man announced that he would proceed and announce 
to the people that Imichshotsi was destroying the Yuki. He arrived and shouted 
this derision to the village but at this very moment his companions were already 
burning the body of the slain boy. 


This naively self-comphmentary relation, with its incredible ac- 
count of the father’s ironic mockery of his slain flesh and blood, does 
not pretend to be more than a tale. But it illustrates with vividness 
the miniature pitched battles, the long-range shooting and incessant 
dodging of flying arrows, the occasional invulnerable armor, the 


KROEBER |] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 166 


slight losses, the immediate mourning, the cremation of those slain 
away from home, and the lack of all idea of organization, that were 
typical of the fighting of the Wailaki and their neighbors. Strug- 
oles of another character against the same foe, half-avowed and half- 
concealed feuds, with ambushes and village surprises predominating, 
are related of the Kato. 


TEXTILE ART. 


Wailaki basketry is of the northern twined variety—technique, 
materials, patterns, and all. It marks the southern limit of this 
type in the Coast Range region. Among the Yuki there is no trace 
of this ware. With 
it, too, the woman’s 
cap extended to the 
Wailaki and no far- 
ther. As everywhere 
in this region, the 
basketry has a wrin- 
kled surface anda lack 
of fineness)s Even 
and delicate texture 
was not attained, per- 
haps not attempted. 
The forms, too, run 
deep, as in north- 
eastern California. It 
would seem that the 
characteristic low bas- 
ket of the Hupa and 
Yurok was coexten- 
sive in its distribution 
with the best worked 
ware. Mortar and 
varrying baskets are 
strengthened by the Wailaki with one or two stiff hoops, sometimes 
lashed on with a thong. 

While the northwestern basketry has not passed from the Wailaki 
to the Yuki, the coiled ware of the latter has found some introduction 
among the former. It is the art that has taken a hold, not a case of 
objects traded. The Wailaki, however, make but few coiled baskets, 
and these serve as valuables and gifts rather than practical utensils; 
and they even seem rather better made than most of their Yuki 


prototypes. Coiling must be looked upon as sporadic with the 
Wailaki. 





Fig. 16.—Wailaki charm. 


154 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


CULTURAL RELATIONS. 


Other objects of material culture are little known. On Round 
Valley Reservation the Wailaki dance in feather ornaments similar 
to those of the Pomo and Yuki; but this might possibly or partly be 
an assimilation under American pressure. 

Some Wailaki feathered head darts and forks that happen to have 
been preserved reveal a type that, while central Californian, is per- 
ceptibly different from the corresponding Yuki and Pomo ones (Fig. 
21); and this distinction is probably significant of others that existed 
anciently. 

Charms of grass or rush wound diagonally around two crossed 
sticks were used, but their specific purpose is unknown (Fig. 16). 

The Yuki state that the Wailaki shamans often dreamed of a 
spirit coyote, and were able to kill at long distances by means of a — 
magical hulk’oi-tit or “ coyote snare.” They themselves had no such 
coyote shamans. 

NUMBERS. 


The Wailaki population in 1910 was somewhat over 200, mostly 
on Round Valley Reservation, though only a minority are listed as 
full bloods. This figure makes them the largest surviving group of 
Athabascans in California after the Hupa. Their original number 
may have been a thousand, possibly somewhat more. 


Toe Karo. 
THE NATION. 


Wedged in on three sides by the Yuki, the Kato or Kaipomo, the 
southernmost Athabascans on the Pacific coast, held the uppermost 
courses of the South Fork of Eel River, their only neighbors of 
their own stock being the Sinkyone to the north and the Wailaki to 
the northeast. Though they belong to the same speech division as 
these two groups, their dialect was considerably specialized from 
that of the Wailaki and only partly intelligible. To the Hupa, of 
whose existence they had no knowledge whatever in aboriginal days, 
their idiom is completely unintelligible. 

The word Kato is a Pomo place name meaning “ lake.” Kaipomo 
means “ valley people ” in the same language. The Katos’ own name 
for themselves as a group 1s not known. It is possinle that they had 
none. Their current Pomo designation, the fact that the whites first 
reached them through the Pomo, and that some individuals among 
the Kato speak Pomo in addition to their native language, led to their 
being formerly erroneously classed as Pomo. It is clear, however, 
that they were considerably influenced by this more advanced group, 
and, with the Huchnom, served as transmitters of religious cults 
and other civilizational features from the Pomo to the Yuki and 


Wailaki. . 


KROPRER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 155 


NUMBERS. 


The Kato are said to have had nearly 50 villages. If these had 
all been inhabited contemporaneously, the population of the group 
would have been 2,000, which is not only an abnormally high figure 
for California, but hardly compatible with the rugged nature of their 
habitat. Part of their country is dense redwood forest and the re- 
mainder is well timbered. The permanent settlements must have 
been generally confined to the three little valleys in which Brans- 
comb, Cahto, and Laytonville now stand. A thousand seems the 
maximum population that can be assumed ; 500 is probably nearer the 
mark. ‘To-day about 50 persons, mostly full bloods, are reckoned as 
Katos. Some of these are on Round Valley Reservation, others on 
land provided them by the government near Laytonville. 


MYTHS, 


Kato customs are known chiefly through their mythology. Their 
creation legend refers to two original beings, Thunder and Nagaicho, 
or “great traveler.” The latter is known also to the Sinkyone, and 
corresponds in function as in the meaning of his name to the Yuki 
creator Taikomol. Thunder is, however, represented by the Kato 
as distinctly the more powerful of the pair, and the actual creator 
of men, many animals, mountains, trees, and springs. The grandeur 
of the concept of our earth as a vast horned animal that wallows 
southward through the primeval waters with Nagaicho standing on 
its head, until it comes to rest lying down in its present position, can 
not be denied. The making of the sky with its four columns and 
four cloud gates, the theft of the sun by Coyote, his securing of 
fire from the spider who alone hoards it, the designation of Coyote 
as our mother’s brother, are told with a similarity to Yuki tales that 
evinces the close contacts existing between the two peoples. 


TRAITS SHARED WITH OTHER GROUPS. 


Kato myths and tales refer to two objects which they are not 
known to have used: the basket hat and the canoe. The woman’s 
cap, so universal in the north, has not been found among any of the 
tribes grouped together on Round Valley Reservation. It may be 
suspected that its range at the utmost was that of the northern twined 
basketry, whose outpost is with the Wailaki. Kato baskets are 
scarcely distinguishable from those of Yuki manufacture. But it 
is possible that the Kato now and then traded for objects which they 
did not make. 

The reference to the canoe, ch’iyashts, suitable for ocean travel, is 
harder to understand. The Kato streams are far too small to be 
navigable, and the Yuki of the coast, to whom they refer as inti- 
mate associates, deny having had boats. It is probable that the 


156 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY fRuLn. 78 


Kato knew the canoe only as a possession of the northern Sinkyone. 
Iven the episodes in their legends mentioning it may have been 
learned from tribes that possessed boats. 

The gambling game in which bones are rolled in freshly cut grass, 
the man’s hair net, the many varieties of bulbs cooked in the ground, 
the large dance house with a roof door, are all traits shared with 
the Yuki. The employment of an elk-horn wedge and stone maul 
in the procuring of firewood, and the frequent use of acorns molded 
or blackened by long immersion in water, are probably common to 
the northwestern and central groups. Jato women smeared pitch 
on their foreheads in mourning. This is not northwestern, but 
has Sacramento Valley and Pomo analogues. 

The Yuki Zaekomol-wok rite—with both its “big-head ” dancer 
and the teaching of children through myths told them by an old 
man conversant with the ceremony—are said by the Yuki to have 
come to them from the Kato, and the legends of the latter contain 
references to the institution, though its name has not been recorded. 
The Kato in turn probably derived the cult from the northern and 
these from the eastern Pomo, who in turn were affected by the Win- 
tun, or retained in less elaborate form the elements of an old ritual 
which was subsequently organized into greater complexity im the 
Sacramento Valley. ) 

The victory ceremony, danced in line in the dance house with 
the head of a corpse that had been pulled in two, and the preserva- 
tion of the “scalp”—probably the entire skin of the head—were 
substantially like Yuki customs. 

Specific references are to cremation and not burial, but it is not 
certain if this was the universal practice, since all the funerals re- 
ferred to are those of strangers or people killed in war. The Yuki 
bury, except—lke many other Californian natives—in case of death 
at a distance, ashes being more transportable than the body; the 
Pomo burned until the American came. 

In speech, an influence of the adjacent Pomo is traceable. The 
cther Athabascans of California all count decimally. The Kato 
reckon up to twenty by fives. The stems of their numerals are pure 
Athabascan, the manner of use foreign. They have also the custom 
of addressing their parents-in-law in plural or dual forms com- 
parable to French vous and German 7hv, in place of the singular, as 
an expression of respect. This is a Pomo habit, but may have been 
derived by the Pomo from the Athabascans, since the practice prevails 
north to the Hupa. 


WARS WITH THE YUKI. 


A series of hostilities that arose between certain of the Kato and 
the Yuki shortly before the coming of the Americans has been re- 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 157 


corded from a Yuki source. The details are anecdotic; but as the 
result of the fighting is pictured as mostly in favor of the Kato, the 
underlying reliability of the account can scarcely be doubted. 


Word came to the Lilkaino’m or Lilshikno’m Yuki on Eel River that if they 
would come to the Kolukomno’m Kato village of Lila*sichma™l or “ red- 
rock-creek,” they would receive gifts; that is, that the Kato wanted to trade, 
making a donation first and then accepting presents in return. When the Yuki 
arrived an old man and two of his sons were killed and two other young men 
captured by the Kato. <A brother and a son of the old man, named, respectively, 
Titopi and Pitaki, escaped. The former had indeed been seized, but broke away. 
As he fled up the canyon he was shot through the hand with an arrow. But he 
made his escape, and when he arrived on top of the mountain sat down and 
mourned his brother after the fashion of the Wailaki. The Lilshikno’m and 
Ta’no’m Yuki were in closer association with the Wailaki than the other Yuki, 
and this is only one instance of several that they followed the customs whicn 
their kinsmen regarded as characteristic of the Wailaki. 


The Kato man who was responsible for this attack was called 
Palmi by the Yuki. One of the three victims had his head cut off 
by the Kato; that is, they danced over it. The fate of the two cap- 
tives is not mentioned in the story. To a California Indian this 
would probably seem naturally equivalent to stating that they were 
killed. It is characteristic that the names of the two men who 
escaped are cited, but those of their slain kinsmen not mentioned. 

It appears that the thing attempted was first to get hold of a victim 
and then dispatch him at close quarters. This practice recurs in the 
following accounts. Stand-up fighting was not in favor except in 
a pitched battle, and this was evidently a long-range affair with 
arrows and infinite dodging. 

War was now on, and the Kato, anticipating reprisals, came to Hanchamta'l, 
a Lilshikno’m or Ta’no’m settlement on Eel River, and succeeded in killing an 
old Yuki and carrying off his head. This was “too soon,” according to the 
narrator, for the Yuki had not yet made an attack in return for their first loss. 
But after this they went out. 

Near Hayilta", in Kolukomno’m territory, the Yuki scouts from Hanchamta‘l 
were run on to by a young Kato known to them as Hutichpalsi. He was seized, 
bound, his arms stretched out, and his head cut off. There may have been 
more fighting ; but apparently the Hanchamta*l people, having got a head for the 
one that they had lost, were satisfied and went home. At Tamahan they built 
a dance house for the occasion and celebrated over the trophy. 

The customary intertribal visiting had suddenly ceased under this state of 
affairs, the native narrator continues; but a Yuki woman, sister of the old 
man who had been killed at Hanchamta‘"l, was intent on revenge and pretended 
a revival of friendship. Supported by a party of Yuki in hiding, she followed 
her husband to a Kato house. When he had entered, he made as if he were 
having difficulty passing through the door a large basket of buckeye porridge 
which his wife had brought up; until one of the two Kato men inside said: 
“Set down this Yuki blood.” At once the husband leaped upon them, his wife 
rushed in, and between them they overpowered and killed the two inmates. 
A Kato woman seized up her baby and fled, but the Yuki amazon ran her down 
at a near-by spring and brained both her and the infant. The main Yuki party 
probably came up after the affair was over, since the narrative does not men- 


158 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


tion them again; and if there were Kato in near-by houses, they probably fled at | 
the first alarm, knowing that an attack would not be made without an equipped 
and outnumbering force in reserve. 

The reciprocating Kato offense fell upon the Pomaha*no’m, a group of the 
Ta’no’m. The Yuki account admits 11 slain, but passes over the painful details. 

The Pomaha*no’m, of course, did not sit still. A party went out, but appar- 
ently hesitated whether to attack or to treat for settlement. Possibly the offer 
of peace was a ruse, but it seems that it not infrequently happened that an 
untoward event would turn a band of willing but suspicious and frightened 
peace negotiators into aggressors; and, on the other hand, there may generally 
have been no one who dared treat for a settlement without an armed and ready 
force standing at his back. 

At any rate, the majority of the Yuki went home or turned aside. Two 
bear doctors, shamans of unusual ferocity, who had the grizzly as their 
protector and could more or less completely turn themselves into this dan- 
gerous and vindictive animal, in native belief, trusted in their power or the fear 
of their repute and boldly went or remained among the Kato. The latter took 
one of the two brothers fishing, and after cooking one of the catch offered it 
to him. The Yuki, however, knew in his heart that the fish had been poisoned 
by one of the Kato who could exercise magical control, and refused ; whereupon 
a Kato came up to hold him, no doubt preliminary to the others dispatching him. 
The unarmed bear doctor, however, seized his bone hairpin and, using it aS a 
bear would his teeth, killed the man who had grasped him and several others 
after him, until the Kato, recognizing his supernatural abilities and invul- 
nerability, desisted. A true bear shaman can not, in fact, be killed with 
weapons; but they may have been unconvinced that his powers were complete 
and genuine. About the same time his brother was attacked at the Kato village 
where he had remained behind, but saved himself by recourse to similar facul- 
ties. The Yuki of to-day believe that between them the two medicine men dis- 
posed of six of their foes before they returned home, and that so strong and 
bearlike was the frenzy of the one brother that he chewed and actually devoured 
part of the arm of the rash man who ventured to be the first to hold him. 

However, there was more to this expedition than the story tells, for the 
Yuki admit that on the same trip the Pomaha"no’m lost an old and a young 
man. The Kato themselves ran off after the deed. The Yuki must have done 
the same, for the Kato, returning the next day, found the corpses still on the 
spot and cut off the heads. They carried these to the coast, presumably to 
be in a sufficiently remote place to make the dance over the heads safe from 
an interrupting attack. The choice of this locality indicates that the Coast 
Yuki were siding with the Kato, or were at least sympathetically neutral. 
This is not surprising in view of the fact that in times of peace the Kato 
were constantly visiting the Coast Yuki, while the remoter Yuki rarely if 
ever ventured to the ocean. 

The count stood 17 or 19 killings for the Kato, only 11 for the Yuki, in 
half a dozen or more encounters, though without a pitched fight, during a 
period that very likely covered two or three years. Excitement must now have 
been at a point where larger undertakings might be attempted; and in fact 
all the Yuki, from the Sukshultatano’m at Fishtown to the Witukomno’m on 
the slopes of Sanhedrim, talked of combining for one great expedition into 
Kato territory. Talk and deliberation are, however, the necessary and almost 
endless preliminary to any joint action of California Indians, however swift 
and resolute they may be in crises as individuals; and talk it remained. 
lor the whites appeared in the country, upset the native life, and gave Yuki 
and Kato alike more pressing problems to meet than even their feud. 


CHAPTER 10. 
THE YURI: BrHNiG GHROGRAPHY. 


THE YUKIAN Famiry, 159. THe YURI proper: Habitat, 160; divisions, 161; 
the tribe in California, 162; organization of the Yuki communities, 163; 
other notes on divisions and subdivisions, 165; group traits, 166; nDomencla- 
ture, 166; trade, 166; wars, 167; population, 168. 


THe YuKIAN FAMILY. 


The Yuki language and alhed dialects have long been recognized 
as constituting a distinctive group, and even the comparative re- 
searches of recent years have failed to reveal much clue of their possi- 
ble relationship to either Athabascan, Hokan, or Penutian. The 
general type of the language, it is true, is somewhat similar to that 
of the Penutian idioms, but specific connections have not been dis- 
covered. Yukian, therefore, remains as a small isolated speech fam- 
ily, the only one, in fact, of the many Californian stocks for which 
original unity with other languages has never been asserted.t Its 
position is somewhat like that of Basque in Europe, so far as can be 
told to-day; and the people speaking Yukian dialects, or some of 
their ancestors, must accordingly be regarded as having had a long 
separate career. (PI. 28.) 

As with the Basques, a peculiar physical type tends to accompany 
distinctive speech in the case of the Yukian family. The northern 
tribes of the family possess probably the longest heads in California, 
and are unusually short of stature. That this physical type is found 
also among some of the adjacent non-Yukian tribes, and that the 
southern Yukian divisions depart from it and resemble their broader- 
headed and taller-bodied neighbors, is easily intelligible as a conse- 
quence of gradual intermarriage and the shifting of populations from 
their former seats; in other words, as a secondary phenomenon. The 
essential fact remains that Yukian speech and Yukian anatomy are 
both distinctive and both not definitely connectible with any other 
group. In this sense, the Yuki may fairly be spoken of as coming 
nearer, so far as can be judged at present, to being autochthonous 
Californians than any of the other modern natives of the State. 


——_—___—. 





1Tt has been asserted since the above was written: by Paul Radin, in Univ. Calif. 
Publ. A. A. E., XIV, 489-502, 1919. 


12 159 


georo Or 
3620 —29d 





160 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The Yuki live in two principal bodies, whose speech, though 
clearly one in origin, has diverged very considerably. The northern 
eroup held the larger territory and was probably more populous. 
Its seat was between the Athabascans and the Pomo, and between 
the Wintun and the sea. The southern group, known as the Wappo, 
was, roughly speaking, south of the Pomo. The Wappo had them- 
selves sent out, or retained, a minute offshoot in Pomo territory. 
The northern Yukians were almost separated into a coast and larger 
interior subgroup by the Athabascans and the Pomo, whose terri- 
tories they themselves separated ; but the difference in speech between 
coast and interior was not very impressive, so that a comparatively 
recent cessation of contact is indicated. The interior subgroup again 
subdivides into a smaller, dialectically distinct, southwesterly body 
known as the Huchnom, much modified in customs by intimate con- 
tact with the Pomo; and a main mass that may be designated as the 
Yuki proper. The latter group subdivides once more into a con- 
siderable number of small units which might almost be called tribes, 
some of which also differed at least dialectically or subdialectically ; 
but as the precise number, dialectic range, and relations of these 
smaller units are imperfectly known, and the differences between 
them appear to have been slight, it seems preferable to treat them, 
except in the discussion of their geography, as a single whole. The 
four Yukian divisions to be considered separately are thus the Yuki 
proper, Huchnom, Coast Yuki, and Wappo. 


THe Yuxrt Proper. 
HABITAT, 


As seen on the map (PI. 26), the distribution of the Yuki seems 
irregular. This is not because their location ran counter to natural 
topography but because it followed it. Their country lies wholly 
in the Coast Range mountains, which in this region are not, on the 
whole, very high, but are much broken. They contain some valleys, 
but the surface of the land in general is endlessly rugged. The Yuki 
habitat is, however, not defined, except incidentally, by limiting 
mountains and ranges, but is given in block by the drainage of such- 
and-such streams. The native did not think, like a modern civilized 
man, of his people owning an area circumscribed by a definite line, 
in which there might happen to be one or many watercourses. This 
would have been viewing the land through a map, whether drawn 
or mental; and such an attitude was foreign to his habit. What he 
did know was that the little town at which he was born and where 
he expected to die lay on a certain river or branch of a river; and 
that this stream, or a certain stretch of it, and all the creeks flowing 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE %6 





TITKAIENO’M 
WINTUN 


=NOMLA KI 


NO Kicdte Bel 2 


x 
Be 
Slutithoy 











——— 








YUKIAN DIVISIONS 













+, 







sae Aaa 
ers VA Te kia ea 
4 aa! tahiyes oes Fo 


“bees : i’ j hs . - te ri 
oe hn’ Yar pr hith Cigar MEH ob at ai ‘ ; 
Se be rm i “ ; dah ; ; ’ bi i Oca + Aloe Wyn 5 












tie) a 


sean y: Toidcbatne, Kacaee sly ae "ait ates CeO ALS dap 
fe Neder Darton oy ibe ce nibs: ne 2 the. foie ! 
Mt +, cong nae Ot cnt aan 
se Skat a Ae Re an Thee ye ae 







A seg’ 





reer cet ia ‘ hl heen tate 
+ € val, byt ; 








RAE Fg ag 


aly ey 







~ 
, «+ 
a 





i a Mag Y Me © { ae vi ve. vy 

a all ade ak bmi he hasta x , eaten ss " 
get mey am L Spey : f ig ; ee 4h anaes 

+f my + aes 2 erie a : bid Bis ire hit i (Reavis dts i rigs 


eae ue iN oe . e ' “arya a ss ark ‘ ie Ue 
eae CF Wi dat + ty Pas ey © Be ae rhe 
LATE meh AM Naga eis 





ran) 













Vieni Nor ai his 4 hy pyehdeD 4: 4inmey, Pree 
Ak sh War a bas su ah iar Gay bial ty Bay 
ee talent ie Abs kc ae ay hate ihe, Acai 






\ Aue j yee ? a ee io - . Cae by y 


| : + ae ei ne Sih aoe A 
> i tiene: ij ey ih. < ict If TA Ls i *h Nad p, i) rh ~ oy dei all Ae 7 






mat 
fi j ¥ ¢ 
i . i 4 i ‘ i" : 
eM, eet ph, a RIN ong 
A { 2s +e, ‘ene 1 ee : r 
} awe ‘ 


KROPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 161 


into it, and all the land on or between these creeks, belonged to his 
people; whereas below, or above, or across certain hills, were other 
streams and tributaries, where other people lived, with whom he 
might be on visiting terms or intermarried, but who had proprietary 
rights of their own. ; 

Yuki territory may be described as all the land lying in the drain- 
age of Kel River above the North Fork, except for a stretch on South 
Kel River where the allied Huchnom were situated. This sounds 
and is simple enough. It is nature’s fault, and not any intricacy of 
the Yuki mind or subtlety of Yuki institutions, if this extraordinarily 
compact and unitary fact takes form on our maps in the shape of a 
meaninglessly curved, indented, and irregular border. 


DIVISIONS. 


The same basic simplicity of topography applies to the habitat of 
the larger Yuki divisions. The Ta’no’m were on main Eel River, the 
farthest down. The Lilshikno’m or Lilshaino’m or Lilnuino’m were 
upstream from them. Still farther up, where the river forks into the 
South Kel and the Middle Eel, were the Utitno’m. Each branch can 
be followed up inthe same way. On the South Eel, nearly to its forks, 
were the Huchnom; from the forks up, the Onkolukomno’m. Along 
Middle Eel, there were, first, on the south side, especially on the 
tributaries, the Witukomno’m. Eden Valley was the largest piece 
of level land in this section. Opposite, where a number of creeks 
flow into the river from the north and west, mostly through Round 
Valley—the largest flat tract not only in this area but in the whole 
Yuki habitat—were the Ukomno’m. Farther up, the Middle Eel also 
divides. On its South Fork were the Huititno’m, on the North Fork 
the Sukshaltatano’m. 

It would be entirely erroneous, however, to regard these eight or 
nine groups as being in any way tribes. They were each merely an 
ageregation of smaller units that happened to live together in a natu- 
ral area. Among themselves, they probably did not use the designa- 
tions just mentioned, and thought of themselves as the people of vil- 
lages A, B, and C, or the people of chiefs X and Y. The broad names 
were those used by outsiders when they wanted to generalize, just 
as we, for convenience, speak of the Balkan peoples or the Indo- 
Chinese, while well aware that Serbia is not Bulgaria and that a 
Burman does not dream of considering himself of one nationality 
with an Anamese. “ 

A distinction which has not always been observed must be drawn 
with scrupulous exactness between the village as a town or physical 
settlement and the village as a group or community. 

The community always might and usually did embrace several set- 
tlements. This seems simple enough. What has caused confusion 





162 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


and makes the acquisition of accurate information so difficult, now 
that the old organization is gone, is the fact that the community 
was nameless. If designated, it was referred to by the name of the 
principal village. This place name therefore denotes at one time 
a cluster of several little towns and on-other occasions one of these 
towns. Even the addition of a term changing the reference from 
the spot to the inhabitants leaves the situation obscure: “ X people ” 
may mean either the residents at the particular settlement X, or 
those of X, Y, and Z, which together are called X. 

The word “tribe” can not be extended to these communities with- 
out an entirely erroneous implication, since they possessed, as a rule, 
no group appellation, no separate dialect, and no distinctive customs. 
In the sense that the communities were the only political units they 
were tribes; but as they lacked all the traits of individualized nation- 
ality, which it is customary to attach to the meaning of the term 
“tribe,” it is wisest to avoid its use. 


THE TRIBE IN CALIFORNIA. 


The Yuki type of organization existed among the Pomo and the 
Maidu, with both of whom the village community and the village 
settlement can be definitely distinguished in certain areas. It is 
likely to have been the plan of political society followed by the 
majority of other Californian Indians, well into the southern part 
of the State; but, other than among the stocks cited, positive in- 
formation fails us, except in a few areas where it is clear that a 
different organization prevailed. | 

These exceptions are, first, the Yuman peoples on the Colorado 
River, who were clearly constituted into tribes in the usual sense of 
the word, and thoroughly similar to the tribes of, for instance, the 
Plains region in the heart of the continent. This true tribal organi- 
zation, however, clearly did not extend to the neighboring Cheme- 
huevi, Cahuilla, and Diegueno. 

Second, there were the tribes of northwestern California. Here, as 
described for the Yurok, there were no groups other than the persons, - 
often largely connected in blood, who lived in one spot. Except for 
their permanent occupation of one site, the Yurok town groups were 
accordingly in the political status of the primitive horde, as it is 
theoretically depicted. 

The extent of the northwestern type of organization is not 
clearly known. Besides the Yurok, Hupa, and Karok, the Tolowa, 
Wiyot, and Chilula participated in it. The Shasta and Chimariko 
are in doubt. The southern Athabascans, at least the Wailaki and 
Kato, followed the Yuki plan, and there are indications that the 
Yukian scheme of organization may have prevailed as far north as 
the Sinkyone, if not beyond. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 163 


The third and last exception is provided by the Yokuts, but it is 
only a partial one. The Yokuts were divided into tribes, each named 
and each with a dialect. But, as set forth in the chapter dealing 
with these people, the Yokuts tribes in size, in relation to territory, 
and in their own consciousness were rather similar to the Yuki and 
Pomo community groups, so that their distinctive nature, however 
significant, was secondary rather than fundamental. Some of the 
Shoshoneans east of the Yokuts, on both sides of the Sierra Nevada, 
were organized somewhat like them. 


ORGANIZATION OF THE YUKI COMMUNITIES. 


The Yuki add the suffix -no’m, “ people,” to the names of larger 
regions, districts, villages, or mere landmarks, to denote the inhabit- 
ants of these localities or their vicinity. The words containing this 
increment might be taken for tribal names were it not for the fact 
that it is always the people that are named after the place, and not the 
reverse. There is also no restriction of the terms to communities. 
Ukom-no’m denotes all the inhabitants of the Round Valley region, 
groups A, B, C, as given below, and as many others as there were. 
U’witno’m appears to be applicable at will, according to the context, 
to all the members of group A, of which U’wit was the main town, 
or to the actual inhabitants of the particular settlement called U’wit. 

The ending -no’m is the equivalent of the Pomo increment -pomo or -napo, of 
the Wappo -noma; perhaps also of the Maidu and Plains Miwok -mmni, Sierra 
Miwok -chi, Costanoan -n. It is often difficult to decide whether the words 
containing these suffixes denote primarily the village or the inhabitants. 
Perhaps native usage did not enforce a clear-cut distinction. Wappo -noma, for 
instance, has been obtained chiefly on names that seem to denote places; yet the 
element is unquestionably one in origin with Yuki -no’m. 


Fortunately there is a restricted area for which specific informa- 
tion has been assembled; and the conditions deducible from these 
data no doubt applied to all the Yuki. In the northern part of 
Round Valley and adjacent hills were three such quasi-tribal groups 
or communities. These constituted only part, and probably a small 
part, to judge by their area on the map, of the division known as 
the Ukomno’m. Each comprised several settlements. Each settle- 
ment had its headman; but each quasi-tribal group of settlements 
also recognized a common chief of wider authority. 

GRouP oR ComMuUNItTy A: Northern portion of Round Valley west of the 
agency. Last head chief, Hunchisutak, who lived at U’wit. 

Village or settlement 1: Chochhanuk. Name of chief forgotten. A small 
settlement. 

Village 2: Mameshishmo, Chief: Kumshume. There was a dance house 
in this town. 


164. BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Village 3: U’wit. Town chief: Olyosi. The head chief of the group also 
lived here. This town had a dance house. 

Village 4: Hake. Name of chief forgotten. There was a dance house. 

Village 5: Son. Olyosi of U’wit acted as town chief for this town as well 
as his own. 

Other villages, probably of minor size and without dance houses, belonged 
to this group but have been forgotten. 

Group B: Northern part of Round Valley east of the agency, and northeast 
over the hills to include Williams Valley. Last head chief, Hultalak at Pomo 
village. © 

Village 1: Pomo, in Round Valley. 

Village 2: Mo’t-huyup, in lower Williams Valley. 

Village 3: Kilikot, in Williams Valley, farther upstream. 

Village 4: Lelhaksi, in Williams Valley, farther upstream. 

Village 5: Nonakak, in Williams Valley, farther upstream. 

Village 6: Yukuwaskal, in Williams Valley, farther upstream. 

Village 7: Moyi, in Williams Valley, farther upstream. 

The names of town chiefs and locations of dance houses have not been 
learned. 

Group C: Northeastern corner of Round Valley and eastward to Middle Hel 
River. Last head chief, Sinchichmopse of Titwa. 

Village 1: Titwa or Ona’s, in Round Valley. 

Village 2: Sonkash, in Round Valley, 

Village 3: Molkus, in Round Valley. 

Other villages lay east of the valley, toward the river, but their names and 
sites are not known. 


From the data on group A it appears that the “tribal” chief was 
more than the headman of the largest village, since his village held 
a town chief as well as himself; and that the town chief and the 
dance house have a definite connection. Evidently it was only a 
recognized headman who put up a dance house, or the man who 
erected such a structure thereby became the headman of his settle- 
ment. It is also evident that the early Spaniards and Americans 
were not always misunderstanding native conditions in California 
so completely as sometimes seems to modern ethnologists, in naming 
villages and “tribes” after their “captains.” As the group had no 
name or single site, its political entity must have been primarily 
associated with the head chief. His functions are not well known; 
but it 1s reasonable to conjecture that he determined war and peace 
and the time and place of ceremonials, and that invitations for 
visits, large feasts, and trade meetings with other groups were issued 
by him. His influence may have extended beyond these matters. 
On the other hand, it is likely that the relation of each town to its 
food supply, the decision how long to remain at or away from the 
winter home, and where to camp or dig or hunt, rested with the 
town chief. 

Many interesting problems must remain unanswered for the Yuki. 
We do not know how far the head chief’s position was hereditary, 


KROERER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 165 


nor if so, precisely in what manner, nor whether in doubtful or 
obnoxious cases the consent of towns or town chiefs was required. 
There is nothing to show whether the head chief got his own food 
along with his fellows or whether he was supported by contributions 
and gave his time to being dignified and accumulating wealth by 
grinding shell beads. And it would be interesting to know his part 
in the delicate deliberations that must often have preceded the deci- 
sion to put out of the way a shaman believed to have turned witch 
and poisoner. I‘urther, we are in ignorance of how substantially 
the men of each town were a group of kinsmen, presumably in the 
male line, and whether there was any feeling favoring a man’s 
marrying outside his community, or any unformulated but customary 
practice of doing so. 


OTHER NOTES ON DIVISIONS AND SUBDIVISIONS, 


The Ta’no’m, one of the eight geographical groups shown on the map, ad- 
joined the Athabascan Wailaki where a ridge named “Imtomol” comes down 
to Eel River from the east, at the big bend of the stream, a couple of miles 
above the mouth of the North Fork. This ridge was the scene of a tradition- 
ary fight between the Ta’no’m and Wailaki, which has already been related. 
Later two groups of Athabascans fought on this same ridge. Probably they 
were Kato against Wailaki, the latter now aided by the Ta’no’m. This may 
have been about the time the Americans came. The Ta’no’m were named 
after Ta’, a long open hill slope east of the river. Six of their divisions have 
been recorded—the Kichilpitno’m, Kasha*sichno’m, Pomaha"no’m, Ma”tno’m, 
Ha*chhotno’m, and Ulamolno’m. These are likely to have been political units, 
each with a head chief, corresponding to the Ukomno’m groups A, B, C, described 
above. Kasha"sich, Pomaha", and Hanchhot were places. It is significant that 
an old Ta’no’m was able to name without effort more than 250 spots in the 
little territory of his people, in which he had not lived for 50 years. These 
included summer and winter habitations, hunting places, spots for snaring deer, 
hot medicinal springs, flint quarries, places where the women leached buckeye 
mush, or gathered seeds in summer or acorns in autumn, meadows whose grass 
was burnt to catch the nutritious grasshoppers. spots where the shamans kept 
their obsidians or where the Wailaki once came to make the obsidian ceremony, 
and many others. This same informant was married simultaneously to four 
women—one from Suk’a, one from Nu’, two from Ontit. 

Other Yuki groups—whether settlements or communities is uncertain in most 
cases—are the following: 

Alniukino’m, in northwest part of Round Valley. Wilikuno’m, in the northern 
or lower end of Eden Valley. Witukomno’m is not only the name of the entire 
group in and around Eden Valley, but of the people of a village near its head. 
North of the Middle Kel River, between the Ukomno’m and the Witukomno’m, 
was a group for which no generic name has been obtained, but which 
included the Suk’ano’m, the Sonla™Ino’m, the Chakomno’m, and the Chahelil- 
nom, Liltamno’m and Nonlachno’m, perhaps synonyms, at Blue Nose, north 
or northeast of Round Valley. Ukachimno’m, in Poorman’s Valley, northeast 
of Round Valley. Shipima™ino’m and Kichilukomno’m, in Williams Valley— 
one of these may be the name of the group B above. Ma‘*lchalno’m at one 
of the heads of Middle Eel River. Onkolukomno’m, in Gravelly Valley near 


166 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


Hullville: Nuichukom as the name of this tract seems to be a Yuki translation 

from the English Gravelly Valley. Hunkalich was a village near Hullville. 

‘he Matamno’m were a Yuki group, perhaps of Witukomno’m affiliation, who 

first learned the Taikomol myth and ceremony from the Kato and spread it 

to the other Yuki. 
GROUP TRAITS. 


There are dialectic divergences within the area of the Yuki proper. 
The speech of the Ta’no’m, Ukomno’m, and Witukomno’m differs. 
The Utitno’m dialect classed with the Witukomno’m, the Lilshikno’m 
probably with the Ta’no’m, the group including the Suk’ano’m may 
have leaned either to Ukomno’m or Witukomno’m, while the affilia- 
tions of the three eastern divisions of mountaineers are not known. 
All the dialects were mutually intelligible, but apparently different 
enough for any Yuki to recognize the approximate provenience of 
another. 

The Yuki have a saying that the Ta’no’m, Lilshikno’m, and 
Witukomno’m, in other words, the groups on Main Eel and lower- 
Middle Eel Rivers, were light skinned in comparison with the darker 
complexioned Ukomno’m of Round Valley. 


NOMENCLATURE, 


The word “ Yuki” is Wintun and means stranger or foe. It 
1S in generic usage by the Wintun, and its application to what we 
call the Yuki is an American practice. There is no equivalent 
native name. The Pomo call the Yuki Chumaia; the Wailaki 
and Kato name them Chiyinch or Ch’inch. 


The Yuki, in turn, designate their alien neighbors as follows: The Atha- 
bascans in general, and the Wailaki in particular, are the Ko’il or Kool; 
the Kato, or perhaps a division of the Kato, are the “ black stream people” or 
La*lshikno’m. The northern Pomo, especially from the vicinity of Sherwood 
and Willits, are the Nakonmi; the eastern Pomo of Clear Lake, of whom 
the majority of the Yuki had but vague knowledge before the white man came, 
the Upochno’m: The Wintun of Stony Creek were the K’umno’™m or “salt 
people”: those of Grindstone Creek the Lilshimteino’m or ‘ shallow black 
rock people”; those of Thomas Creek—the Nomlaki of the vicinity of Pas- 
kenta—the Titkai"eno’m; and those of Cottonwood Creek the Waik’emi. The 
K’umno’m probably included the northeastern Pomo. Of Yukian divisions, the 
Huchnom were so called, the Coast Yuki were the Ukhotno’m or “ ocean 
people,” and the Wappo were beyond ken or so little dealt with as to carry 
no distinctive name. The Concow Maidu and Pit River Achomawi that have 
been introduced on Round Valley Reservation are known to the Yuki 
there as Inshin and Shawash, respective corruptions of ‘ Indian” and 
‘“* Siwash.” 


TRADE. 


As regards trade, shells and beads of all sorts came into the 
country from the south, from the Pomo, but apparently mostly 
through the Huchnom as intermediaries. Furs were given in re- 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 167 


turn. The Yuki rarely if ever ventured to the coast, perhaps be- 
‘ause their kinsmen there stood with the Kato in the prevalent 
feuds. Ocean foods, dried haliotis, mussel, and seaweed were, how- 
ever, relished by them, and obtained from the northern Pomo, whose 
range extended to the sea, and whom they could perhaps meet 
amicably in Huchnom territory. 


WARS. 


In general, the Yuki fought all their neighbors, though more or 
less intermittently,- and rarely, perhaps never, as a united body. 
The eastern groups, in the higher mountains, were at feud with the 
Wintun on the other side of the range. Ta’no’m and probably 
Lilshikno’m had a hereditary quarrel with the Wailaki next below 
them on Eel River; which did not, however, prevent some intermar- 
riage and considerable interchange of customs. About the time of 
the appearance of the whites, or shortly before, the Wailaki nearest 
the Ta’no’m seem to have got into a quarrel with other Wailaki or 
Kato farther north, around Bald Mountain, and to have received 
Ta’no’m support against these kinsmen. The Lilshikno’m, about 
the same period, became embroiled with the Kato, with whom they 
appear to have been on less acute terms before; and before long the 
Ta’no’m were involved on their side. The Witukomno’m had their 
own feud with the Kato, and another with the northern Pomo of the 
vicinity of Sherwood. How the intervening Huchnom stood in this 
affair is not known. The Onkolukomno’m of the upper South Eel 
were joined on at least one occasion with the northeastern Pomo of 
Stony Creek, in the salt district of the region, against the eastern 
Pomo of the upper part of Clear Lake, to the south of themselves. 

Certain of the Yuki wars against their Athabascan neighbors 
have been described in connection with the Wailaki and Kato; but, 
as everywhere in California, there were also internecine conflicts. 

Apparently in the early days of Round Valley Reservation a woman refused 
to marry a Chakomno’m Yuki named U’umi and went to live with an U’witno’m, 
who was at once the father’s brother and the stepfather of the narrator. Jeal- 
ous U’umi prepared a plot. He induced his friends to feign an attack upon 
himself, but to use arrows without obsidian points. Then he shouted: to his 
brother-in-law and to his U’witno’m rival to help him. They rushed to his aid; 
but when the U’witno’m’s bowstring was void, and U’umi had an arrow aimed 
at his pretended foes, he swung his bow about and shot the unsuspecting 
victim at his side through hip and thigh. He fell; and the brother-in-law 
stepped up and finished him with an arrow above the eye. A clamor arose, 
and U’umi, with his accomplice, his friends and kin, and the related people of 
Suk’a, fled southward toward their old homes. The U’witno’m and other 
Ukomno’m, aided by some Wailaki, pursued. The shooting during the flight 
must have been at long range, for the avengers related how for all their en- 
deavors they could not get their arrows to penetrate even when they hit. At 


168 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


last the pursuers became discouraged and the fleeing party rallied. The tide 
turned and Chakomno’m and Suk’ano’m drove the northerners back to the start- 
ing point in Round Valley; but also without scoring a kill, There the ex- 
huusted combatants quit. The murdered U’witno’m was never paid for by his 
slayer. Probably the Government officials interfered with the resumption of 
the feud. 

The Round Valley people also fought the Witukomno’m of Eden Valley; but 
this seems to have been before the appearance of the Americans. It is likely 
that the murder just related was at bottom a recrudescence of this older 
enmity, the Chakomno’m and Suk’ano’m standing with the Witukomno’m against 
the Ukomno’m. 


POPULATION. 


The original Yuki population is very difficult to estimate. With 
only 200 to 300 souls to each of the eight or nine geographical divi- 
sions, a total of 2,000 is reached. Yet 200 to 300 seems a low average 
in view of such information as there is of the villages in part of 
Round Valley alone; whereas, on the other hand, if the total of 
2,000 is materially increased, the Yuki as a whole would outnumber 
important and more advanced tribes like the Yurok and Karok, 
whose population gives every impress of comparative density. There 
would also be a tremendous decrease to be accounted for, which is 
dificult in view of the Yuki not having been drawn upon for the 
missions, and enjoying the advantage, in comparison with most other 
tribes, of remaining at least in part in their old homes and inhabit- 
ing a region thinly settled by whites—factors which in most of 
California have operated toward a better preservation of the 
aboriginal population. Yet the census of 1910 reports only 95 Yuki, 
three-fourths of them full blood; and this figure tallies closely with 
an official count. The Indian Office reports are higher, but worth- 
_less, since such a factor as tribal or speech difference has been mean- 
ingless m the routine administration, and the Round Valley Res- 
ervation rolls apparently hst Yuki, Wailaki, Wintun, Maidu, Pomo, 
and Achomawi not according to what they are but on the more con- 
venient plan of assigning each Indian a nationality according to 
the quarter of the reservation in which his allotted land happens to 
he. 

Taking everything into consideration, 2,000 is perhaps the most 
conservative estimate of the original number of Yuki. 


CHAPTER 11. 
THE YUKI: CULTURE. 


Cultural position, 169; the art of basketry, 171; household utensils, 172; dance 
und game objects, 178; dress, 173; food, 174; houses, 175; money, 176; 
counting, 176; the leaders of society, 177; battles and triumphs, 178; mar- 
riage and sex, 179; the dead, 180; names, 180. 


CULTURAL POSITION, 


The civilization of the Yuki was in some respects anomalous. They 
were definitely beyond the last influences of the northwestern cul- 
ture, and yet in many points outside the general stream of customs 
and thoughts that pervaded the bulk of native California. Toward 
their wealthier southern and eastern neighbors they stood in the rela- 
tion of rude and hardy mountaineers. But on the other hand, they 
possessed some rituals of considerable development, while the rule 
in California is that the hill tribes lack, in such matters, all that is 
most elaborate and specialized in the ceremonies of the adjacent low- 
land people, and content themselves with the simplest and most wide- 
spread elements—the earliest elements, to all appearance—of the 
religion of these neighbors. 

Basketry illustrates the peculiar position, The Wailaki are not a 
northwestern people in any accurate sense as regards their mode of 
hfe as a whole. Their basketry, however, is purely northwestern, 
and indistinguishable from that of the Yurok except in its coarser 
workmanship and in some subtler details that can be felt but are 
definable only with difficulty. As far south as the Wailaki, then, a 
positive northwestern influence penetrates but there stops almost 
absolutely. The Ta’no’m Yuki interchanged ceremonies with the 
Wailaki. They may have acquired some of their baskets in trade, 
now and then. But they did not take over the Wailaki and north- 
western art of basketry, or a single one of its features. An absolute 
line can be drawn here. 

The Yuki, in short, and with them the Kato and Coast Yuki, were 
the northernmost advance guards, in the coast region, of the basket- 
making art characteristic of the central Californian culture. But if 
Wailaki baskets are ill-made Yurok ones, the ware of the Yuli is not 
merely inferior Maidu-Wintun-Miwok ware, nor even Pomo ware. 

169 


170 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY Bunn. 78 


A novice can tell it at a glance. It is a basketry with a character of 
its own. 

The Pomo, it is true, had developed a peculiar art, which remained 
restricted to themselves and the small groups adjacent on their south 
and east. It is not remarkable that the Yuki in their mountains 
failed to partake of the specializations of this art, its feather and 
shell ornamentation, its decorative elaboration of pattern, its variety 
of techniques and forms, But it might be expected that Yuki baskets 
were comparable with the substratum of simpler everyday Pomo 
ware. And yet this is not the case. 

Again, it is true that the Pomo art of basket making seems to 
represent a variation upon an old and well-established widespread 
central Californian art, which appears with considerable local modi- 
fications, but with no basic differences of aim or method, all over the 
great middle valley of California and the mountains that border it. 
It might be anticipated that the Yuki ware, failing to keep pace with 
the advanced Pomo development, represented merely a local survival 
of this more widely spread underlying art. In a sense, this is un- 
doubtedly the case. Yet it is surprising that so small a fragment 
as the Yuki were, even if we reckon with them the Kato and Coast 
Yuki, should have come to acquire so distinct a provincialism in their 
industry, as great, perhaps, as that of any part of the broad Wintun 
group and of the widely spread Maidu; and the Maidu basketry 
shades almost insensibly into that of the Miwok, as again Miwok and 
Yokuts ware intergrade along their boundary. It is possible that if 
ever we learn more of the material culture of those of the Wintun 
immediately adjoining the Yuki, clearer transitions and affilations 
will be revealed between them than are evident now. At present we 
can only separate Yuki basketry quite definitely and without expla- 
nation from the general industry upon which it is based. 

The other side of the picture comes out in ritual. Two of the 
three distinctive major ceremonies of the Yuki have come to them 
from the south. This is quite clear from the character of the cere- 
monies themselves, and is confirmed by Yuki statements. The most 
immediate sources were the Kato and Huchnom. Back of them lie 
the Pomo. And the Pomo rituals themselves are quite clearly a 
provincial offshoot from the basis of the intricate Kuksu rituals that 
pervade the middle of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley and 
probably had their source as well as focus among the Wintun. The 
thing that is difficult to understand is that so much of the influence 
of this movement reached the Yuki and remained among them, when 
other hill tribes, whose speech and position and intercourse would 
indicate that they must have been at least equally subject to the same 
influence, reveal almost no traces of its effects. The northern 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 171 


Wintun, for instance, the northeastern Maidu, the Yana, the Atsu- 
gewi and Achomawi do not organize themselves into an esoteric 
society and impersonate gods and spirits in their dances, and even 
the typical material paraphernalia that accompany these rituals are 
lacking among them. Not so the marginal and backwoods Yuki. 
They have, at least in rudiments, the society, the impersonation, and 
part of the regalia of the lowlanders. 

And on top of these surprising connections with the centers of 
native civilization there is again a local specialization, which links 
the Yuki with the Athabascan north and divides them further from 
the Pomo south. The mythological character or creator with whom 
one of these two rituals of southern origin, the Z’atkomolwok, is 
associated, is known also to the Kato and even to the northern 
Sinkyone—under another name, indeed, but a name of the same 
meaning. And the third of the major ceremonies of the Yuki, the 
Kichtlwoknam of the Ta’no’m, has no Pomo or southern equivalents 
at all, so far as known, but was evolved in association with the 
Wailaki to the north, if not directly imported from them. 

It is in the light of these considerations that the details of Yuki 
civilization will be presented. 


THE ART OF BASKETRY. 


The better and decorated Yuki baskets are coiled. This method of 
manufacture, which is here encountered for the first time in our 
review, is therefore the one typical of the tribe. The most usual 
coiling is over a foundation of two rods and several welts. Some- 
times a single rod is inclosed by welts, or lies toward the outer side 
of the basket from them. Poorly made baskets sometimes contain 
only welts or splints or have rods introduced sporadically. Such 
baskets usually have their stitches spaced well apart, 3 to 5 to the 
inch. Splints mostly le vertically. Pomo coiling dispenses with 
splints altogether and uses either one or three well-rounded rods. A 
minority proportion of Yuki baskets are also coiled on a three-rod 
foundation without splints; but the single-rod foundation is not 
Yuki. 

The materials for the foundation are usually dogwood, or occa- 
sionally honeysuckle, hazel, and perhaps also willow; for the sewing, 
normally Cerczs redbud, and possibly maple and digger pine. For 
white portions of the pattern, the inner side of the redbud is used; 
for red, the outer; for black, the outer bark darkened by long soak- 
ing. The Carea sedge root favored by the Pomo is employed only 
occasionally. 

The coil of Yuki baskets progresses from right to left, of Pomo 
ware from left to right, as one looks into the hollow of the vessel. 


142 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Baskets of open-bowl form—some almost as flat as plates—are used 
for parching, smaller ones for sifting meal, both as general recep- 
tacles. Hemispherical vessels were cooked in and held food. Some, 
usually small examples, were almost globular, with the mouth smaller 
than the body: these served to hold small articles not used for food 
and were given as presents. 

The patterns are remarkably simple. By far the commonest deco- 
ration, especially in the flatter baskets, is a series of bands, each one 
course of sewing in width, encircling the vessel. As each band meets 
its beginning, the spiral progress of the basket has carried it one 
course higher, so that the junction would be a step. The Yuki woman 
meets this decorative awkwardness, in most cases, by leaving a little 
gap. This break is almost universal in Pomo work, where it is known 
as the daw and is associated with magical ideas, much as among the 
Zuni in their pottery. It is not known whether the Yuki hold similar 
beliefs: at any rate, the gap is often filled in. 

A characteristic feature of the ornament are small rectangular 
patches of varying size irregularly scattered over the white surface. 

The hemispherical baskets bear diagonal and vertical patterns 
more often than the shallow ones, but rarely are elaborate in orna- 
mentation. 

The Yuki share the quail plume design with the Pomo, Wintun, 
and Maidu. 

Twined baskets comprise a mortar hopper, of Pomo type but with 
Wailaki suggestions; a close-woven (cf. Pl. 24,7) and an open-work 
conical carrying basket; a plain twined seed beater resembling that 
of the Wailaki, though made of split instead of whole sticks (PI. 
29); an open-work sort of plate, with turned-in warp ends; and a 
similar hemispherical basket for leaching buckeyes. The common- 
est material for both warp and weft is willow; but hazel, grape- 
vine, and digger pine also occur. The occasional patterns are in 
A erophyllum. 

HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS. 


The mortar proper is, as to the north and south, not a hollowed 
rock, but a stone slab on which the basketry hopper is set. It is so 
used that it does not indent too deeply in one place. The pestle is 
the flaring or bulbous ended Pomo implement. 

Acorn soup paddles are undecorated, like those of the Pomo, but 
more roughly made. The pipe is the wooden one with sudden large 
bowl fancied by the Pomo, but without the long, slender stem often 
worked. by the latter people. (PI. 30, 7.) The awl was small and 
slender, with the joint of the bone ground away to leave no definite 
handle. (Fig. 67, 7.) 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 


NORTHERN 


CEINTRAL 
POMO 
mS 
































































































































BULLETIN 78 PLATE 27 


LEGEND 
WAP P Oiigicknnn, . at Saale: 
LAKE MIWOK.2. 3.0.55 
POMO UNTIL 1830........_....... 
POSSIBLY LAKE MIWOK...__ _ 


Scale 
0 Fes & § 10 Miles 































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































SETTLEMENTS OF THE WAPPO AND LAKE MIWOK 


ets 
a : 7 


: "D 
: ‘ AY 


ee 
i: : 
Si 
© 
i 
* 


a A 5 pene 


es neeethaaiiectan Fonsi cei At OTOH 


Pe , ane pig 


abled AHA MUA OTA BHT 20, EY OMT oe 


a Fri 
~ 4 
et ee 


_ ei! ss | 


4 





BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN, 78. PLATE 28 





YOY Bes 


The woman with hair cut in mourning (lower left) is half Huchnom. 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BUCLETING/S. (PLA fee2g 





SEED BEATERS 


Above, left, Nongatl; right, Chumash. Below, left, Pomo, wickerwork; right, Yuki 


Oe 


eo . 


hecied.? 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 30 





WOODEN SMOKING PIPES 
a,b, Pomo; c, d, Yokuts; e, Miwok; /, Yuki; g, Wintun 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN +738 SPLAT Bess 





Salinan Yana 





Hupa girls 
CENTRAL AND NORTHERN CALIFORNIAN TYPES 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLEN +78 rE lA ees2 


















































d € if 
SIERRA NEVADA TYPES 


a,d, Southern Miwok; 6, e, Chukchansi Yokuts; c, Western Mono; f, Washo, 





< - ——— ~~ — . ” OE a 


‘aod jouuny ‘q {UN} 0} WEY} JOJ MOIIVU 00} St dviy oy} PUB ‘gno SuIyoR Ysy oy S}uAord YO “yur UT prey “p 


SdVUL HSIA OWOd 


“Ys [[eUIs JaAo pasunqd ‘doy uo edo “9 ‘Ysy [[BUIS 10J 





ADOIONHLA NVOIYAWYV SO NVAENG 


ec eaeVids 84 Nitaigns 


KROERER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 178 


For loads, the Yuki employ both the Wailaki pack strap that 
= + . . 
passes around the carrying basket and the Pomo carrying net. 


DANCE AND GAME OBJECTS. 


Religious paraphernalia are of the kind general in central Cali- 
fornia. They come very close to Pomo forms, but are invariably 
simpler or less neatly made. The yellow-hammer headband, for in- 
stance, hasits component quills roughly trimmed and unevenly sewn 
together (Fig. 20). The forked feather dart, nowadays made on wire 
instead of wood, is notably less elaborate than the better Pomo pieces 
(Fig. 21). The cocoon rattle runs to no great cluster and is without 
interspersed feathers (Fig. 37). The wooden clapper rattle, to judge 
by available specimens, is unpainted. The Pomo band theirs. The 
whistle, which may be of bone or reed, single or double, is less accu- 
rately cut off, pierced, and tied. 

Yuki games are practically undescribed, except for the men’s guess- 
ing game, which was played as by the Pomo with a pair of bones 
rolled in grass, and in which the widespread international exclama- 
tions tep and wei were used in designating the bone guessed at. 


DRESS. 


Little is known of dress, and it appears to have been scant. Women 
wore the usual fringed skirt or apron made of buckskin, and if nec- 
essary drew a deer cape or blanket over their shoulders. Young men 
wrapped a fur or skin around their hips in place of drawing a breech- 
cloth between the legs. Old men may have gone stark naked. In 
cold weather a deerskin served as blanket. Rabbit-fur robes are 
scarcely mentioned. Their advantages are such that they must have 
been prized; but the timbered country was more productive of deer 
than of rabbits. The Yuki know the Wintun as being particularly 
given to taking rabbits by snares. 

A basket cap was not worn by the women. This article of dress 
seems to stop everywhere with the southern limit of exclusively 
twined basketry, and to reappear again, in coiled form, only some 
distance to the south, or in diagonal twining in the Great Basin. 

A compensation, as it were, for the women’s basket caps are the 
string head nets of the men. Substantially, the two seem mutually 
exclusive in California; so it is not surprising that the Yuki em- 
ployed the net, at least when the hair was to hold feathers. 

Women’s facial tattooing was most prominent on the cheeks and 
less precisely dictated by an inflexible fashion than in the Northwest, 
where it was the custom to cover the chin almost solidly but to leave 
the remainder of the face clear. Cheek tattooing seems to have 
reached its climax in the region of the Yuki and Wailaki. (Tig. 45.) 


174 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 
FOOD. 


The streams in Yuki land are small enough in late summer, but 
in the rainy season are often torrentially swollen, and their courses 
are swift and rock-strewn. These were not conditions that encour- 
aged any form of navigation, and the Yuki declare that they made 
not even rafts or tule balsas. Since many of their women, however, 
were poor swimmers, even when unencumbered by babies, the men 
in winter would bank coals of fire in a mass of ashes in a basket and 
carry this across a river. There they would start a blaze and warm 
themselves, then return and transport the children and feebler women 
by setting them in large carrying baskets, which the men pushed 
across while swimming or fording, as opportunity offered. 

Fish nets, spears, and weirs of their own make are no longer used 
by the Yuki in their reservation life. What they need in this re- 
gard they buy from the Wailaki, whom they appear to look up to as 
superior fishermen. Such complete dependence could not have ob- 
tained in native days.. But there was probably some tendency in 
this direction. Certainly the Wailaki on the main river and its 
immediate tributaries were better situated for fishing than the bulk of 
the Yuki on the headwaters. The latter, on the other hand, as the 
heavy winter flows receded and left the large salmon practically shut 
in pools separated by long and shallow riffles, gave the Yuki a chance 
to take the fish without nets. Men dived in and came up with a 
hand in the gills of a salmon, or, it is said, with a running noose 
slipped around its tail. 

Bears were hunted in such wise that one man advanced boldly with 
nothing but a woman’s root-digging stick with which he struck at 
the animal’s pawing legs and stood him off while his companions 
took careful aim with their arrows. 

The salt used by the Yuki came, wholly or mostly, from the 
I’umno’m, the “salt people,” or northeastern Pomo. It may have 
been gathered there by the nearer divisions, such as the Onkolukom- 
no’m with the consent of the amicable owners of the territory; at 
any rate, it probably passed through Onkolukomno’m hands. The 
groups farthest to the northwest were farthest from this source of 
supply, and in fact the other Yuki say that the Ta’no’m, and with 
them the Wailaki, having but little salt available, were accustomed 
to do without and showed little eagerness to obtain it. 

The Yuki ate acorn soup by scooping two crooked fingers into 
the mess and sucking them off. Similar table manners have been 
reported from other parts of the State, and probably prevailed 
wherever spoons were not in common use. 


KROPBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 175 
HOUSES. 


The Yuki house or han, and dance or “ sweat” house, zw2/-han, lit- 
erally “poison-house” or “supernaturally powerful house,” were 
built on one plan, and differed only in size and elaboration. They 
were circular, conically domed, and earth-covered, with one forking 
center post. There is no reference to any roof entrance, but the 
dance house had a small side entrance for fuel. The dance houses 
and larger houses were probably somewhat excavated, and are said 
to have hada series of low forked posts around the edge which 
were connected by the rafters. From these, poles and sticks ran up 
to the crotch of the center pole. On the poles were put successive 
layers of bark, grass, pine needles, and earth. The center post was 
actually somewhat back of the middle, which would give the rear 
of the roof a steeper pitch unless the house were built on a hillside. 
There was a short and low entrance tunnel of four forked sticks cov- 
ered with poles and earth. At the inner and sometimes also at the 
outer end of this tunnel was a door consisting of a large piece of 
flat basketry, or a deerskin, around which the corners of the doorway 
were stuffed with grass. 

Smaller houses dispensed with the peripheral uprights and had 
their poles laid from the central fork directly to the ground. Such 
a house would be built in a few days by a man working alone or with 
the assistance of a brother, and would stand without much repair 
for a year or two. 

Still smaller houses were made without a center post, and con- 
sisted only of a conical lean-to of poles and bark, with an entrance. 
These must have been substantially identical with the bark houses 
of the Sinkyone and Lassik to the north. ; 

Tt is clear that the distinction between the Yuki house and dance 
house is not structural, but lies in size, in their names, and in the 
recognition of the uses to which they are dedicated. This appears 
to have been the case throughout the northern portion of the central 
area. The northwestern sweat house differs from the living house 
in type as well as in service. In south central and southern Cali- 
fornia there is no true dance house, and the sweat house tends to be 
built differently from the living house. 

The sweat house proper has usually been confused with the dance 
house on account of the customary designation of the latter as “ sweat 
house” in English. The customs of the other north central Cali- 
fornian tribes suggest that the sweat house proper was earth roofed, 
but smaller than the dance house and perhaps than the dwelling. 

The people lived in their han during the winter. They occupied 
them also in summer when they happened to be at the home village, 


3625°—25 13 





176 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [nuLL. 78 


but, since much of the dry season was spent in the hills, most of the 
living then was in brush shelters. 

Houses stood irregularly in little groups. There would be only 
one dance house to the village, if that. The geographical accounts 
given speak of villages with and without dance houses as permanent 
features, but all the recorded narratives of actual ceremonial events 
mention such structures as specially erected for each occasion. 


MONEY. 


The current money was the central Californian clamshell disk 
bead, and was obtained from the Pomo, most frequently in finished 
form, but also in the unworked shell for piercing and grinding round 
by the Yuki themselves. The magnesite cylinders made from a de- 
tee in the erent of the southeastern Pomo and commonly called 

“gold money ” by the modern Han, also penetrated to the Yuki, 
who knew them as shép, “scars.” Most valuable of all were dentalia, 
muli, which came from the northern Pomo of Sherwood and Willits, 
though where these obtained them, unless at the end of a drift up the 
South Fork of Eel River Ahveavatelh the Sinkyone and Kato, and past 
the Yuki, is not clear. The involved reflux to the Yuki emphasizes 
the relative concentration of wealth among the Pomo. These southern 
dentalia would, however, have been viewed with contempt by the 
Yurok and Hupa. They were fragments of an inch and less, strung 
in fathom lengths and more. The northerners would have hung 
them around their necks as unconcernedly as they were careful to 
roll up and hide their full-length shells of real money. 

The Wintun, at least the Nomlaki of Thomas Creek, had the repute 
among the Yuki of owning few beads and being uninterested in their 
acquisition by trade. 

COUNTING. 


The Yuki system of counting—and it alone among all the Yukian 
languages—is not decimal or quinary, but octonary. Only the Sali- 
nan and Chumash, far to the south, follow an analogous quaternary 
method. It is remarkable that the Yuki counted on their fingers 
as regularly as any other people in the State. The explanation is 
that they did not count the fingers but the spaces between them, in 
each of which, when the manipulation was possible, two twigs were 
laid. Naturally enough their “ hundred ” was 64. 

The younger men, who have associated with the aeate se) seem 
not to realize that ein fathers thought by eights instead of tens, 
and are so confused in consequence that ghey give the most con- 
tradictory accounts of even the lowest native numerals. The old 
generation, on the other hand, is as innocent of our method. One of 
these survivors, when asked if he knew how many fingers he had, 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF GALIFORNIA Bist 


answered without hesitation, huchamopesul, ten. Asked how many 
fingers and toes he had, be rephed that he did not know. If the 
query had been how many spaces there were between his fingers and 
toes, which would trip up many a civilized person required to answer 
without calculation or actual count, he would no doubt have known 
instantly. Two pairs of hands were then spread before him as the 
accepted equivalent of his own fingers and toes, and he began a labo- 
rious count, pushing the digits together into groups of fours. The 
result he announced was molmihuipoi, nineteen. Unaccustomed to 
handling fingers, he had overlooked a thumb. When the same man 
was allowed to place pairs of little sticks between his own fingers, as 
was habitual to him, he reckoned rapidly and correctly. 

The Yuki managed their count with only three real numeral words: 
pawt, one; opi, two; molmi, three. Every other word denoting the 
numbers up into the hundreds is a description of the process of 
counting. Thus, a translation of their numerals from four to 
twenty runs as follows: two-forks, middle-in, even-chilki, even-in, 
one-flat, beyond-one-hang, beyond-two-body, three-body, two-forks- 
body, middle-in-body, even-chilki-body, even-in-body, middle-none, 
one-middle-project, two-middle-project, three-middle-project, two- 
forks-middle-project. Sixty-four is two-fork-pile-at. There are 
sometimes several ways of denoting a number. Thus eight is one- 
flat, or hand-two-only 

As among most Californians, there was no word meaning year. 
Pilwan signified either the summer or the whole year: it is con- 
nected with pila"t, sun. Or, a man might speak of pa"wa. ona, one 
earth or one world, in the sense of a year having elapsed. But such 
counts were not carried further than an involuntary memory, unaided 
by dates or fixed supports, allowed. And of course no one knew 
his own or anybody’s age. 

The eastern Pomo called a year hotsaz, the etymology of which is 
obscure, but early adopted ainu, their pronunciation of Spanish aio, 
as a substitute. 

THE LEADERS OF SOCIETY. 


A rich man was called wok-huyako’l, “ dance-director,” or atat- 


zwop, “person-man,” that is, a real man, a man who was a person. 
A chief was the ¢’0’/, a war leader taw"-huya"kiki. The last two 
were distinct; how far the rich man and the ¢i’o’7 may have merged 
in native consciousness is not quite clear, though the former seems 
to correspond to the dance-house owner or town chief, the latter to 
the head chief of a political group. 

The chief is described as being wealthy, friendly to everyone, ready 
to offer advice, heeded and liked by all, and hospitable. He invited 


178 BUREAU -OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


and entertained visitors, and might see that a widower’s children 
were taken care of. He would notify the owner of a dance house 
and possessor of the necessary paraphernalia when to make, or 
begin, a dance. He did not lead in battle or fight, but he might tell 
the war captain when the time for war had come. He might not 
hold his station all his life, since it was necessary for a chief to 
retain general liking. Perhaps a chief that permanently lost public 
approval would be succeeded in influence by a more popular man 
of prominence without any formal action having been taken; or 
he may have been deposed. But we know of no such incidents, and 
they can not have been common. 

The “ person-man” was probably the informal head of a local 
settlement, who had a number of able-bodied relatives and a-store of 
shell money, had put up a dance house with their aid, which he was 
regarded as owning or controlling, and had made and kept a number 
of dance costumes. . 

The war leader seems to have been merely a person of bravery — 
above the average, who had displayed his courage and skill in com- 
bat and won the confidence of his people. He did not lead the van, 
in an open fight, but stood aside or behind, advising and encouraging 
his men. In surprise attacks, on the other hand, it is probable that 
initiative in action rested directly with him. 


BATTLES AND TRIUMPHS. 


Fighting was normally concluded by a money settlement. Until 
a payment were tendered, the losers would be more animated by 
revenge to continue the conflict than the victors encouraged by their 
success to persist in the fight. Sometimes, it is said, the side suf- 
fering the heavier losses might be willing to quit, in which case the 
victors would be notified and, with the chief’s consent, a payment 
made to the losers and friendly relations resumed. In such cases 
persons orphaned in the course of the struggle received the largest 
share of the compensation. If a son or close relative of a noted war 
leader fell, the slaying party was hkely to make prompt tender of 
a considerable amount, to forestall the reprisal which would other- 
wise be certain to be attempted. A bad man, it is said, was not paid 
for. ‘This statement may be conjectured to refer to unlucky shamans, 
poisoners, and other objectionable characters disposed of by their 
own or a friendly neighboring community. 

When an enemy was captured or his body secured, he was decapi- 
tated and the head taken home. A dance or sweat house was built 
for the taw"-wok or war dance. The head was handed to a boy or 
girl who had lost a father in the feud. The youngster seized the skin 
with his or her teeth and drew it off. During part of the dance, pre- 


KROBBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 179 


sumably before this act, the head was thrown on the ground. At 
other times the head was carried on a stick held by the young men. 
After this it was given to the young women, who during their dance 
addressed it as husband, carried it about in their teeth, and chirped 
“pi, pr, pr, pr, pt,’ as if the head were calling. The dance was con- 
tinued, it is said, until the head was worn out, after which it was 
thrown away and covered with stones. 

There is no mention of scalping as such nor any suggestion of an 
idea of permanently retaining a visible trophy. The head was merely 
the occasion for an expression of satisfaction at the revenge obtained. 
This attitude is revealed also in the fact that when several foes were 
slain only one head seems often to have been taken. One gave the 
opportunity desired and was enough. A Plains Indian on the hunt 
for scalps or a record of coups would have wondered at this futile 
moderation as much as a Yuki would have been astonished and 
perhaps shocked by the Sioux and Cheyenne way of playing the 
game of war. 

That the taking of a head was an event and the war dance much 
more than a spontaneous celebration is revealed by the circumstance 
that a full earth-covered dance house was erected for the occasion 
if the victors did not happen to possess one in their village. 

It is characteristic that a man might out of meanness, as the In- 
dians put it in their colloquial English, give the name of the enemy 
he had slain to his boy or of a female relative of the fallen foe 
to his daughter. With the intensity of feeling that prevails in Cali- 
fornia against any allusion to the dead, this was the extreme of 
vindictive gloating. 

MARRIAGE AND SEX. 


Marriages were sometimes arranged by the parents. Well-to-do 
people paid for a wife, whereupon the girl’s parents made a return in 
eifts. Something of the sort probably took place even among the 
poorest, since there was a name, “ dog-child” or “ coyote-child,” for 
bastards. This epithet could hardly have existed without a definite 
recognition of what constituted marriage, and such recognition can 
hardly be conceived of without being based in part on a payment. 

A casual Yuki statement that blood kin sometimes married, to 
prevent misunderstandings and quarrels, may refer only to one or 
two exceptional instances; but might also, when followed out, reveal 
» peculiar and definite system. So, also, the assertion that a widow 
sometimes married her husband’s brother and sometimes another 
man, is no doubt correct, and there may not have been a rigidly 
regulatory law; but there must have been quite specific controlling 
considerations, such as the presence or absence of children, as men- 
tioned by the Huchnom. 


180 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


In labor, a woman sits, raising herself from the ground on her 
hands. After birth has taken place, the woman and her husband eat 
neither salt nor fat for some time; nor does he go to hunt or gamble, 
in fear of bringing illness on the infant. The child’s navel string is 
carefully kept. If the baby falls sick, the cord is laid in a wet skin 
or rag which is squeezed out over its body. 

The usual type of restrictions for the woman who was after the 
manner of her kind were in force, but seem not to have been extreme. 
She ate apart, but was not forced to leave the house for a shelter of 
her own. 

The Yuki appear to impose rather slight restrictions on communi- 
cation between relatives by marriage, though in reservation life they 
have learned that the Concow Maidu son-in-law and mother-in-law 
will not even look at each other. They do not seem to employ the 
pluralizing circumlocutions to which the Kato and Pomo hold. 

The transvestites whose recognition forms so regular a part of 
Indian custom, were not lacking among the Yuki, who called them 
iwop-natip, “men-girls.” Besides dressing as women they were tat- 
tooed and are said to have spoken in more or less feminine voices. 
Sometimes they married men. There seems to have been no cere- 
mony marking the establishment of their status. Their number, as 
among other tribes, is difficult to estimate, but may be conjectured 
to have been in proportion to the normal frequency of well-defined 
homosexualists of feminine inclination in all populations. An old 
informant knew of none in his own village of U’wit, and mentioned 
but two: Ishchosi of Nw’ and Chikolno’m of Inkak. 


THE DEAD. 


Their dead, the Yuki assert, were buried, usually in large baskets. 
Some of the dead person’s belongings were buried with him, but a 
part was preserved for the survivors. Cremation was practiced also, 
but was not the standard custom, being reserved for those slain in 
fighting or dying under exceptional circumstances. Regular burning 
of the dead is, however, ascribed by the Yuki to their kinsmen the 
Huchnom, and to the Pomo. 

There was also no formal memorial mourning ceremony such as 
prevailed among the Maidu. In this the Yuki agree with the Pomo, 
as well as all the groups to the north of them. 


NAMES, 


Names were bestowed on children about the time they made their 
first endeavors at speaking. They were given by relatives—the 
exact kin is not known and may not have been prescribed—accom- 
panied by a gift. The meanings of the names lack what we should 


KRODBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 181 


consider personal dignity. ‘Some clearly refer to bodily peculiari- 
ties; others may allude to trivial incidents. Examples are: Sore- 
eye, Digging-eye, Striped-acorn, Becoming-summer, Handle-comes- 
off, Flayed-hide, Bear-walks, Rib-boy, Manzanita-bear, Getting- 
bloody, Black-to-sit-on, Feet-strung-out, Closing-it-up-with-the-heel. 
Women’s names are Sweet-acorn and A fraid-of-her-shadow. 

In regard to the avoidance of the name of the dead the Yuki say 
that a decent man would not do such a thing as to utter the name. 
For a breach of the custom the dead person’s relatives might lie in 
ambush or try to poison the violator. It is clear that the idea of the 
mention carries such an obvious implication of unspeakable offense 
that it is conceived of as being made only with the most deliberate 
and hateful intent. 

The Yuki have a word equivalent to our “thanks,” though of un- 
known etymology: yosheme. This is used both when a gift is re- 
ceived and as an exclamation to one that sneezes. The first syllable 
suggests Spanish Dios. The Huchnom say heuw, “ yes,” or tatki, “ it 
is good,” to express gratitude; the northern Pomo equivalents are 
hau and kudi—hudi in eastern Pomo. 


CuHaptTer 12. 
THE YUKIL: RELIGION; 


Cosmogony, 182; rituals, 188; the Taikomol initiation, 184; the ghost initia- 
tion, 185; a biographic account, 188; general features of the initiations, 
189; the obsidian ceremony, 191; girls’ adolescence ceremony, 195; acorn 
and feather dances, 196; shamanism, 196; a doctor’s history, 197; various 
shamanistic beliefs and practices, 198; rattlesnake shamans, 199; bear 
shamans, 200. 


COSMOGONY. 


Yuki cosmogony and mythology are thoroughly of the type preva- 
lent through north central California. They revolve around two 
personages—a creator and an unstable assistant who sometimes mars 
and again supplements the work of his chief. With the polarity 
between these figures to build on, the natives manage to develop at 
once some rude grandeur of conception and a considerable amount 
of simple philosophy about the dualism inherent in the world, the 
origin of evil, and similar problems that confront anyone who has 
lived a life. The mass of the episodes in Yuki mythic narrative is as 
much part of the common stock of the north central tribes as is the 
basic motive of the plot; but as among every people there are certain 
flashes and turns that are national peculiarities and the original prod- 
uct, probably, of individual minds. In their incidents and specific 
stories the Yuki lean more closely toward the adjacent Athabascans; 
in their organization of the episodes into a whole, rather to the richer 
and more studied Pomo and Wintun. 

Of the two polar cosmogonic personages the negative one seems to 
have the older and deeper roots. He has been formulated by all 
the central tribes and is always identified with the coyote. Even in 
southern and northwestern California he has not disappeared en- 
tirely; and it is well known that he retains many of his aspects 
throughout the plateau tribes and well up among those of the North 
Pacific coast. 

The concept of his constructive antithesis, the creator, is con- 
fined to north central California, and is variable even within that 
area. ‘To the Yuki he is Taikomol, he who walks alone, to the 
Kato Nagaicho, the great traveler, to the Wintun Olelbis, he who 
sits in the above, to the Maidu the ceremonial initiate of the earth 


182 


Se 


ee a 


KROBBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 183 


or 4<odoyanpe, the earth namer. Among the Pomo we do not know 
the meaning of his name, Madumda. On the fringes of the area 
thus outlined, he sinks to the level of an animal, such as the silver 
fox of the Achomawi, or disappears wholly, except for a vague 
mention or two, as among the Yana and Shasta. In south central 
California he has an analogue in the eagle, but only a partial one; 
for to the Yokuts the eagle is not so much the creator as the chief 
of the assembly of animals who participated in the origin of things. 
In southern California the creator is replaced, especially among the 
most advanced tribes, by a parallel but psychologically quite distinct 
figure, the dying god. In the Northwest, too, Yimantuwingyai and 
his Yurok and Karok equivalents are only in shght measure represen- 
tatives of the north central Californian creator: in reality they are 
a fusion of him with the coyote, placed in a new setting of world 
inception. ‘The idea of a true creator of the world is thus confined 
to those of the central California groups that followed the Kuksu 
cult; is evidently associated with that religion; but may have an even 
narrower range of distribution. 


RITUALS. 


Yuki ceremonies are more numerous than might be expected of a 
tribe the material basis of whose culture was so crude. There were, 
first of all, among the bulk of the group, two rituals that observed 
esoteric initiation and practiced divine impersonation: the 7'aikomol- 
woknam and the Hulk’ilal-woknam. 'These are admitted to have 
been derived from the Kato and Huchnom, and seem to rest on a 
Pomo and perhaps ultimate Wintun foundation, though the rituals 
themselves are no doubt quite different in many respects from those 
of the tribes that originated their impulse. Among the Yuki of 
main Eel River in intimate contact with the Wailaki was practiced 
a Wailaki ceremony, the A?chil-woknam, which, though at bottom 
shamanistic rather than ritualistic, possessed at least some elements 
of organization and initiation. 

The Yuki further possessed all the ceremonies that are conducted 
without a formal organization, that serve an immediate, specific 
purpose, and that are the common stock of all the tribes of northern 
and many of those of south central and southern California: the 
dance to initiate shamans or Lamshiwok, the girls’ adolescence dance 
or Hamnam-wok, and the victory celebration dance or 7'aw"-wok. 

In addition, there was the Kopa-wok or feather dance, in which 
religious and festive social elements were avowedly blended, and for 
which there are a considerable number of north central Californian 
parallels; and a somewhat more distinctive dance, the La*lha"p-wok, 
connected with the acorn crop. 


184 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The formal mourning ceremonies of the southern and south cen- 
tral tribes and Maidu were not practiced. Of the specific rituals of 
the northwest there is not a vestige. 

The three ceremonies connected with an organization bear names 
that end in -woknam. Wok is “ dance,’ nam to “he”; the com- 
pound has about the sense of initiation. The Yuki translate it as 
“school.” The children or young men lay during the prolonged in- 
struction, which, with demonstrations, comprised the bulk of the 
initiation. No name for the organization or secret society as such 
has been recorded; but those who have passed through the ulk’2lal- 
woknam are said to be called hulk’tlal-woknam-chi or lashmitl. 


THE TAIKOMOL INITIATION. 


The Z'aikomol-woknam refers to the creator Taikomol. His im- 
personator in dances wears the “big head” costume that prevails 
among the Pomo, Wintun, and Maidu, and the Yuki directly identify 
their Taikomol with the Kuksu or big head of the northern and 
eastern Pomo. 

The children or youths to be initiated were brought into a dance 
house in the morning. There they sat with crossed legs, forbidden 
to move or even to stretch themselves until the middle of the day. 
Often their parents sat behind to prop them up. They put rope, 
knives, net bags, snares, furs, and other property in a pile to pay 
the old man who was to teach their children. The old man then 
began. He had nothing on or with him but a cocoon rattle and 
perhaps a feather with which to point and illustrate. He sang a> 
song that referred to the first event in the creation of the world. 
Then he would tell this episode in prose. Other songs and pieces of 
narrative followed, interspersed with explanations, applications to 
life, and a good deal of moralizing. The whole followed the thread 
of the creation myth. The instructor does not seem to have tried 
. to veil his meaning in cryptic and esoteric utterances; but the nu- 
merous repetitions, the constant change from obscure song to story 
and from narrative to comment, and the self-interruptions, must 
have produced a sufficiently disjointed effect to make several listen- 
ings necessary before a coherent scheme of the myth could be ob- 
tained. 

Taikomo! came from the north. Therefore in this ceremony they 
put the north first as they point successively north, south, west, east, 
down, and up. Sometimes they point four times in each of the six 
directions, then three times, then twice, then once. 

There is also a Z’aikomol ceremony distinct from this teaching. 
‘This is a doctoring ceremony, and reveals a connection that exists 


KROBPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 185 


between all society rituals and shamanism among the Yuki. It is 
called Z'athomola-lit. 

The sick person lies in the middle of the dance house, feet toward 
the door. Near his head sit five or six singers. Some one goes on 
the roof of the house and calls yuhe kokohokok he! Then the 7'ai- 
komol impersonator, who has dressed himself somewhere out in the 
brush in a long feather-covered net that conceals his entire face and 
body, approaches. He stops, retreats, and approaches again. This 
is counted as four movements. Then, walking backward, he comes 
close to the house, retreats, approaches again, and comes through the 
door rump first. ‘This is again counted as four movements. He 
stands by the side of the recumbent sufferer, who, the Yuki say, 
believes the feathered figure to be Taikomol Wintite This must be 
taken with a grain of salt, as representing theory rather than prac- 
tice. Adult males, at least, would certainly have known better. The 
identity of the impersonator was, however, not revealed. Accord- 
ing to one account, there were two Taikomol! dancers. 

The Tatkomol now dances to four songs, leaping over the patient, 
bouncing from the ground, and shuffling along; after which he goes 
out, and a sucking doctor proceeds to the actual diagnosis, feeling 
the patient over until he locates the disease object. This act is 
repeated for four nights. The officiating doctor and the chief 
singer—the Zathomol-ha"p-na"ho’l—are paid; the assistant singers 
and impersonator receive nothing, at least not directly from the 
patient. 

It is said that long ago a man of the Matamno’ m, one of the 
Witukomno’m or othier southerly Yuki divisions, bought certain 
black wing feathers of the condor from the Kato, pat easaattiten 
with Ehera! This information was the creation myth as related in 
the Zackomol-woknam. The feathers were worn, but were also like 
an American book: the knowledge came with them. Because of this 
event the southern Yuki are said to sing the Z’azkomol songs some- 
what differently from the Huchnom and Ta’no’m, to whom, evi- 
dently, this importation did not extend. Of course, it is much more 
likely that a new variety of song, myth, and ritual were superim- 
posed on similar cultural possessions in this introduction, than that 
a brand new importation of a heretofore entirely unknown 7'aikomol 
cult took place. The Matamno’m purchaser imparted his knowledge 
to the grandfather of a man born about 1830, which fact sets the 
date of the innovation back of 1800. 


THE GHOST INITIATION. 


The Hulk’ilal-woknam is the impersonation of the Aulk’ilal or 
chosts. It is said that this was instituted by Taikomol, but that at 
first he, or according to another account the bungling coyote, made 


186 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


the ceremony with real ghosts, in consequence of which all the on- 
looking people died. He then created a fresh set of human beings, 
and had some of them act as hu/k’dal and all went well. 

Taikomol also first made a powerful thing lke a basket with 
feathers projecting from it, but this swallowed the people. There- 
after he had a human being disguise himself in the same way. This 
is perhaps a parallel myth concerning the “ big head” in the Z'azko- 
mol-woknam. 

Boys and young men were initiated and reinitiated in the //u/k’ilal- 
woknam, but never a girl. No woman was ever admitted into the 
dance house during any part of the ceremony, nor was she supposed 
to know anything about it. 


The directors of the ceremony meet in the dance house for four days to sing 
and discuss which children shall be initiated. Apparently, the boys from the 
settlements or camps for some distance about are gathered up and set in front 
of the dance house toward evening. As it begins to be dusk, they are picked 
up and passed through the wood hole in the side of the house, received by 
another man, and set down. It is pitch dark inside, and the half dozen or so 
‘‘shosts”’? standing about are invisible. When the children are all placed, the 
singers gathered around the drum start a song, helina heluli, the men present 
put their fingers against their throats, shake them, and shout yuwurwuwuwua, 
the fire is stirred up, and the boys begin to tremble as they see the horrifying 
hulk’ilal. 

These impersonators have body, arms, and legs painted in broad horizontal 
stripes of black and white. They wear false hair of maple bark, and a wreath 
of black oak, pepperwood, and manzanita leaves to conceal the face. Their 
faces are distorted. Grass is stuffed in the cheeks. A twig twice the length of 
the middle finger is split and each half inserted in a nostril. Hach is then 
bent until the other end catches behind the lower lip. This simple device pushes 
the nostril up and the lip down, and gives the face a monstrous appearance. 
Of course the voices also sound unnatural. 

The director of the ceremony asks the hull’ilal: ‘‘ Where do you come from? 
Why are you here and say nothing?” One of them replies: “#! We have come 
to see how you do this. The one above sent us to see how you make it. We 
came to look at this fire, the drum, and everything else that you have. We shall 
be here only a little time.” 

The hulk’tlal also pick out men among the spectators to go out for food, 
specifying what to get from each house. When this is brought in, every one 
eats. The children in particular are made to eat heartily, as this is their last 
meal for four days—that is, probably, until the fourth day. They may also 
not drink. When they have finished, the men shake their throats and shout 
again. 

The fire is kept up and the dance house is hot throughout the ceremony. 
In addition, the boys are covered with straw or brush. . 

Then the hulk’ilal dance. Their step is a leap up, they swing and twist their 
hands, and move about randomly. It is apparent that they act as clowns. It 
is said that the men frequently laugh at them, subduedly but heartily. The 
hulk’ilal point to the sticks in their faces and utter inarticulate sounds. They 
pull the cheeks down from the eyes. The significance of this is that they bring 
abundanee of acorns, luck in the deer hunt, and plenty of all foods. They hold 


w 
‘ 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 187 


their privates, or each other’s. They direct each other to step in the wrong 
place, which is their way of indicating where they are to stand. Should one 
really go where he is told, he has to pay. 

The dance centers about the drum. ° Each hulk’ilal leaps on this four times 
with a tremendous reverberation, crying “he’ye” with each jump. The song 
refrain at this time is yoho yoho. The fire is kept especially hot. 

The children are kept in the dance house for four days. The hulk’ilal are 
not present continuously but enter at intervals. There is talking in low tones 
and then the four, six, and eight designated for the next impersonation slip 
out quietly, so that even the spectators present do not know their identity when 
they return. They go on a hill to paint and dress. Then they separate in pairs, 
so as to be able to approach the dance house from different directions. 

One of the men inside mounts to the roof and shouts yuhe kokokokoko, as in 
the Taikomol’s appearance. They answer bd, ba, ba, in long bleats, and as they 
begin to draw near each other shout brrrrr! A singer with cocoon rattle goes out 
to meet them with a certain song. They approach and enter singly, each going 
through the same motions as the Taikomol in his ceremony. During this en- 
trance there is also a snecial song. Then they dance as described, everyone 
in the house, even the oldest men, standing up and dancing with them; and 
meanwhile the fire flares up so that all sweat. The men often hold or even 
earry their sons or grandsons. One or two will take brands and blow sparks on 
the boys, some of whom instead of shrinking back stretch out their arms and 
cry ywu, ywu, to prove that they can meet the ordeal with fortitude. The song 
for this dance and scene of animation ends with the refrain hohu hohu hohu! 

It is not clear whether this entry and dance take place once or several times 
each 24 hours. 

The first morning the boys are put in a pit or broad hole which has been dug 
and lined with grass to the accompaniment of a particular song on the preced- 
ing day. This part of the proceedings seems to be connected with sweating 
the youngsters. 

The men have food brought into the house every day, after which some of them 
go up into the hills to bring wood for the continual fire. On the last day 
food is brought in also for the boys, but this is kept separate. An old man 
holding angelica root in his hand goes about to a song heye hiyohu, touching 
each vessel of food or drink with a feather that he licks off, thus imparting 
health-giving qualities to what the boys will consume. 

The ceremony is concluded about noon on the fourth day by throwing the 
boys out of the dance house ihrough the wood bole by which they entered. Two 
eld men are thrown out first. The boys hold their breaths and Keep as still 
as if they were dead while they are being handled and pitched. Their relatives 
are outside to catch them or pick them up. In the afternoon the boys seem to 
reenter to be sweated once more and be rubbed over with ashes. 


The initiation, which takes place at intervals of some years, 1s 
thought to make the boys strong, swift at running, and enduring on 
the hunt. 

That there is another side to the hu/i’tlal impersonation beyond 
that revealed in the initiation of the woknam, is evident from the 
statement that as the huwlk’ilal approach the dance house they confide 
or boast to each other that what they are doing will work harm to 
people of another tribe. A Yuki who went through the ceremony in 
reservation days partook in it when performed by the northern Pomo 


188 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


there, who made it to poison a Yuki named Mano, on the ground 
that he knew too much about it. Perhaps a realization of his knowl- 
edge caused motives of having tried to abuse his power by sickening 
his enemies to be attributed to him, so that the Pomo considered they 
were acting only in retaliation. Another statement is to the effect 
that the northern Pomo on the reservation, known as the Little Lake 
tribe, are addicted to. the hudht/at ceremonials and visit them when 
held by the Yuki. The people of each nation present try to make 
the others go to sleep. If they succeed, the man who has slept, or one 
of his kin, dies soon. | 

Fat was forbidden during the long duration of the Hulk ilal- 
woknam, and used sparingly for some time thereafter. 

Early in the autumn following a ulk’dal-woknam there is a cere- 
mony called J/am, “mast or crop of black-oak acorns,” evidently of 
the new year’s or first fruits type. The young acorns are gathered and 
dried and deer are killed, and the older members or people feast, but 
the novice initiates abstain for their own good. 

The graduates of the ghost initiation were looked upon as doctors 
or the equivalent of doctors, although they had no personal spirits 


unless they happened to have acquired them outside the course of - 


the ceremony. Like the 7’aikomol initiates, they sang over the sick, 
to find out if the illness were caused by the huldk’tlal spirits; in which 
case a sucking shaman, whose power lay in his control of an indi- 
vidual spirit not associated with this ritual, removed the disease 
object introduced by the ghost. 


. A BIOGRAPHIC ACCOUNT. 


The place of the hudk’ilal initiation in the life of the people is more 
easily deductible from the biographic account given by an old man 
than from the attempts at generalization made by him and others. 


*T am a Singing doctor, but not a sucking doctor. I have made the doctor 
dance. I can cure by Taikomol. I have been through the Taikomol-woknam 
and through the Ta’no’m Kichil-woknam. I went through the Hulk’ilal-woknam 
three times. Doctors take part in this like other men, but those who make it 
need not be or become doctors. 

“When I was a quite small boy, we were at Kolma"l. From there we went to 
Suk’a, where a dance house had already been erected for the Hulk’ilal-woknam. 
My maternal grandfather Shampalhotmi of Ushichma*lha"t was at Suk’a. As 
we arrived at his house a deer was being brought in. My grandfather said to 
me: ‘Do not enter on this side but on the other and come to ine.’ I was fright- 
ened, but went to the left of the fire, around behind it, and back to where he 
was lying near the door. We stayed there that night. Next day it was decided 
that there was not enough food at Suk’a, and that they would go to Ushich- 
ma*lha"t. Everyone moved there and the same day a dance house was put up. 
The logs were cut and everybody helped in their erection. 

“That night the old men discussed among themselves how they could best 
catch me next day. 





KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 189 


“In the morning they went out to cut the large center post and took me 
along. They found a good white oak in the canyon and cut its roots. They 
had no steel axes and worked with a large stone. When they were about to 
fell the tree itself they ordered me up into it. I was to sit om the crotch 
with my arms folded. They wanted to test me and see if I was a man 
and make me into some one who would be a chief. But they made the tree 
fall as lightly as they could so as not to hurt me. Then they chopped off 
the top above the fork in which I still sat. Now one of my uncles took off my 
boy’s fawnskin and gave me a man’s deerskin to wear. Then they took the 
log away. I lay flat on it. Thus they brought it into the dance house. They 
set it up in its hole and still I kept my place. Then my maternal grandfather 
reached up and took me off, laid me on his lap and cried over me. Then I could 
not help but cry too. . 

“When the sun went down, they built a large fire and sweated them- 
selves, but did not trouble me. For four days I was in the dance house 
with many other boys, all of us eating nothing. My maternal grandfather, 
and also my paternal grandfather (or grandfather’s brother) Lamsch’ala, talked 
to me about the hulk’ ilal. 

“This was late in the fall, when the river first began to rise (perhaps 
November). After four days I was allowed to eat and drink again, but all 
winter they kept me hidden away in the dance house. Whenever I went 
outdoors my face was covered. All through the winter at intervals they had 
the hulk’tlal-lit (performance or doctoring) for four days at a time. They 
made it for themselves, not to teach me. But my grandfathers told me to 
watch them and to see everything that they did. Between times they kept me 
well covered up. Every evening they sweated. Thus they did until late 
spring when the grass seeds were ripe (about May or June). 

“The second time I went through the woknam was at Suk’a. I was a big 
boy now. This time the ceremonies lasted only four days. After the meal 
at the end I belonged to the dance house (i. e., I was a full initiate of the 
organization) and went with the others to bring wood for sweating. Be- 
tween the first ceremony and this one my grandfathers had taught me fully 
all the songs and all that I must know. 

“The third time I took part I was a grown and married man. Now I 
took part in the building of the dance house and all the other work. I 
danced and helped to give orders. I was practicing to be an important man. 
This was about when the whites were first coming in. There was sickness 
and the Indians were being killed by the whites, and all things like this 
stopped being done, all at once as it were. So this time the ceremony was 
short, only about two days.” 


GENERAL FEATURES OF THE INITIATIONS. 


It is clear from the foregoing account that the “ dance house” was 
at times used for sweating as well as dancing, so that neither the 
designation here used for it nor the more usual one of “ sweat house,” 
nor in fact the English translation of the Yuli word, “ poison house,” 
can be taken in a literally descriptive sense. Its use partook of all 
three functions. 

It appears that when a dance house is erected for a particular occa- 
sion, as here described, a drum is also specially made, and with con- 
siderable ceremony. All the members of the house or organization 


190 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


go out together for this purpose. They make a fire and lay a log on 
it to burn it out. As they chip off the bark with sharp stones, and 
perhaps complete the hollowing begun by the fire, they sing a song 
with the burden helegadadie hiye. 'The convex slab is tested and 
when it gives a good sound it is addressed: “ You shall have much to 
eat.” Then, everyone having painted black, they carry the drum 
home, singing the same song. Before it is actually put through the 
dance house entrance, a motion is made, perhaps four times, of thrust- 
ing it in. Once inside, it is carried four times to the right and four 
times to the left of the center post. Again, four starts are made be- 
fore it is finally set in the resting place over the prepared ditch at 
the back of the house. All this time the helegadadie hiye song is 
kept up. Finally, much property is piled up by it, to “ pay” it. 

As practiced in recent years, the Aulk’tlal dancers are described as 
belonging to something like a club. Outsiders, if men, may enter as 
spectators, on payment. There is perhaps an aboriginal basis for 
this reservation custom. 

The Zathomol-woknam and Hulk’ilal-woknam present many resem- 
blances to the Pomo and Wintun ceremonial organization, and to 
the more remote but more fully known one of the Maidu. Among 
these must be mentioned, first of all, the fact of a definite organiza- 
tion or secret society with a membership dependent upon an elaborate 
initiation, and strictly excluding women. Second is the impersona- 
tion of spirits in such a way as to cause women and uninitiated chil- 
dren to believe, theoretically at least, in the actual bodily presence 
of these gods, and to leave even the members, except for the direct- 
ing officials, in doubt as to the individual personal identity of the im- 
personators. The long masking net of feathers and the “big head ” 
of radiating feathered sticks correspond to the Wintun and Maidu 
moki and yohyo or di. The latter peoples have separate clowns; the 
Yuki Aulk’ilal manifest clownish features. The Pomo call the “ big 
head” kuksu or guksu, and their hahluigak or “ ghosts” play lke 
the Yuki “ ghosts.” The long series of ceremonials from autumn to 
spring corresponds, although diversified among the Maidu with an 
endless series of distinctive dances and numerous particular imper- 
sonations, and monotonously repetitive with the Yuki. The calling 
of the spirits from the dance-house roof, their answering cries and 
peculiar approach, their backward entry, the dancing about and on 
the drum, the form of this implement, and the general character of 
the treatment of the initiated boys are so similar as to make any 
interpretation but that of development under a common influence im- 
possible. The Yuki rituals are much less elaborate than those of the 
Maidu and Wintun, and somewhat less elaborate than those of the 
Pomo, but the same ideas and manners pervade them. The com- 
parison is gone into more fully in one of the chapters on the Wintun. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 191 


~The relation of Z'atkomol and hulk’ilal ceremonials to each other 
is not clear. If Maidu precedent applies, the Yuki had only one 
society, which performed two or more rituals, the directors and im- 
personators for each being drawn from those individuals who had 
been fully initiated into the branch of the ritual in question. The 
Yuki data give the impression of distinct initiations and organiza- 
tions; but even if paralle] there must have been a relation between 
them; and there is nothing known that concretely contradicts the 
assumption that a single general society of Maidu type underlay the 
two Yuki rituals. 

As the accounts of the Yuki ceremonies refer to the days before 
the coming of the American, they are free from allusions to the 
modern element that has invaded Pomo and Wintun rituals since 
the semi-Christian and revivalistic ghost-dance movement of the 
seventies, 

THE OBSIDIAN CEREMONY. 


In place of these two ceremonies—Zathomol and Hulk’ilal— 
the Ta’no’m and perhaps Lilshikno’m alone of all the Yuki held 
the Aichi/-woknam or obsidian initiation. This was practiced 
by the Wailaki, and the Yuki specifically state that it came to them 
from the Wailaki. It is also asserted to be an old Ta’no’m cere- 
mony, however. The discrepancy is to be understood thus: The 
Ta’nom had long had the ritual, although its ultimate Wailaki 
origin is probable. About a generation before the coming of the 
Americans it was decadent among the Ta’no’m. There were no 
prominent obsidian shamans in the tribe. It was reintroduced by the 
son of a Wailaki who had married a woman of the Kasha*sichno’m 
division of the Ta’no’m and taken her to his people. About 1835 
this half- Yuki made the ceremony among his mother’s people, and 
all the children were initiated; but as he spoke only in Wailaki, it 
was not very intelligible to the boys. Some years later the same boys 
were put through a second ceremony held in Yuki. 

This double initiation seems to have been characteristic of the cere- 
mony as of the corresponding two ceremonies of the other Yuki. The 
first initiation took place when the boys were quite small, the second 
when they were nearly grown or almost men. The ages may be put 
at about 8 and 15; but as the ceremony was held only at intervals of 
some years, there must have been considerable variation for indi- 
viduals. 

That girls were also initiated, though once only, marks this ritual 
off most sharply from the 7atkomol-woknam and Hulhk’ilal-wok- 
nam, and is indication that it was not a function of a true membership 


3625°—25 14 


192 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


society. All other evidence points the same way, The absence of 
masked impersonators, for instance, must have given a very distinct 
tone to the Kichil-woknam. Wherever definite esoteric societies are 
known in California, they impersonate spirits, as in so many other 
parts of the world. The ceremony was directed by obsidian shamans, 
and while an attempt was made to have all children participate 
for their own good, it was also looked upon as a means of determining 
and perhaps assisting those among them who were or would be en- 
dowed with the power of becoming an obsidian doctor. Again, a 
great part of the initiation took place outdoors, instead of in the 
dance house. <All the basic associations of the Aichél-woknam there- 
fore point to shamanism, and it must be looked upon as a develop- 
ment of this activity in the direction of esoteric organization without 
a full attainment of organization. ° 

Of course shamans and societies, both being religious, can not be 
wholly dissociated, and in a simple civilization, such as that of all 
California is at its best, there are certain to be numerous contacts. 
Even with the Maidu and Wintun such contacts appear to be more 
numerous than in a highly organized culture such as that of the 
southwest. The Z'aikomol and hulk’ilal practices include doctoring 
and poisoning; and Yuki informants clearly class these two cere- 
monies with doctoring by singing, and the A7zchil-woknam as an 
expression of the powers of the obsidian doctors and sky doctors, 
who have a head guardian spirit of their own and, in contrast with 
the singing shamans, extract disease by sucking. This parallelism 
is essential to the understanding of the ceremonies; but on the other 
hand it is also clear that as regards T'aikomol and hulk’ilal we have 
esoteric societies with some shamanistic functions; in the A7ichdl- 
woknam, shamanism partly organized into an approach to a society. 

This development among the Ta’no’m and Wailaki on the fringe 
of the area over which the central Californian secret society pre- 
vails seems to find a parallel among another border people, the 
Yokuts on the south. There also there is an initiation and shamans 
of certain classes act together in public, but formal organization 
and the recognition of membership, as well as spirit impersonation, 
are lacking. 

The Kichil-woknam is in charge of the obsidian-shaman or sky-Sshaman reec- 
ognized as ablest. The others assist him. Among themselves they go over the 
available children and count their number by laying out sticks. This confer- 
ence seems to be to insure that no children shall be overlooked rather than to 
select the most worthy and suitable. The children are then gathered without 
knowing what is in store for them and seated in the place where the singing 


and most of the treatment will take place. Their parents follow them; in 
fact everyone gathers there. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 193 


Two large baskets of pounded grass seeds and two of water are set down 
and the children told to eat heartily, as for five days they will receive neither 
food nor drink and on the sixth day only water. 

Then one of the sky shamans takes a long obsidian blade—believed to have 
fallen from heaven—from a net sack full of such pieces. He goes about among 
the children rattling this sack and lightly striking them with it. About the 
same time they begin to keep the children hot, apparently in warmed sand. 
This outdoor sweating or cooking goes on the whole five or six days of the 
ceremony except as it is interrupted by special actions. There is an analogue 
not only in the Hulk’ilal-woknam sweating of boys, but in the “ roasting of 
girls”? which is so conspicuous a feature of the adolescence ceremonies of the 
Luisefio and other southern Californians, not to mention the “ cooking of the 
pains” in the Yurok initiating or perfecting dance for adult shamans. 

Then they prepare to go to a spirit infested “lake” in the mountains which 
ordinarily is too dangerous to approach. In reality the lake is only a damp or 
swampy hollow. Deer have been killed and are eaten by the assembled people, 
while the children lie about under their hot coverings as if dying. Now one 
of the shamans proceeds to the lake on a zigzag course, blowing a whistle and 
approaching the spot cautiously and with stealth. The children and multitude 
follow along until all are seated in the lake bed. Several of the shamans, one 
behind the other, sprinkle them with wet pepperwood leaves. Soon water 
begins to rise in the dry lake. The doctors sing, everyone else dances, and the 
water splashes about them. After they have come out in single file one of the 
shamans throws a stone or a stick into the lake to defy those who live there. 
The shamans poke the boys with a stick to select the one who will wince least 
and become the bravest man. Now this boy chases the people. They rush 
about as if attacked, crying out and dragging their children with them. Thus 
they run away until they are out of sight of the lake. 

- When they return in the evening they enter the dance house and make the 
obsidian dance, Kichil-wwok. The adults dance, and the children—at least the 
smaller and more exhausted ones—are carried by them. There is a large fire, 
and the heat is very hard to bear. It is said that even the manliest boys are 
likely to ery under the ordeal of constant sweating, particularly after they have 
become thin and weakened from several days’ fasting. 

This ends the first day. 

The second and third days are the same, except that the lake is not visited. 

On the fourth day there is a special ceremony, to which, besides the con- 
ducting shamans and the children, only those of the people are admitted 
who have themselves passed through the initiation at some time. To the ac- 
companiment of a particular song, the shamans thrust their sky-obsidians— 
that is, their long blades—into the children to their stomachs, it is said, and twist 
them. Those who bleed at the mouth will be obsidian-doctors themselves; 
the others can not expect this career. Then, to another song, condor feathers 
are pushed into the patient youngsters so far that only the butt of the quill 
projects from their mouths. These are also twisted and signs of blood 
watched for. 

This elimination of the future obsidian shamans from the common mass 
did not, of course, constitute them doctors. In fact, they did not become such 
until after they were men. But the test foreshadowed their future attainment. 

The fifth day seems to be passed like the second and third. 

On the sixth day the children are subjected to another ordeal. They are 
taken out to a shallow hollow, perhaps also a sacred spot, as it is spoken of 
as being in the mountains. The children are laid down, covered with pine 








194 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


and fir needles, grass, or brush, and logs are laid around the inclosing edge of 
the little basin. The logs are fired while a shaman runs singing around the 
circle of fire. Sometimes the flames will spread down into the hollow and 
the brush on the children will spring into a blaze; but they are never hurt. 
When the fire has died down, the brush is pulled away and the children taken 
out, gasping for breath. 

On the return, the dance house is visited, and the nightly obsidian dance 
made around the fire, “to sweat the children.” Everyone is present, parents 
holding their children up by the arms, or carrying them on their backs, which 
is construed as equivalent to the children dancing. When a child faints in 
the circle its parents pick it up and cry over it. Sometimes children are so 
thoroughly exhausted that they have to be taken outdoors. Some _ boys, 
however, Manage to withstand the stifling heat and continue to dance among 
the men. 

Some time on this sixth.day the children receive their first drink of water. 

The seventh and last day brings several features, both tests for the children 
and demonstrations of magic. 

The boys are made to run or clamber up a steep hill. In their enfeebled 
condition, many can progress only a short distance. Some finally arrive at 
the top. These are the boys who will be courageous and successful in war 
when they grow up. 

Then the children are dragged off to a place in the mountains, one of the 
shamans leading the way with a song, the words of which are to this effect: 


“This rock did not come here by itself. 
This tree does not stand here of itself. 
There is one who made all this, 

Who shows us everything.” 


The boys and their parents follow him around every prominent rock and con- 
Spicuous tree. When they arrive, the children are seated and strengthened by 
having the song continued over them. 

Seven sticks are counted out for the seven days of the ceremony. Thus the 
creator did, it is said, and on the seventh day produced water. A shaman now 
proceeds to do the same. He squats before a sky-obsidian that has been set 
upright and probes four times in the dry ground with a stick, singing. At the 
conclusion of his song he draws out the blade and digs the spot where it stood. 
He digs with his stick perhaps a foot down. Soon the hole fills with water. 
The shaman says to the multitude: “ This is from the creator. I am showing 
you what he did. I do not do this myself. I was taught by him. If you believe 
this it will be well with you. People will be good to you. Will you believe 
what I say?” The shaman is heavily paid for this exhibition. 

It is not clear whether the creator referred to is Taikomol or some Wailaki 
equivalent god or the Milili, who is the head of the spirits with whom the 
obsidian and sky shamans are in communication. 

This performance could be varied or added to. Thus a Pomaha*no’m shaman 
once announced that he had learned from his spirits that young condors were 
coming from heaven to be among the people. He set up three obsidian blades 
at equal distances apart and asked the onlookers to watch for the birds and 
join in his song when they approached. Soon two condors alighted to the north 
and south of the obsidians, first turned their heads away and then toward each 
other, and after sitting a short time flew away. This shaman was also well 
paid for the act. 

It is likely that these demonstrations rest upon sleight of hand, but the 
filling of the lake on the first day appears to represent a manifestation of the 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 195 


kind which is often ascribed to the power of Hindu devotees and which has 
sometimes been attributed to the influence of exceptionally concentrated sug- 
gestion with an effect akin to that of hypnosis. Of course, the Indian is enor- 
mously more suggestible than we when phenomena of this sort are involved. 

On the return from the mountains the children are given their first food in 
the shape of salted clover. Then they are taken to the stream to bathe. As 
they emerge they are repeatedly pushed back. They return and are painted red 
and white and down is put in their hair. They follow the shaman in a file, 
he singing, back to the stream, on reaching the bank of which they dance vio- 
lently at his command. Coming back to the village once more, he starts his last 
song, to which they drag brush over the floor of their homes. With this final 
undoubtedly symbolic act the seven days’ ritual ends, and the worn-out boys and 
girls sit down to their first real meal. 

While the demonstrations of magic in this public ceremony recall Yokuts 
practices, the ordeals undergone by the children savor strongly of the tests of 
endurance and fortitude to which Luisefio boys are subjected, and stamp the 
rite as akin on the whole to puberty ceremonies; aS an induction to the state 
of manhood rather than membership in a defined organization. 

The Kichil-woknam is said to have been made only once on Round Valley 
Reservation, and can hardly have escaped material modification on that occa- 
sion. 

The shamans who conduct the Kichil-woknam also treat disease. One method 
employed by them is to construct a kind of little funnel of earth, perhaps 2 
feet long. At one end of this the patient reclines; at the other, obsidians are 
set up. The doctor then blows tobacco smoke through the hole on the sick person. 

Kichil denotes both flint and obsidian, but the ceremonial references seem to 
be prevailingly to the latter material. 


GIRLS’ ADOLESCENCE CEREMONY. 


The girls’ puberty rite is the Zamnam-wok, the “ adolescence dance.” 
The word for adolescence contains the element nam, to lie. This idea 
seems prominent in the Yuki mind in connection with anything like 
a preparatory or initiatory rite. The girl actually does lie; and her 
success is In proportion to her quietness. Another feature, also enter- 
tained among many other tribes, is that she must not look on the 
world. The course of the ceremony is much as elsewhere, and the 
usual taboos against eating meat, or scratching the head with the 
fingers, prevail. Twice a day the girl is taken out from under the 
covering basket and made to dance, her face covered, with a woman 
who holds her arms. 

Perhaps the most distinctive trait of this ceremony as practiced by 
the Yuki is the direct influence which the rite is supposed to have 
upon food supply. Each night the la"l-ha"p or acorn songs are 
started and men and women, shuffling in line together, do the 
— Larl-hap-wok, the acorn song dance. The house is entirely black, 
affording opportunity for the abundant licentiousness that is per- 
mitted to the participants. Then, it is said that the more the treated 
girl hes still, the more the sun is pleased, and the more abundant will 
the natural crops be in the ensuing season. 


196 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 78 


Finally, at the conclusion of the ceremony, there is a feast, at which 
a shaman stands and addresses the sun with his hands raised. Soon 
the ha"waii-no’m or “ food-people,” the spirits who cause and control 
food, begin to come, and the shaman is seen brushing them off his 
face. Then the people begin to feel them stinging and also brush 
and scratch themselves. If any skeptic voices his unbelief, the shaman 
catches one of the little flying fellows in his hand and offers to show 
it to the doubter. As it is thought that the latter would become 
blind if he saw the spirit, even for an instant, the demonstration has 
perhaps never been carried to its conclusion. 


ACORN AND FEATHER DANCES. 


The acorn song dance just mentioned was also made as a separate 
ceremony, on four successive nights in winter, in a roofed-over brush 
inclosure. It may then have been a new year’s or new crop rite. 

The kopa-wok or feather dance was briefer, and largely social in 
character. In it were worn the dance costumes by which the district 
is chiefly represented in museums: feather net cape for the back, 
head net filled with eagle down, forehead band of yellow-hammer 
quills, and feathered upright forks. The dancing is first in a re- 
volving file, then abreast. The /i/-ha@o7 or “rock carrier” directs 
the dancing and beats time with a spht stick. He signals the singers 
to begin by saying hawawaaa. As they commence, he calls het het 
hei, and as they conclude, wz ya. There is a “rock carrier” also in 
the acorn song dance, although there he limits himself to accompany- 
ing the singers, without directing the dancers. A personage with 
similar functions, and title of exactly the same meaning, reappears 
among the Pomo. 

SHAMANISM, 


The Yuki doctor or shaman, /amshimi, is a man, rarely a woman. 
Most frequently he receives the first intimation of his faculties in a 


dream, but it may also come to him in a waking appearance. His | 


powers rest not upon control of small semianimate disease-bringing 
objects or “ pains” which he normally carries in his body, but upon 
intercourse with spirits of human shape and speech. There are 
bear doctors and rattlesnake doctors. In all these respects Yuki 
shamanism is of central Californian type and contrary to northwest- 
ern customs. } 

Doctors dream of supreme spirits, upon whom their power de- 


pends, but they exercise their curative and other functions by the 


aid of lesser spirits, whom they actually control. Such personally 
owned spirits are called mumolno’m, or hushkaiemol, “speaker, in- 
structor.” The great spirits are W/iili and the creator. J/¢lili lives 


. 
7 
‘ 
: 





KROBBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 197 


in the sky above the visible one, and owns an enormous block of 
obsidian of which all obsidians in the world are fragments that he has 
thrown down. He has the shape of an enormous eagle or condor. 
He controls deer, mz/, to which his name refers. Aichil-lamshimi, 
obsidian doctors, mél-lamshimi, deer doctors, and mit-lamshimi, sky 
doctors, probably corresponding in some measure to the rain makers 
of the southern half of California, all derive their power from 
Milili. When the creator is a shaman’s spirit, he seems to be known 
under other names than his usual one of Zaikomo/. Rattlesnake 
shamans have the sun for their spirit, and bear doctors grizzly bears. 

The Yuki divide. their shamans into those who doctor by singing 
and those who suck, or perhaps diagnosing and extracting physi- 
cians. ‘he two classes correspond more or less with those who de- 
rive their power respectively from the creator and J/i/ili.. Sucking 
doctors are, however, differentiated into those who extract actual 
arrowheads from wounds received in battle, and others who suck 
out invisible obsidian points which the spirits have shot into one in 
lonely places. 

A DOCTOR’S HISTORY. 


The attitude of mind underlying Yuki shamanism is perhaps made 
clearest by an autobiographic account. 


“When I was still so young as to have no sign of beard, they were having 
the doctor dance, Lamshi-wok, in summer. They were training two or three 
new doctors. The older Shamans danced with them for five days. Once all 
the people joined in and danced in a circle with whistles in their mouths. The 
novices’ spirits came to the older doctors and instructed these how to treat the 
young men, who were not yet able to manage them. The established shamans 
did this voluntarily. They were paid by the people at large, who were glad to 
have additional doctors to keep them alive. 

“ Now it is when new doctors are receiving their training that still younger 
ones often first learn of their powers; and so it was with me. The first night 
of the dance I was sleeping outdoors, between my brother, who has the creator 
as spirit, and another doctor. Then I, too, dreamed of the creator On-uha"k- 
namlikiat. JT did not see his face or body; but I was in the sky, and saw many 
colors, like a mass of flowers. In the morning I was bleeding from mouth and 
nose and badly frightened. My relatives gathered about me and cried. Finally 
my brother picked me up and began to sing with me. ‘This is what we made 
the doctor dance for,’ he said. Then my relatives rejoiced that I was not to die, 
and the other people that they were to have an additional doctor, and they gave 
net sacks, rope, and various property to my brother and the four other doctors 
who had begun the dance. Now they put me right into the dance with the 
other novices until it was finished. I was so much younger than usual that the 
people had not thought my bleeding was due to my becoming a doctor. But as 
my brother also had dreamed of On-uha"k-namlikiat, he knew. 

“When I first saw the creator, he sang a song which I was always to Sing. 
Something like a string stretched from him to my head. He sang another song, 
and told me to use that also, 


198 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 ° 


“Then while I was lying on my back and the other doctors were working over 
me, after they had received their pay for training me in the dance, I dreamed 
that I was treating a person bitten by a rattlesnake, by means of a third song, 
Therefore I can cure snake bites. 

“ Some time after, on the hunt, a rattlesnake struck three times at one of 
my companions and bit him once. I ran up and supported him, while he gazed 
at the sun. I saw at once that he was not seriously hurt, for something like 
milk appeared to be coming out of his mouth, and the sun spoke and ordered me 
to cure him. As the others were talking of sending for a certain rattlesnake 
doctor, I interposed and told them that I had been directed to treat the sufferer. 
So we made a litter of poles, while one of the party went ahead to give the news 
and have a place prepared for my doctoring. When we laid the wounded man 
down he was nearly dead. I painted a flat stone red and white. Then I ad- 
dressed the sun. Then I sucked the wound twice, and the second time extracted 
a small but complete rattlesnake, which I spat upon the stone. Immediately 
the man sat up, folded his arms, and said: ‘Good, my father-in-law.’ All his 
property was stacked up before him to pay me. Whenever a man is bitten by 
a snake he has no belongings left. 

“After this, I dreamed again of the creator, who showed me one of the people 
who live on high peaks, a mumolno’m or huchatat (mountain person), to be my 
helper in curing disease. This spirit taught me his song. Other doctors saw in 
their dreams what was happening to me, and began to fear my power. After 
that I commenced to doctor sick people. 

“T can cure all disease except that caused by spirit obsidians. I did dream 
of such obsidians once, but did not reply to the spirits who were addressing me, 
thinking the dream would come to me again and be clearer. Later I was told 
by the old people that I had made a mistake, that the obsidian spirits never 
spoke to anyone more than once.” 


VARIOUS SHAMANISTIC BELIEFS AND PRACTICES, 


The mumolno’m or personal spirits are small, like boys, with gray 
hair. Some doctors control several; but one identical spirit some- 
times serves two or more doctors. The spirits are called older broth- 
ers, and address the doctors as younger brothers. Their communi- 
cations are sometimes audible to other people, and sound faint and 
far away, or lke whistling. 

A doctor who is called by a patient and refuses to come becomes 
sick himself. The usual custom seems to be for the shaman to order 
as much property as he thinks proper pay to be hung over the sick 
person. On cure, this becomes his; but if the patient dies, the prop- 
erty is buried with him. 

The following is a case of an appearance outside of a dream. A man on 
the hunt met two strangers, who had live and wriggling deer tails on the ends 
of their bows. They talked to him about the hunt and went on. He saw them 
kill a deer, sit down to smoke, and laugh. Then he fainted. When he revived 
he was bleeding at all his bodily openings. He arrived home half dead, but 
the doctor who was called in knew what had happened to him and said there 
was nothing wrong. Soon the man became very thin. He was fasting and 


training under the direction of another doctor. After he had made the doctor 
dance, he became well again and commenced to practice. 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 199 


When a man finds an obsidian blade, a mt hichél, sky obsidian, or 
Mililit kichil, Milili’s obsidian, he lays his clothes and anything else 
he may have with him before it and says: “I give this to you.” He 
puts his clothing on again, but is careful not to touch the obsidian, 
which he raises with a stick, covers with a wrapping, and carries 
home in his net sack. He says nothing, but before long a doctor 
comes and says: “ Where is what you found?” The discoverer then 
“ gives the obsidian to eat” by providing a public feast. Should he 
omit this, or the offering of his clothes, he would suddenly find the 
blade vanished. The Yuki prized such blades for their supernatural 
potency, and state that they neither manufactured them nor put them 
to practical use. 

Quartz crystals, wa’, were also highly valued and employed in 
blood letting. 

It is in the doctor dance that a young shaman’s spirits first come 
to him outside of dreams. He is frightened, but the older shamans 
exhort and encourage him. His spirits shoot him with spirit obsid- 
ians, to make his heart hight and clean. As these same invisible 
obsidians make ordinary people sick, the idea involved here is akin 
to the Yurok belief that curative power lies in the shaman’s faculty 
to keep disease-bearing pain objects in her body. . 

The deer, according to the Yuki, can not be exterminated, as the 
American game laws fear, for these animals, or their souls, have a 
permanent home inside a large hollow mountain, and are under the 
control of Aziz. 

RATTLESNAKE SHAMANS. 


When a man walks by a rattlesnake, he is struck or escapes as the 
sun wishes. If he has nearly stepped on the serpent, he says to it: 
“Grandmother, I did not see you.” If he is bitten, he looks at the 
sun, which appears to him to dip twice to the horizon and back 
again. If he sees it milky, he will recover; but if bloody, he knows 
he will die. When the doctor is summoned, he knows at once the 
fate of the victim. If it is adverse, he makes no attempt to stay the 
inevitable, but breaks into mourning. If, however, the sufferer will 
recover, he begins by threatening or abusing the sun; after which 
he paints wavy lnes, apparently representative of rattlesnakes, 
on a flat stone, warms the wounded part with hot ashes, lays the 
stone on for a time, and then begins to suck. The poison operates 
by reproducing a small but live rattlesnake in the body, which the 
sucking draws toward the practitioner’s mouth and then into it. 
The patient feels this miniature snake leaving him; and just before 
it departs from his body it dies; so that the shaman demonstrates 
only its inert form, of the length of about his hand. On the same 
principle a rattlesnake shaman sucks out a dead spider in curing the 
bite of the dreaded hulmunintata spider. 


200 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Pilartat lamshimi mihik, “the sun’s doctor he is,” or pilante itin 
hushkaiemol, “the sun is my directing spirit,” would be said of and 
by a rattlesnake doctor. 

BEAR SHAMANS. 


Warshit lamshimi or bear doctors are a special and well-defined 
class of shamans that prevail among all the tribes from the Yuki 
south to Tehachapi Pass. They receive their power from bears, 
transform themselves into bears, are almost invulnerable, or if 
killed likely to come to life again, and are much dreaded as ferocious 
avengers or even aggressors. A curious point is that while it is in- 
sisted that they have the power of bodily transformation, several 
accounts speaking of the discomfort of the bear fur growing through 
the skin and the like, yet the Yuki nevertheless explicitly state that on 
marauding excursions they were men incased in a hardened bear 
hide, and that while they pretended to bite their foes with their 
long teeth, they actually stabbed them with a concealed weapon. . 
The very feats alleged by the Indians as nonmagical are, however, 
almost as incredible as the supernatural powers ascribed to these 
shamans; so that it is doubtful whether the asserted practices are 
not a myth. That there were bear doctors is certain; but that they 
ever executed the theoretically possible things they are alleged to 
have done customarily is very questionable. 

Bear doctors began by repeated dreaming of bears. Young bear 
women took them to the woods and lived with them. Sometimes an 
actual bear was said to carry the man off in the body. An incipient 
shaman might thus stay away an entire season. Sometimes, it seems, 
a man deliberately sought the power. He would swim in the pool 
iormed where an uprooted tree had stood. On emerging he would 
dance toward and back from a tree which sang to him, and growl 
and scratch the bark of this as bears are believed to do in their 
dances. Hair would begin to grow over his body, and finally he be- 
came a bear. 

On his return to human beings the bear novice was taken in hand 
by older bear shamans, and taught to sing and develop his strength 
in lonely places in the woods. He hurled logs about as later he was 
to handle and fling men. He allowed his instructors to roll him 
down a canyon side in a hollow log. He sat on an oak limb, which 
they bent down and let spring. Finally he was set on a log and 
thrown into the air. If he retained his straddling hold, he was a 
complete bear doctor. During all this period of training the bear 
doctors associated with actual bears, and ate their food, and at times 
lived with them. They might be out from spring to autumn. 

The powers of the finished bear shaman were several. He cured 
bear bites, He also gave demonstrations, such as digging in the 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNTA 201 


fire and producing a living snake, or in the hard-baked ground under 
the fireplace and bringing up a mouse nest. Their most important 
and spectacular function, however, was to go out, alone or in twos 
or threes, to kill persons against whom they held a grudge, or people 
of other localities against whom their own tribe entertained avowed 
or concealed enmity. Some accounts tell how the bear doctors sang 
to each other for this purpose until they were transformed into 
actual bears who set out on their errand of destruction. Other state- 
ments relate that they incased themselves in a complete bear skin, 
the stiffness of which was sufficient to stop arrows. Small baskets 
were set in the heels of the bear’s feet for some unknown use. An- 
other basket had a stone put in it, and was worn so as to rumble like 
a bear’s growl when the shaman shook his head. They carried beads 
or other valuables with them, so that if they should be killed they 
would be buried with appropriate belongings. When the foe was 
attacked he was slapped to blind him, then stabbed with a knife or 
bone dagger held in the hand close to the mouth to give the appear- 
ance of a bite being delivered. The slain were gutted, dismembered, 
and their flesh scattered about over the brush as might be done by an 
enraged bear. 

This certainly sounds rather unlikely. It may at times have been 
attempted, but none of the paraphernalia used have ever been seen 
by students or preserved for museums. The supernatural element 
was no doubt present for the Indian even in these physically conceiv- 
able methods of operation: no one could perform such extraordinary 
feats of strength and skill without faculties imparted or developed 
by the bears. 

A specific instance of reputed achievements by bear doctors has 
already been related in the story of the Kato war with the Yuki. 
Here is another and less sensational incident from an eyewitness : 

Several of us were hunting deer, when I heard singing. Peering through the 
brush, I saw a person lying in a little glade by a spring. I was frightened and 
ran to my companions. We all went to investigate. Climbing a log, we looked 
down over it and saw three men lying close together with a bearskin near 
them. A young man of us said: ‘‘ Let me shoot and frighten them.” An older 
member of the party objected, but the youth insisted and won assent. He shot 
and the arrow passed right under the back of the nearest person. The man 
uttered no sound, and only raised his head to look about and regard the arrow 
under him. He was just as indifferent as a bear. Then our young man shot 
a second arrow, which went through his ribs. The shaman jumped and rolled, 
growling like a bear. The two others leaped up too, but ran off, leaving him 
lying. ‘Then we went away too. Next morning we returned. Only the bear- 
skin was still there. His two companions had carried the wounded bear doctor 
away. We left the skin where it was and went home. 

It may have been a group of practicing bear shamans who met 
with this misadventure. | 


CHAPTER 138. 


THE HUCHNOM AND COAST YUKI. 


THe Hucunom: Land and people, 202; cultural affiliations, 203; ritual, 204; 
mythology, 206; the modern ghost dance, 207; calendar, 208; chiefs, 209; 
marriage and names, 210. THe Coast YuxKr: Geography, 211; material 
culture, 218; customs, 215; religion, 216. 


Ture HucHNom. 


LAND AND PEOPLE. 


The Huchnom are so called by the Yuki and apparently by them- 
selves. The Pomo know them as Tatu, and the whites’usually desig- 
nate them as Redwoods, a denomination apphed also to the remote 
Athabascan Chilula and Whilkut. Their American name was given to 
them from their occupancy of a site they call Mulhol in Redwood Val- 
ley, near one of the sources of Russian River. They probably visited 
here in aboriginal times; but the stream was in Pomo ownership, 
above and below, and the only established Huchnom residence on 
it was a result of shiftings caused by the coming of the Americans. 
Huchnom is said to signify “mountain people” and to have been 
more specifically applied by the Yuki to the northern part of the 
eroup of the village of Shipomul. 

The Huchnom territory comprises the valley of South Eel River 
from Hullville nearly to the mouth, together with its affluent Tomki 
Creek and the lower course of the ae known as Deep or Outlet 
Creek. The Pomo had a number of villages on the middle and upper 
portion of Deep Creek. Whether the Huchnom allowed their share 
of its drainage to he idle except for hunting, or whether they also 
held settlements on its banks which have merely not been recorded, 
is open to doubt. 

The Huchnom territory is typical of California “tribal” distri- 
butions. First, it is essentially an area of one drainage. Thus, 
watersheds and not watercourses mark its boundaries. But, secondly, 
it is not rigidly confined to these natura] limits, spilling slightly over 
the divides at two points. One village, probably Huchnom, but 
possibly Yuki, and of uncertain name, was on the headwaters of the 
South Fork of Kel River—not to be confounded with the South Eel 

202 


——_. 


KROEBUR] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 203 


on which the main body of the Huchnom lived. Another, Ukumna, 
stood on Russian River near the head of its eastern source. These 
two settlements look like advance posts that have begun to encroach 
on areas naturally belonging to Athabascans and the Pomo; but 
they may be rear guards of a Huchnom shrinking from a once wider 
habitat. 

The other main settlements lay on the South Eel, and, in order up- 
stream, were: Shipomul at the mouth of Outlet Creek; Nonhohou; 
Yek; Mot: Mupan; Mot-kuyuk, at the mouth of Tomki Creek; 
Ba’awel (this is its Pomo name), only a couple of miles from Ukumna 
over the divide; Lilko’ol; Komohmemut-kuyuk; Mumemel, just. be- 
low the forks at Hullville, where Yuki settlements recommenced. On 
Tomki Creek were Hatupoka and Pukemul farther up. 

The Huchnom were friendly with the Pomo. The Ukumnano’m at 
the head of Potter Valley, for instance, observed no line of demarca- 
tion between themselves and the Pomo villages below them. Each 
people hunted and fished at will over the territory of the other. In 
the frequent hostilities between the Pomo and Yuki the Huchnom 
sympathized with the Pomo and no doubt were occasionally involved. 
Nevertheless they remained the transmitters of many articles of 
trade, and in the long run of elements of civilization also, to the 
Yuki. . 

The original Huchnom population probably did not exceed 500. 
The census of 1910 recorded seven full bloods and eight halfbreeds. 
This is probably substantially correct, but the survivors are so mixed 
in and intermarried with the northern Pomo and the hodgepodge of 
tribes on Round Valley Reservation that an exact determination 
would be beyond the efforts of census enumerators. 


CULTURAL AFFILIATIONS. 


Generic statements made both by the Yuki and Pomo suggest 
that the Huchnom affiliated in customs with the latter people more 
than with the Yuki, to whom they are related in speech. This im- 
pression is confirmed by reports of their utensils, which seem to 
be substantially identical with those of the Pomo. It also tallies 
with their political relations, which were uniformly friendly with 
the nearer Pomo divisions and with the Kato, but often hostile to 
the Yuki and Wailaki. 

On the other hand, all that is known of the religion of the Huchnom 
allies them very closely with the Yuki. Like the latter, they prac- 
tice only two major ceremonies of the Kuksu type; they call these 
by the same names as the Yuki, and approximate the creation myth 
of the latter. 


904 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


Huchnom civilization must therefore be reckoned as on the whole 
intermediate between those of the Yuki and Pomo, but as tending 
to adhere to the one or the other type in any single phase. It is a 
mixture rather than a blend. 


RIEU AL. 


Like the Yuki, the Huchnom practice a wok or dance of 7'atkomol, 
the creator, and of the hulk’tlal, the ghosts or spirits of dead human 
beings. The impersonator of Taikomol wears the familiar “ big- 
head” costume, which is the most widespread of all the many ac- 
couterments of the Kuksu cult. The huik’ilai are unmasked, but 
disguised by stripes of black and white paint across face and body. 
They wear no feathers but tie blossoms into their hair. No women 
or children, in other words no uninitiated, are admitted into the 
hopinim, or dance house, for either of these ceremonies. 

There is also an initiation, or “lying dance,” for each of these 
ceremonies. The hwlk’ilal woknam comes first. It begins in the 
autumn, when boys of 12 years or thereabouts are collected and 
brought into the dance house. Here they spend six or seven months 
until spring, under restrictions of food and conduct, and listening to 
the creation myth and its accompanying songs. It appears that a 
new dance house was put up for such an occasion, which came 
only infrequently to any one town. When a woknam had been 
announced for the winter among the Huchnom, neighboring Pomo 
and Kato villages seem to have moved over bodily and brought their 
children for participation. A year or several later it is likely that 
a winter might be given up to these rites among one of the other 
groups, whereupon the Huchnom, or such of them as had boys of 
the proper age, might bring them. So far as the Kato are con- 
cerned, this arrangement is reflected in the fact that the Huchnom 
know and use Kato songs along with their own. It has already been 
stated that the Yuki, who were less friendly with the Kato, acknowl- 
edge that much of their sacred lore came to them from these people, 
and it appears below that Coast Yuki and Kato were wont to join in 
dance celebrations. As regards the Pomo, the situation presents the 
difficulty that those of them that are best known, the Clear Lake 
division, practiced a larger number of ceremonies than the tribes 
heretofore mentioned. It is therefcre likely that the most northerly 
border tribes of the Pomo approximated the Yukians more nearly 
than the main body of their kinsmen in their ritual system. 

After the boys had gone through the Awlk’ilal they entered the 
Laikomol-woknam, in which they remained throughout the summer. 
Very nearly a year seems thus to have been spent in this period of 
induction into the mysteries. 


SS 


KRODBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 205 


A food taboo which has not been reported from any other people 
is mentioned by the Huchnom. Their initiated boys ate no small 
game, such as squirrels, rabbits, quail, or trout. This prohibition 
is said to have endured throughout life, all meat of this sort being 
consumed only by women and children. The flesh of the deer, elk, 
and salmon—in other words, of the larger mammals and fish—was 
free to men and boys after a special ceremony had been sung over 
them at the conclusion of their initiation. The reason given for the 
taboo is that flesh of the small game is incompatible with knowledge 
of the creation myth. Women were not taught this cosmogony and 
its accompaniments, and consequently were not injured. 

On the other hand, deer meat clashes as violently with anything 
female, in the opinion of the Huchnom, as in the opinion of nearly 
all other California tribes. It was not only strictly forbidden to 
women at the recurring periods of their adult life but was strictly 
taboo to adolescent girls for about two years. The dance made for 
them at this time is called the humnumwok, and seems to have been 
performed over them by women at monthly intervals throughout a 
winter. The girls might not walk about for fear of being paralyzed 
or otherwise afflicted in body. They were kept away from the sight 
of men and spent as much time as possible recumbent. 

It was women who sang over them, but not in the dance house, 
which was too intimately associated with the men’s mysteries to be 
profaned in this way. It is clear that we have here a form of the 
widespread Californian adolescence ceremony for girls, but with an 
attempt to partially equate or parallel it to the fundamentally dif- 
terent Kuksu type of initiation for boys. <A similar phenomenon is 
encountered several times in California, even among religions of 
quite diverse type and origin, as among the Luiseho. At the same 
time it is clear that the idea of initiation in the form of a religious 
school or “lying dance” has become firmly impressed upon the 
Yuki and Huchnom alike as one of the fundamental facts of their 
civilization. 

Boys during their period of initiation were allowed to eat only 
with a spoon of mussel: shell or elk horn, and to scratch their heads 
only with a bone. The latter is a taboo definitely associated with 
the girls’ adolescence rite in the remainder of California, and ap- 
pears to represent a sporadic Huchnom patterning of the boys’ cere- 
mony after that for girls. 

The dance house had a smoke hole on top, but as among the 
Yuki this is said not to have been used as a door, and there is no men- 
tion of any ladder for descent. The entrance used was a little tun- 
nel descending from the ground, and was usually at the south end 
of the dance house. 


206 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 


The owner of the dance house and manager and responsible head 
of the initiations and dances conducted within it was the chief, ¢e’o/, 
the same individual who led the community in its social and politi- 
cal activities. The Huchnom are clear and emphatic on this point, 
and the condition they describe agrees rather well with that known 
from the southern Wintun and with more general statements re- 
corded elsewhere in north central California. 

There was, however, at least one official possessing authority to 
admonish and even strike the chief for ceremonial violations. This 
was the w7hli, who seems to have exercised a sort of censorship. 
He is said to have been selected by the chief after a talk in which 
other men participated. The wi’hd ordered the work that was nec- 
essary for ceremonies. It is possible that his name is derived from 
the word meaning “to work.” — - 

The huno’%ik were the watchmen or caretakers of the dance house. 
While an initiation was in progress one of them was always on duty 
and awake to report to the chief any violations of the rules by quar- 
relsome or lazy or recalcitrant boys. The fire tender was known as 
yehim k’awesk or yehim tateyim. The director of the steps of the 
dance, or shouter of orders to the dance performers, was called 
lalha’ol, as by the Yuki. 

MYTHOLOGY, 


The Huchnom creation, like that of the Yuki, begins with Taikomol 
alone in the universe. He made the land, built a dance house, made 
human beings from sticks, and instituted the hulk’ilal wok. ‘There 
was some mistake, however, and things went wrong. The world sank, 
the primeval water on which it had been floating came up, and the 
earth disappeared. ‘Taikomol was again alone on the expanse of 
ocean. He created another world. This had no daylight or sun and 
was without game, and the people ate one another. This world also 
did not go right and was burned. Even the water is said to have been 
consumed. Then Taikomol gave himself his name, and, still singing, 
sald that he was a real man and a chief. Again he made an earth, 
beginning in the north and extending it eastward. It was new and 
white and clean, without rivers or mountains. He traversed it south- 
ward, and when he looked to the east found it had extended so far 
that he could no longer see the water on that side. He made rivers 
and mountains and again built a dance house, but the world was still 
floating too hghtly on its substratum and swayed lke a log. There- 
upon he set at its northern end a great coyote, elk, and deer to hold 
it. They, however, also floated about, whereupon he made them lie 
down and the earth finally came to rest. It quakes now when they 
stir. Then he laid sticks into his dance house with the wish that they 
wake up as human beings and hold a feast. He stood at the door of 


—-- . 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 207 


the dance house and listened, and in the morring the people emerged 
with chatter and bustle. Then he gave them the hulk’ilal wok. One 
of them did something wrong and became sick and died. Taikomol 
spoke to him: “I shall dig a hole and bury you, but in the morning 
you will come back.” Then in the morning the dead man arose and 
returned and entered the dance house. Taikomol stood at the door 
again to listen, and heard them say that he who had returned smelled 
too strongly. They all became sick. His wish of resurrection was 
therefore abandoned, but Taikomol enjoined on the people to keep the 
hull’ilal wok so that they might live well and long. The first man 
who gave heed to him and carried the ceremony on and taught it to 
the people was Lamshim-chala, “ White doctor.” When he died, 
Shum-hohtme, “ Big ear,” was the next teacher, and after him, //ath- 
pota, “ Gray net-sack.” After that tradition ceases;as the Huchnom 
say, the succeeding leaders down to the present were only “ common 
men.” 

This sounds like good myth; but the last. part. of the story is very 
likely authentic history. The Yuki mention the same masters and 
teachers of the Taikomol ceremony as having lived two or three 
generations before the coming of the white man. It would seem 
that the Huchnom have projected a set of relatively recent events 
into the far legendary past; or, perhaps, to put the matter more accu- 
‘ately, that neither Yuki nor Huchnom discriminate clearly between 
a century or two ago and the time of the creation. 

A myth of a contest of the creator and Thunder suggests the rivalry 
attributed to them by the Kato, but the Huchnom agree with the 
Yuki in making Taikomol supreme. Thunder challenges him, but 
fails to carry out his boast of dropping on the ocean and standing 
on it. He sinks deep into the water, whereas Taikomol succeeds in 
alighting on it and walking to shore. Thunder is not yet convinced, 
and suggests a contest of darting down and kicking great stones to 
pieces. Again he fails, but when the creator follows he drives the rock 
far out of sight into the ground. Taikomo] then sends Thunder 
north. In spring he is to travel south and play with the hail and 
return in winter, when the clouds drive north over the ocean. 

Taikomol is said to have closed his career by ascending to the sky 
on a rainbow and to be alive there now. Other details are added, but 
have apparently been taken over from the ghost dance or directly 
from Christianity. 

THE MODERN GHOST DANCE. 


The ghost dance of 1872 came to the Huchnom from the central 
Pomo of the coast, who in turn had it from the eastern Pomo. From 
Round Valley and vicinity it was carried north, according to modern 


3625 °—25 15 





208 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bun. 78 


survivors, to the Hayfork Wintun and Hupa. The latter statement is 
probably not to be taken in a literal geographical sense, but it cor- 
roborates the inference, already derived from the existence of cir- 
cular dance houses among the Whilkut, that this distinctly north- 
western group derived the type of structure through a northward 
extension of the ghost dance. 

The Huchnom make a good deal of the fact that the ghost dance 
reached them from the south, whereas their old dances are all be- 
lieved to have originated in the north. This latter is not a reflection 
of a historical fact, since it is quite clear that the center of the cults 
to which they adhere hes to the south and east of them. Their opinion 
is due to the trend of their mythology, which makes the creator, the 
world, and everything ancient and venerable begin in the north. 

They state that the ghost dance after its spread to the north ceased. 
This is true so far as concerns its existence as a separate cult con- 
nected with the return of the dead and the approaching end of the 
world. At the same time, traces of ghost-dance influence can be dis- 
cerned in the cosmogony, ceremonial speeches, and dances of the 
Huchnom of to-day, so far as they still exist. It is true that the ghost- 
dance influence seems not to have been as strong among these people 
as among the Pomo, who were nearer its center of diffusion, but it is 
perceptible. 

CALENDAR. 


Their old calendar seems to have become confused in the minds of 
the few Huchnom survivors. A few of its divisions were numbered, 
as it were, by the fingers, as in the Modoc reckoning; the majority are 
descriptive of seasonal events, like the moons of the Maidu. Twenty 
names of periods are on record, and these do not seem to exhaust 
the ist. There must, therefore, have been synonyms for most of the 
lunations, or a separate designation for the waxing and waning of | 
each moon, This is the list, the exact sequence being open to some 
doubt. 


Mip@ohot, ‘old man finger,” thumb (March), 
Mipa-koye, “long finger.” 

Mipa’-olsel, 

Yoht-umol (May). 

Olpalmol, ‘“ tree leaves.” 

Im-pomol, 

Yoht-wanmol. 

Im-tomol. 

Im-pusmol. 

Yoht-pomol (dry). 

Yoht-usmol. 

Olom-tomol, “mountains burned over.” 
On-tutwin, 








KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 209 


On-woi-mol, “ earth smoky” (August or September). 

Lehpwanmol or lehpwene (beginning of autumn). 

Huwol-huntusmol, “acorns ready to drop” (preparations for woknam). 
Huwol-chukmol, “ acorns fall” (new dance house finished). 
Mul-na"tmol, “ice on streams.” 

Yem-tamol, “ fire - 

Hu"w-ta"kmol, “ fish frozen.” 

This seems to be the type also of the Yuki calendar, which is even 
less satisfactorily known. Pal-kush,“ leaves fall (?)” and uk-hamol, 
“waters high ”—perhaps they are synonyms—came about the begin- 
ning of November; ma”l-na"tnol, “streams rise,” or sha"wa" 
lashk’awol, “winter moon,” followed; and lashh’awol-hot, “ great 
moon,” or ta"wish hot lashk’awol, “ principal one,” was the time of 
Christmas and January. 

The eastern Pomo system evidently follows a similar plan, since 
two of its months were sa’oldi, “thumb,” and nusuthz, “ index,” while 
others, although not recorded, are said to designate characteristics 
of the time of year. It is reported that each man who was interested, 
but especially he who fished or hunted much, kept his own account. 
Reckonings often differed and there was no standard but nature’s 
by which to settle disputes. When the acorns actually fell, argument 
as to the acorn moon was decided.* 

The central Pomo calendar is wholly descriptive. Its beginning is 
unknown and its order not wholly certain; but approximately its 
moons corresponded with our months as follows: 

Bashelamatau-la, buckeyes ripe (January). 
Sachau-da, cold winds. 

Kadamchido-da, growth begins, 

Chidodapuk, flowers. 

Umchachich-da, seeds ripen. 

Butich-da, bulbs mature (bu, Brodiaea). 
Bakaichich-da, manzanita ripens (kaye, manzanita). 
Luchich-da, acorns appear. 

Shachluyiau-da, soaproot dug for fish poison (sha, fish). 
Kalemkayo, trees felled by fires at butt (kale, tree). 
Kasi-sa, cold begins, 

Stalpkel-da, leaves yellow and fall (December). 


CHIEFS, 


Chieftainship seems to have rested on the idea that the new in- 
cumbent should be a relative of the last chief, with precedence given 
to his son, but no clearly defined rule of succession. If there were 
no son, a stepson or sister’s son or other relative followed. The same 


1 Recent data indicate that the eastern Pomo followed two systems. The less formal] 
was descriptive of movements of fish, the acorn crop, and the like. The other plan 
was really a count from 1 to 13, with the fingers (from thumb to little finger) replacing 
the numbers 8 to 7. The first moon seems to have come at the winter solstice. 


210 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


plan appears to have prevailed among the northern Pomo about 
Sherwood. 

At the same time, the community was consulted, so that conditions 
were not radically diverse from the customs of the Yuki and Maidu, 
whose chiefs are stated to have been elective. Thus, the Huchnom 
report: 

Mu"ye mose hame, whom (do) you like? 

Keu" iyi k’u"thke, him I desire. 

Kekimko te’ol mehme heu, his-father chief was yes. 
ireu” te’ol tolte iyi k’u"ihke, him chief’s son I desire. 
Ke nviyi tateyimpa, he you will-care-for. 

Wi kee kapsheki, we him install. 

And, when the old chief’s bow, beads, rope, and other valuables 

were handed to his successor by the brother of the dead man: 
Kalu shwhin ushi nu"wuk, with-this giving-to-you (?) us watch. 
Kalu ushi tateyim, with-this us care-for 
Me ahtu mehike, you chief (?) are. 
Milauhtela ushi ku"imin, not-be-ashamed us address. 

Orating seems to have been one of the principal functions of the 
chief. He also dispensed food at gatherings, partly from stores 
collected by him, together with gifts of shell beads, among his people. 
He built and owned the dance house; and his direction of ceremonies 
has already been mentioned. 

The hereditary principle appears also in the recognition by the 
Huchnom, as by the Pomo and southern Wintun, of chieftainesses. 
These were called mus te’ol, woman chief, and it was their privilege 
to harangue women. A chief’s wife or daughter might attain to the 
position, it is said; the former, to judge by Pomo custom, through hav- 
ing a chief for father rather than because of her marriage. 


MARRIAGE AND NAMES. 


The Huchnom married indifferently in their own town, in another, 
or among friendly foreigners. A union was usually broached by 
two mothers; then the fathers conferred also. A youth who hunted 
or worked actively was looked on with most favor. The four old 
people being agreed, two brothers or other kinsmen of the groom 
staked him to shell beads and went with him to the bride’s house, 
where the gift or price was tendered. His companions then returned, 
and he remained with his wife, but left for his parents’ home early 
in the morning. The youth was extremely bashful toward his 
mother-in-law at this period and she toward him, and a similar atti- 
tude existed between the bride and her husband’s father. This feel- 
ing was no doubt connected with the young husband’s visiting his. 
wife only by night, After he had taken her to his old home for a 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA Wid 


visit, and especially after the couple had settled in their own house 
and the fact of the marriage was publicly recognized, the first shame 
dissipated and the couple and their parents-in-law of opposite sex 
began to address each other. The return of the husband to his own 
people was made the occasion of gifts of food and beads to the pair, 
which they gave to the wife’s parents, besides entertaining their kin. 
A return visit to the wife’s people followed, after which the couple 
usually founded their own home. ‘This was always among the group 
or in the town of the wife. 

No cousins or other kin married. Marriage with the wife’s kin 
was permissible, but there seems to have been a prejudice—rather 
strange for northern California—against marrying a sister-in-law, 
except that when a man left small children his brother would take 
the widow so that his nephews and nieces might be provided for. 

Names were bestowed by a relative, who made a present. The 
mother’s brother was among these, but it seems no more frequently 
than other older kinsmen. The Pomo usually named after a grand- 
parent; thus an old woman of Sherwood was named Shina-toya, 
“Striped name,” by her father after his mother. The Huchnom 
probably followed this plan also. It is said that no new name was 
bestowed at initiation, which, although in conflict with the Maidu 
practice, accords with the greater simplicity of the Kuksu organiza- 
tion among the Yukian tribes. “ Stingy mountain lion” and “ Snow 
old man” are Huchnom names; “ Dry black oak” was a Kato chief— 
Mam-k’ima, the Huchnom called him in their tongue. These appel- 
lations are as irrelevant as those prevalent among most of the Cali- 
fornian tribes. 





Tue Coast YUKTI. 
GEOGRAPHY. 


The Coast Yuki consider their own speech to be more nearly re- 
produced in the Huchnom dialect than in Yuki proper. This would 
mean that they were an offshoot from the Huchnom, or that both were 
originally a common branch of the Yukian stock. Their position con- 
firms this. They are in contact with the Huchnom, but separated 
from the Yuki by the Kato. 

On the other hand, the available vocabularies ‘place the Coast Yuki 
language as near to Yuki as to Huchnom, so that a critical analysis 
will be required before a positive determination of their ancient affili- 
ations and history can be made. All three languages must have been 
mutually intelligible in some measure, though it is unlikely that a 
Coast Yuki unacquainted with Huchnom and Yuki could have fol- 
lowed the whole of a conversation in either, The divergences are 


ey BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


in part the result of the formation of words from different stems 
of similar meaning, and in part the consequence of phonetic changes. 
The latter seem to be rather consistent. Thus there are regular cor- 
respondences of Huchnom wv, Yuki a, Coast e, and Huchnom e, Yuki 
z, and Coast 2. 

They call themselves Ukoht-ontilka, and are called Ukhot-no’m by 
the Yuki. Both words mean “ocean people.” Their Pomo name, 
Kamalel-pomo, seems to have the same significance. 

The Coast Yuki territory was covered with heavy redwood timber, 
except for portions of the wind-swept, open coast, which ran to cliffs 
except at the mouths of the filled streams. 


The Coast Yuki settlements have not been recorded. Names of places in their 
territory, most of which were probably inhabited, are, along the coast from 
north to south: On-chil-ka or On-chil-ém, “ land gap,” beyond Rockport; Hs’im, 
at Rockport or Hardy Creek; Melhom-i’ikem, “surf fish,” Warren Creek; 
Hisimel-auhkem, “ salal-berries having,” the next creek; Lil-p’in-kem, “ rock 
lies,” De Haven; Shipep or Shipoi, ‘‘ willows,’ Westport; K’etim, Chetman 
gulch; Lilim, Mussel rock; Ok’omet or Shipoi, Kabesillah (kai is ‘“‘ willows” 
in northern Pomo); Metkuyak-olselem, the creek north of Ten Mile River; 
Metkuyaki or Metkuyakem, the mouth of Ten Mile River and also the river, 
the largest stream in Coast Yuki possession; Mil-hot-em, “ deer large,” or 
Lalim, “ lake,” Cleone. 

Here Yukian territory ends and that of the Pomo or Nokonmi begins. Sus- 
mel-im, “‘duck creek,’ was at the mouth of Pudding Creek; Ol-hepech-kem, 
“tree foggy,” Noyo River; Nehkinmelem, Casper. Inland, Onp’otilkei, “ dusty 
flat,’ was in Sherwood Valley, and Ukemim, “lake” near Willits. 

All Athabascans, Sinkyone, Wailaki, Kato, were Ko’ol. The Kato were 
specifically designated T’okia. Branscomb or Jackson Valley in their territory 
was Olohtem-esich-kei, “redwood red;” Cahto was Ukemim, ‘“ lake;” and 
Laytonville or Long Valley, Ukemnini. To the north on the coast, among the 
Sinkyone, Usal was Nu’chem; the inhabitants of the vicinity, the U’tino’m; 
Needle Rock or Bear Harbor, Hushki; Shelter Cove, On’pu, “ land floats,” with 
reference to the headland as seen from a distance. The people hereabout were 
the Onpu-ontilka. 

The Pomo called K’etim “ Se’eshene”’ and Metkuyaki “ Bidato.” They recog- 
nize another settlement upstream across the river from the latter, one at the 
mouth of the North Fork, and a third between Onch’ilka and Es’im. 


The following was the international status of the tribes in this 
region at the time of American settlement. The Coast Yuki were 
friendly with all their neighbors—the northern Pomo of the coast 
south of themselves and inland on Deep or Outlet Creek; the Huch- 
nom; the Kato; and the Sinkyone about Usal. So amicable were the 
relations with the Kato that each people constantly and freely crossed 
the other’s boundary. 

These various neighbors, however, were often hostile to their neigh- 
bors beyond, and this to some extent involved the Coast Yuki in 
warfare, though at long range and probably with no serious losses. 
The Usal Athabascans fought their kinsmen of Shelter Cove. The 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA Ze 


Kato at times warred against the Yuki and at others against the 
Wailaki. These two hostile peoples were chiefly embroiled with 
each other. Shortly before the Americans came, however, they made 
peace and united against the Kato, who suffered heavily in conse- 
quence, according to the Coast Yuki account, although during the 
portion of the conflict covered by a narrative already related, they 
inflicted greater injuries on the Yuki than they received. This 
Coast Yuki friendship for the Kato is the explanation of the state- 
ment by the Yuki that they never visited the ocean. The Outlet 
Creek Pomo fought their kinsmen on upper Russian River, but this 
did not deter the Potter Valley division of the latter in standing 
with the Huchnom, who were friendly to the Outlet Creek people, 
against the Yuki. The northern Pomo on the coast, of Noyo, Fort 
Bragg, and Albion, were embroiled with those farther south around 
Gualala River, though whether these were the southwestern Pomo, 
who held most of the stream, or the nearer central group, who 
abutted on its mouth, is not clear. 

It is evident that relationship of speech and ultimate common 
origin were of little if any consequence in determining these align- 
ments. It is also clear that travel to any distance, even 50 miles 
from a man’s home, was normally out of the question. Hostile ter- 
ritory had to be traveled before this limit was reached; and beyond 
were people who, if neutral because unknown, were uneasy in the 
presence of a stranger. 

The Coast Yuki population in 1850 may be set at perhaps 500, 
In 1910 the census reported 15. 


MATERIAL CULTURE. 


Manners and thoughts among the Coast Yuki were essentially 
those of the Kato and Yuki proper, with certain peculiarities in 
which they utilized opportunities provided by their habitat. 

Salmon were speared with the two-pronged harpoon as they went 
upstream, and caught with a scoop net as they descended. Surf fish, 
often called smelt, were allowed to run into a net with the receding 
surf. The net hung from a vertical half hoop, which was probably 
fastened to the ends of long poles. Eels were caught on a bone gaff 
at night, the water being randomly raked for them. Deer and elk 
were sometimes taken in snares. The acorn supply may have been 
more limited than among most inland tribes, but seeds were obtained 
in abundance over the hill slopes behind Westport and in the bottoms 
of Ten Mile River. 

The ordinary house was of bark, conical, and probably without a 
center post, as among the coastal tribes north and south. The dance 
house had not only a large center post but a peripheral row of forks, 


914 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


from whose connecting beams rafters sloped up to the middle. The 
pitch of the roof is said to have been steeper than among the Yuki. 
The side door of the Yuki is not mentioned, but there was a roof 
entrance. Both exits were closed when the inmates wished to sweat 
themselves. 

The bow was of yew, shaved smooth with flint, and sinew-backed. 
The width was about two fingers, the middle was not materially nar- 
rowed, and the sides were rounded. This is the typical central bow: 
the northwestern implement being broader, sharp edged, flatter, but 
distinctly pinched in the middle. The materials, however, are north- 
western, as was the habit of overpainting the sinew in red and blue. 

In addition, Kato bows were obtained in trade. These were of 
hazel, somewhat longer, and unpainted. . 

The pestle was of the bulbous Pomo shape. 

Mesh measures were of wood. ~ The central Californian regularly 
uses this material, the northwestern, elk horn. Slght as this detail 
is, it is significant. The shape and size of the implement are the 
same, and rubbing down a slab of antler on sandstone requires no 
more skill than whittling a stick flat and square at the ends. One 
product is also exactly as useful as the other. The sole difference 
of consequence is in the laboriousness of manufacture. That the 
northwesterner was willing to undergo this is evidence that his stand- 
ard was another one, and that certain aspects of culture carried dis- 
tinctive values to him that were of little moment to the central Cali- 
fornian. 

Neither the Coast Yuki nor any of their neighbors had canoes, 
though they knew of them as used by tribes to the north. 

Basketry was like that of the Kato and Yuki, it is said, though no 
examples have been preserved. The Usal Athabascans are said by 
the Coast Yuki to have made coiled baskets of the same kind. It 
is likely, however, that as among the Wailaki, and, in another part 
of the State among the Yana, this ware was only sporadically manu- 
factured by them alongside of the standard forms in twining. 

String was made from the fibers of the iris leaf, ofs’tsh or ts’iwes, 
which was split with an artificial thumb-nail of mussel shell. 
Material and process are wholly Yurok. 

The men’s guessing game and women’s dice were those of the 
Pomo. The count of the dice was: six marked sides up, two points; 
six plain, two; three marked and three plain, one point; any other 
combination, nothing. No form of hoop and dart game appears to 
have been known. This absence is characteristic of all the coast 
region to the north end of the State, perhaps even far beyond. 

Tobacco was gathered wild in stream valleys, a mountain variety 
being considered unduly strong. The Yurok planted their tobacco 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 915 


on hilltops, and the wild specimens on the river flats were regarded 
unsafe to use because liable to pollution. The Coast Yuki pipe is 
the woimi-lil, “tobacco-stone,” though invariably made of wood. 
The discrepancy between the implement and its name recurs among 
the Pomo. 


CUSTOMS. 


The Coast Yuki assert that each of the tribes of their neighborhood 
followed a distinctively recognizable style of women’s facial tattoo. 
The few examples observed or recorded clearly evince variability 
from individua! to individual. A tribal style or significant element, 
even if not a whole pattern, undoubtedly underlay these arbitrary 
variations, but is hardly deducible from the scant and scattering 
data. 

Burial was in elk or bear skins, and on the back at full length, it 
is said, with the head to the north. The stretched position of the 
corpse is probably due to a remote northwestern influence. The 
grave was dug with sticks and baskets. There was no anniversary 
ceremony. Members of a family were buried together, and at their 
abode. Cremation was resorted to only when it was easier to dispose 
of the ashes of the deceased than his body. This, the Coast Yuki 
say, was the habit also of all their neighbors, including the Kato 
and the northernmost Pomo on the coast. The Pomo in general 
cremated regularly. 

Clamshell disk beads were the standard money, but were little and 
unsystematically used in many social relations. Thus there was no 
formal and exact purchase of the wife. The marriage having been 
agreed upon, groom and father made each other gifts of beads and 
other property. Consequently the bride did not become the hus- 
band’s property to take home, nor, if he failed to pay in full, was 
he under definitely regulated obligation to meet the balance due by 
service. He might enter the wife’s home, take her to his father’s, 
or found a new one. No doubt there was some notion of acquiring 
title by payment ; but at best 1t was 111 defined in comparison with the 
rigorous precision of the transaction in the northwest. 

Just so in war. Toa Yurok cessation of the blood feud without 
full compensation for every life on either side was unthinkable. 
There was even an exact valuation of each individual according to 
his social status. If exceptions occurred, they were rare. The Coast 
Yuki—contrary to the Yuki—state that there was no usual set- 
tlement after outright warfare. The sufferers sought revenge or 
stood their loss—which agrees with the details of the Wappo-Pomo 
fighting narrated below. But if a member of another community 
was killed and the murderer or his people were anxious to avoid 
reprisals, they made a payment to the relatives of the dead man. 


216 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY | [BULL 78 


The dog of the Coast Yuki was short-haired and sharp-eared. The 
usual description is given, “like a coyote.” It has been the habit to 
assume from this that the native dog of California was merely a 
tame coyote or a dog that habitually bred with coyotes. This is 
surely a hasty and false inference. The Indians state, among this 
tribe and elsewhere, that their dogs were of all colors, “ yellow, red, 
and black:” This argues long domestication and the probability of a 
disposition very different from that of the wild ancestor. It will 
require a more exact study than appears yet to have been made 
before it can be asserted that the Indian dog was even remotely 
descended from the coyote. For all anyone really knows of the 
matter, the Indian brought his dog with him when he first settled 
the continent. 

The Coast Yuki and Huchnom*did not eat dog flesh. If other 
northern Californians may be inferred from, they regarded it as the 
most virulent of poisons. They also did not name their dogs. They 
did, however, bury them, sometimes even with property. 


RELIGION, 


Dance ornaments were all like those of the Yuki and Pomo. No 
doubt they bore their distinctive features, but in the absence of all 
preserved examples, descriptions are too vague to allow of refine- 
ments being discussed with profit. Both kinds of rattles were used, 
apparently with the same functions as among the Yuki; and the 
dance house held a foot drum. 

The Coast Yuki called the Hulk’tlal-wok: Yihkim-wok, which 
appears to have the same meaning of “ ghosts’ dance,” and it was 
taught and enacted along similar lines. It is said that women were 
admitted to the observances when they had become aged. The 
Wok-oht, “ great dance,” is the Yuki taw"-wok or war dance. The 
scalp that was put on a stick took in all the skin of the head as far 
as eyes and ears. The Shok-hamp, the Yuki Latl-ha"p-wok, is an 
autumnal acorn dance, made in the dance house by men, women, 
and children without feather ornaments. In the Hak’ot-wok, “ south 
dance,” the performers stood in line; in the //2/timelk, or “ fire- 
around,” they moved in a circle. Both of these, as well as what 
was simply called wok, dance, correspond to the Yuki “ feather 
dance” in being of no great sacredness. They were made outdoors, 
and the regalia were showy feather capes, yellow-hammer bands, and 
feather prongs. 

The Yuki creator, “the one who travels alone,” is secondary to 
Thunder among the Kato. With the Coast Yuki, Zaikomol has 
disappeared altogether, it would seem, and Thunder, “hlawmel, 
is the one great deity in the creation. 


Crapter 14. 
THE WAPPO. 


Origin, 217; settlements, 218; a war, 219; another conflict, 220; population, 221; 
culture, 221. 
ORIGIN. 


The Wappo go under an unaboriginal name which is too well 
established to make its replacement possible. It is an Americaniza- 
tion of Spanish Guapo, “ brave,’ a sobriquet which they earned in 
Mission times by their stubborn resistance to the military adjuncts 
of the Franciscan establishments. A similar reputation was enjoyed 
by the Yuki and Huchnom among the Pomo. It is impossible to 
imagine an inborn Yukian racial disposition as the basis of this for- 
titude. So far as their physical type goes, the Wappo and perhaps 
the Huchnom would seem to have been one in what heredity be- 
stowed upon them with the broad-headed Pomo and other peaceable 
central Californians, while the Yuki shared their shorter stature and 
narrower skulls with the Athabascans adjoining them. The superior 
warlike qualities of all the Yukian divisions must be attributed to 
somewhat diverse habits formed in adjustment of their culture to a 
highland and hinterland habitat. They were mountaineers; the 
Pomo were wealthier lowlanders. 

The Wappo proper are separated from the Huchnom by 40 miles of 
Pomo territory in the valley of the Russian River. Their recent Clear 
Lake offshoot, the Lile’ek, are nearer still. 

Wappo speech, however, is exceedingly different from Yuki and 
Huchnom. It differs considerably more than Spanish from Italian 
or German from Norwegian, perhaps almost as widely as German 
from English. On the basis of such comparisons, a thousand years. 
would be a short lapse to allow for the degree of divergence. On the 
other hand, the Wappo were asmall people and wholly surrounded by 
half a dozen nationalities of entirely distinct language. Under such 
conditions of abundant and enforced alien contact a tongue changes 
with unusual rapidity, not only by the direct importation of loan 
words but by the absorption of new methods of sound production 
and perhaps even of structural processes. There is little evidence, it 
is true, of grammar ever being taken over bodily from another 
speech, but it is likely that the mere prevalence of bilingualism or 
trilingualism will disturb the original language to the extent of set- 


217 


218 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


ting in operation within it impulses that result in new mechanisms of 
alteration. While the processes are obscure, linguistic geography 
shows this to have been the fact in all parts of the world, and most 
precise confirmations are found for California in the aberrant idioms 
of the outlying fragments of the Pomo, Shasta, Yokuts, and Sho- 
shoneans. The main body of the Yuki, being on the whole far more 
in contact with each other than with foreigners, would have such 
impulses checked more frequently, and the constant internal inter- 
course would hold their loca] dialects comparatively uniform. 

These considerations are sufficiently strong to reduce materially 
the length of time which their speech divergence at first sight indi- 
cates for the period of Yuki and Wappo separation. Half instead 
of a full or double thousand years seems the more likely figure; and 
even a somewhat shorter lapse might have sufficed. But is is neces- 
sary to be conservative, for while a certain proportion of Yuki and 
Wappo words are not very different, the majority are totally dis- 
similar in appearance, and a member of one group would certainly 
not have caught anything of the drift of a conversation held in the 
speech of the other. 

Within the Wappo area dialectic subdivisions were not very 
marked. The southern dialect is very scantily known. The central 
and western dialects were nearly identical. The northern diverged 
shghtly more from these two. 


SETTLEMENTS. 


The range of the Wappo is peculiar (Pl. 27). Their settlements 
lay in valleys; but their territory was one of mountains, mostly low, 
indeed, but much broken. They held the very head of Sonoma Creek ; 
the valley of Napa River down to tidewater; the upper part of Pope 
Creek; the southern headwaters of Putah Creek, which drains into 
the Sacramento; the upper courses of Sulphur Creek, particularly 
its south branch, which runs into Russian River; a short stretch of 
Russian River itself; and its affluent Elk Creek. The picture of the 
Wappo which this distribution calls up is not that of militant con- 
querors who once set out from a northern home to wrest to them- 
selves the fairest of the tracts they might encounter, but an image 
of a stubborn remnant tenaciously retaining the rough upland 
core of a once more widely spread domain of mellower lands. 

All the known Wappo settlements are entered on the map, but in each dis- 
trict there seems to have been but one larger and continuously inhabited town, 
the center of a community with some sense of political unity. In the southern 
area the important towns were Kaimus, at Yountville, and Anakota-noma, near 
St. Helena, in Napa drainage, and Wilikos, at the head of Sonoma Valley. In 
the central district there were Mayakma, at Calistoga, and Mutistul to the west. 


KROPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 219 


In the north, in Putah Creek drainage, was Lok-noma, “ goose-town,” near Mid- 
dletown. The tract in which this settlement lay was known as “ goose-valley ” 
to all the neighboring tribes: as usual in California, they did not employ the 
Wappo term, but translated it into their own languages. In the western district 
the principal towns were Tekenan-tso-noma, near Geysers in Sulphur Creek 
drainage, and Pipoholma, on Russian River near Geyserville 

Most of these little towns have had their names perpetuated in the 
designations of Spanish land grants. The primacy of each in its 
defined little district was sufficient to lend considerable warrant to the 
Spanish and early American habit of recognizing in each group a 
distinct tribe; except, of course, that the native names applied by the 
whites to these tribes were those of localities and not the designations 
of tribes as such. 

The ending -noma is the same as Yuki -no’m, but appears to mean ‘“ town” 
rather than people. 7'so is “earth,” and -tsonoma, the probable source of our 
Sonoma, is a suffix: Tekenan-tso-noma means “ village of the place of tekenan.” 

The map shows a small detached Wappo area north of the main 
territory, on Cole Creek and the south shore of the main body of 
Clear Lake. These people are called Lile’ek by their Pomo neighbors, 
although the word seems to be a Wappo one. ‘They seem to have 
been a rather recent offshoot from the western Wappo, who visited 
the Pomo Habenapo for fishing or food, intermarried with them, 
and were allowed to settle in their territory. Their occupation was 
recognized; their title may not have been. Later they fought the 
Habenapo, as recounted below. Their principal village was called 
Daladano by the Pomo. 

No Wappo villages have been placed in Pope Valley, although 
Indians of to-day assert the region to have belonged to their fore- 
fathers. At least two sources associate the inhabitants of Pope Val- 
ley with those of Coyote Valley to the north, which, if true, would 
make them to have been Lake Miwok and not Wappo. 


A WAR. 


Alexander Valley, along Russian River above Healdsburg, is one 
of the very few tracts in the State which are directly known to have 
changed from the ownership of one Indian group to another. This 
was some 5 to 10 years before the first Spanish settlements in the 
region, or about 1830. 


At that time the western Wappo had but one village of consequence on Russian 
River, Pipoholma, whose inhabitants were the Mishewal, the “ mishe-warriors,” 
under a chief Michehel. The Pomo called these Wappo A’shochamai or 
A’shotenchawi, sometimes written Ashochimi. Their land extended to a small 
creek named Popoech, at which began the territory of a southern Pomo division 
known to the Wappo as Onnatsilish. The principal villages of these Pomo were 
Ossokowi, “‘ clover valley,” and Chelhelle, “ white-oak flat,’ which the Wappo 
translated into Shi’mela and Kotishomota. On the same side of Russian River 


922.0 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


lay Koloko, and across the river to the west were Malalachahli, Ashaben, and 
Gaiyechin. 

One afternoon the Mishewal gathered acorns on their side of the dividing 
creek, but left them stacked and went home to Pipoholma. During the night 
the people of Ossokowi made off with the piles; but their proximity threw the 
first suspicion upon them, and the indignant Mishewal had no trouble in tracing 
the tracks, at least to their own satisfaction. Michehel, with about 10 of his 
men, stole at night into Ossokowi and killed two of the inhabitants. During 
the cremation of these victims in the morning, and the confusion of the funeral 
wailing, the persistent Mishewal attacked again, this time in full force, slew 
many of the inhabitants, scattered the rest, and burned the town. : 

While the victors were cremating the fallen, the Survivors sent word from the 
vicinity of Healdsburg downstream, where they had taken refuge, that they 
wished to end the feud. A meeting was arranged and gifts exchanged between 
Michehel and the Onnatsilish chief. As the losses were preponderantly if not 
wholly on the Onnatsilish side, it is unfortunate that we do not know whether 
the major payments were also to them, as might be expected. Michehel then 
told the Onnatsilish that they were free to return in peace to the six villages 
from which they had fled. But the latter did not feel at ease so near their re- 
cent foes—there is no telling now what intermittent feuds and dark suspicions 
may not have existed between the two groups prior to the recorded outbreak— 
and they informed the Wappo chief that they would locate elsewhere and that 
his people were at liberty to occupy the settlements in question. Part of the 
Mishewal subsequently resettled Ossokowi and Chelhelle, or as they knew them, 
Shi’mela and Kotishomota. The four other abandoned Onnatsilish village sites 
were not inhabited by the Mishewal. 


That this was not the only fighting between the two nationalities 


appears from the slurring Wappo name for the Pomo village of 
Shawako on Dry Creek: Walnutse, “little warriors.” 


ANOTHER CONFLICT. 


For the Lile’ek a war is also reported. Only a mile or two 
away were the Habenapo division of the eastern Pomo. These 
people were favored with a certain kind of fish which crowded up 
their stream, Kelsey Creek, from Clear Lake. Cole Creek, on which 
the Lile’ek had established themselves by Habenapo sufferance, was 
avoided by the Kelsey Creek fish, Indian tradition avers. The two 
streams debouched close together and the Lile’ek proposed commin- 
gling their mouths. The Habenapo rejected the little engineering 
project. Before an issue was reached, winter rains raised both 
streams bank full. The Lile’ek from Daladano carried their dig- 
ging sticks to Kelsey Creek and broke through the bank at a low 
spot. The flooded stream completed the work and tore itself a 
new channel, or regouged an old filled one, which met Cole Creek 
just above its mouth; and this is the course to-day. 

Later, the Lile’ek are said to have dammed Kelsey Creek above 
the new junction. The Habenapo tore down the weir and were 
shot at. Now there was war. The Lile’ek were joined by the 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA pe | 


southeastern Pomo in their rear, while the Habenapo were supported 
by their kinsmen, the Kuhlanapo. They fought in a long line 
along the course of Kelsey Creek. The Wappo line was broken 
after some hours and driven over the divide into Cole Creek ter- 
ritory. Then the Habenapo ceased. Casualties were few, with only 
two or three deaths. 

POPULATION. 


The former number of Wappo must have been over 500 and may 
have reached 1,000. In 1860, 240 Wappo were reported to have been 
moved from Russian River above Healdsburg to the Mendocino Reser- 
vation since 1856. An estimate giving the Indians of Napa County 
Wappo and Wintun combined—3,000 souls in 1843, 400 of them at 
Kaimus alone, is certainly much too high. The census of 1910, 
which contains the first data ever made available, reports 73 Wappo, 
three-fifths .of them full bloods, which is considerably more than 
any ethnologists conversant with the region would have predicted. 
In 1908 a student familiar with the area had estimated 40 as the 
number of Wappo, Huchnom, and Coast Yuki, combined, outside 
of Round Valley. The Lile’ek, always a small group, are extinct 
except for a few scattered individuals, 





CULTURE. 


Of the customs of the Wappo there are no specific descriptions. 
All accounts make them similar to the Pomo in their habits, as in 
cremating the dead, and the few specimens of their handiwork that 
have been preserved in collections are practically indistinguishable 
from Pomo wares. 


CHAPTER 15. 


THE POMO: GEOGRAPHY AND POLITICS. 


Origin, 222; habitat, 222; environment, 225; major divisions, 226; group names, 
227; political divisions, 228; list of village communities, 280; distribution 
of the communities, 234; wars, 235; the salt wars, 236; populaton, 237; 
numbers and food supply, 238. 


ORIGIN. 


The Pomo, one of the best-known groups in California, belong in 
speech and origin to tne wide assemblage of Indian natives that have 
been designated the Hokan family (Fig. 17). They are an isolated 
member of this group. To the north, 100 miles away, begins the irreg- 
ular and much diversified north Hokan block, the Chimariko, Karok, 
Shasta, Achomawi, and so on. Nearly twice as far to the south is an- 
other Hokan group, composed of Esselen, Salinan, and Chumash. 
The Pomo, however, are isolated from all their ancient congeners. The 
nearest of their relatives, geographically, are the Yana. Less than 
50 miles across the Sacramento Valley separate the extreme limits of 
the northeastern Pomo and the southernmost Yana. More words, 
too, are superficially common to these two languages than between 
either of them and their other relatives. Perhaps, however, this is 
an accident. Structurally, the two tongues differ markedly; a long 
history must separate them; and it seems possible that instead of the 
Yana being specially connected, they represent the end of a long de- 
velopment entirely dissociated from that of the Pomo. 


HABITAT. 


Except for a barely detached offshoot over the main Coast Range 
in the Sacramento drainage, the Pomo form a wholly continuous and 
rather compact body. They also harbored no aliens within their ex- 
terior boundaries, except for a minute subdivision of the Wappo, the 
Lile’ek, apparently a single village community, that had moved a 
short distance from its ancestral hills to the shores of Clear Lake. 
Roughly, the Pomo are inclosed between members of the Yukian, 
Wintun, and Miwok stocks and the ocean. In detail and sequence 
their neighbors are: Coast Yuki, Huchnom, Yuki, Wintun, Lake 
Miwok, Wappo, Coast Miwok—all, except the Wintun, much smaller 
bodies than the Pomo. 

The heart of the land of the Pomo was the valley of Russian River, 
whose whole drainage, except for a patch or two, they held. South 


222 


KROBBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 223 
of the basin of this stream they occupied nothing at all; and to the 
north, only one affluent of one branch of Eel River, namely, Outlet 
or Deep Creek, which flows in a coastwise valley almost continuous 


with that of Russian River, but in the opposite direction. 





Wy, 







Iw 
2 


= nwosvay 


i 
es 


Abe 


. 


FZ 
peal 


\ 
Ww 
mK a y 
NY 


yy o % 
ES \H///), . t os 


OSHONEAN dl 
ae Uy 
| 
Yy iia 


Fic. 17.—Distributien of the Hokan family in California, 


sources are together, the mouths nearly 200 miles apart. Except for 
its headwaters, where the Yuki sat firm, and its very mouth, which 
the maritime Algonkin Wiyot occupied, Eel River was the stream par 


excellence of the Athabascans of California as distinctively as the 
Russian was a Pomo river, 


8625°—25——16 


The 


2IA BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Between Russian River and the cliffy shores of the Pacific runs a 
heavily forested secondary chain of the Coast Range, or series of 
chains in places; and the seaward slopes of this are cut into steep 
transverse canyons—they rarely contain valleys—by a series of rivers 
from the Noyo in the north to the Gualala in the south. All these 
were Pomo possession. 

Eastward, over another range, the water flows into the Sacra- 
mento, but not immediately. The range is double. Between its walls 
lies a basin, the center filled by one of the few large bodies of fresh 
water in Calfornia—Clear Lake. This sheet more than compen- 
sates for an inclination toward an arid climate in the district. Its 
lower shores are fertile; hills and mountains with their inevitable 
seepage and flows approach closely; and altogether this was one of 
the ideal spots for Indian residence in the State. The lake, in whose 
30 miles of extent Upper Lake, Clear Lake proper, East Bay or Lake, 
and Lower Lake are distinguished, ends in Cache Creek, a large and 
permanent stream which cuts its way in a rugged canyon through 
the main chain of the Coast Range, to lose itself, after a flow of some 
length, in the tule marshes bordering the lower Sacramento. In the 
ultimate reckoning the Clear Lake basin belongs, therefore, to the 
great interior valley rather than to the coast region. But Cache 
Creek Canyon is uninhabitable; the mountains to the east are the 
higher; access from Russian River was far easier; and the occupa- 
tion of Clear Lake basin by Pomo allied to those on Russian River 
was accordingly only natural. | 

In every sense within the interior valley, in outlook as well as in 
drainage of their soil, were a separate body of Pomo on Stony Creek. 
They were few and their territory was small, covering only the head- 
waters of the main course of their stream above its junction with the 
Little Stony. These northeastern or Sacramento Valley or Salt- 
Pomo—as they may be called from their ownership of a famous 
deposit of the mineral—were not only cut off from the nearest other 
Pomo—those of Clear Lake—by a mountain chain of some height, 
~ but stood in enmity with them. Their only neighbors to the west 
were a small and remote branch of the Yuki. With these they main- 
tained a perhaps intermittent friendship, but the northward continu- 
ation of the range must have restricted intercourse. On their three 
other and more open sides, the Salt Pomo were surrounded by Wintun, 
members of a great stock, through whom nine-tenths of all their 
contacts with the world must have taken place. It is no wonder, 
therefore, that they became Wintunized. Their proper dialect spe- 
clalized farther and farther away, and rapidly at that, from its 
original form. Many of them, including all the leading men, must 
have spoken Wintun in addition. They took over Wintun customs 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 2925 


and modes of life, and they were so far identified with these more 
conspicuous people that their own identity was long lost to the 
American and it was only in recent years that inquiry on the spot 
revealed their Pomo affiliation. 

The Pomo of Lower Lake have also been perceptibly influenced 
by the near-by Wintun. They have taken over numerals from the 
language of that people, as well as customs, and an unusual speciali- 
zation of their dialect must again be attributed to contact with for- 
eign tongues. But they can not be said to have been overshadowed 
to the verge of submergence by their more populous neighbors, 


ENVIRON MENT. 


The regions enumerated constitute three principal belts of quite 
different environment in which the Pomo lived: The coast, Russian 
River Valley, and the lake district. 


The coast region was itself twofold. There was, first, the immediate shore, 
mostly cliffs or bluffs, with little beach, foggy, and much of the year blown 
over by heavy, steady winds. There are no harbors and few coves; but the 
alluvially filled river and creek mouths afforded small level tracts and 
shelter, and the ocean itself yielded a fair amount of food even to an unnavi- 
gating people. Mussels, surf fish, and sea lions replaced the deep-water fish 
which they were unable to take; and in winter the salmon ran up the rivers 
and creeks. If the smaller streams held fewer fish, they rendered them easier 
to take. For a mile or two back from the salt water, up to the timber on or 
near the crest of the first ridge, the hills were wind swept, but here and there 
yielded bulbs and seeds; only oaks did not grow near at hand. In this district 
lived the bulk of the Pomo coast population, moderate in numbers. 

From the edge of the forest a belt of dense timber extended inland 5, 10, 
or 20 miles, with the giant coast redwood, the rival sister of the Sierra Sequoia, 
prevailing. These gloomy woods, so valuable to our industries, did not attract 
the Pomo. They did not furnish enough to eat; deer, and acorns in spots, were 
the only sustenance they provided. In the main, therefore, the redwood belt 
was only a hinterland, owned but little used by the dwellers on the coast. In 
a few places open ridges offered sunnier prairies, or a valley was less heavily 
overgrown. Here permanent settlements sprang up, and little communities 
had their center; but they remained few, and their affiliations with the shore 
were at least as close as with the interior. 

Russian River flows through a country of hill ridges, which in many places 
are dignifiable with the appellation of mountains. Like most of California, 
it is a half-timbered country. Conifers stand on the higher crests, oaks are 
seattered over the slopes and. levels, manzanita and other brush runs up over 
many of the hills. One can ride anywhere, drive a wagon over most of the 
country where the grade permits, and yet find few large areas of grass. 
True meadows are almost lacking; wet, low places run to tule rush instead. 
Russian River flows through a series of small inclosed valleys, not a continu- 
ous plain. Side streams are numerous, often in deep ravines of some length, 
yet dry in summer; but springs are abundant to any one familiar with the 
country. It is typical California land: arid to the eye once the winter rains 
are over, yellow and gray in tone, but fertile; monotonous in the extreme to 
the stranger, yet endlessly variegated to those familiar with it and its resources, 


226 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 


It is good Indian habitat from the mildness of the climate and the diversity 
of its products: fishing in winter, plenty of small game the year round, @ 
moderate supply of deer, acorns everywhere, and brush, grass, weeds, and bulb 
plants in dozens of abundant species yielding their ready quota. Here was 
situate the kernel and bulk of the nation. More than a third of the Pomo 
communities were on this river, most of them with their winter quarters almost 
on itS very banks. 

On Clear Lake fish and water fowl invited to specialization and permitted of 
a perhaps even thicker clustering of the population. Yet it is notable that 
on the upper and main bodies of the sheet the main villages were not so 
much en the shore itself as near some stream within easy reach of the lake. 
Evidently these people lived much like their kinsmen of Russian River, with 
superadded, perhaps Seasonal, use of the lake when they congregated in camps 
on its margin. Only on Lower Lake, whose surrounding hills in the main are 
arid or excessively mineralized, was there a true lake population. All three 
of the communities of these southeastern Pomo had their stable seats on 
islands, whence they navigated to the shore on their balsas of rushes, as 
occasion advised. 

These three areas of environment do not coincide as much as 
might be anticipated with the lines of speech division among the 
Pomo; less, too, than among most Californian stock. In some cases, 
even, the dialects cut clear across the topography, as instanced 
below. Customs, too, diverged surprisingly little according to 
habitat. Clothing, houses, boats, and a few other manufactured 
objects differed somewhat according to districts; but basketry was 
nearly uniform and religious and social life scarcely affected unless 
by more or less intimate contact with human neighbors. Pomo 
civilization was substantially a homogeneous unit, on which natural 
environment exercised relatively superficial influence. 


MAJOR DIVISIONS. 


Seven principal dialects of the Pomo language are distinguishable. 
Perhaps these should rather be called languages, since their differ- 
ences seem approximately commensurate with those of the Romance 
tongues, though somewhat other in kind. The natives have no names 
for these languages. Geographical designations are usually mis- 
leading, as most of the idioms are not confined to any natural dis- 
trict. The people of one dialect, the southern, have come to be 
known by a term of somewhat uncertain origin, Gallinomero or 
Kainamero, probably based on the Spanish name of a chief, Gallina; 
but this instance stands alone. The wisest recourse, therefore, is 
adherence to the directional appellations, “ northern,” “ northeast- 
ern,” and the like, that came into use with the first linguistic classi- 
fication of the stock, and whose very unconcreteness averts most of 
the lurking opportunities for confusion. 

The northern Pomo lived on the coast, on Russian River, and on 
Clear Lake, besides occupying all the Pomo holdings in Eel River 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA ig a b 


drainage. The central division was on the coast and on Russian 
River; the southern the same. The southwestern dialect was spoken 
on the Gualala and the coast; but this stream flows parallel and near 
the shore, and in the wider sense the idiom belongs to a single area. 
The three other dialects are limited to defined districts: the eastern 
to main Clear Lake, the southeastern to its lower portion, the north- 
eastern to a nook in the direct Sacramento Valley drainage. Ob- 
viously, the distribution of these dialects could not be predicted from 
a study of the map of the territory. 

There are minor divergences of speech in several of these languages, especially 
the northern and the southern, but they are of so little moment as compared 
with the primary sevenfold differentiation that they can be passed over. That 
among the southern Pomo is of interest because the subdialectic line falls at the 
point where the wedge of Wappo territory has penetrated clear to Russian 
River, suggesting that occupation of 
the vicinity by these aliens has existed SE NE 
for some time. 

The internal history of the 
Pomo speech stock as reconstruct- 
ible by interdialectic comparison Saily 
is sketched in Figure 18, which sow 5 
gives not only the presumable 
course of development of the sev- 
eral branches but indicates their 
respective degrees of affinities by 
the distances separating the ends 
of the lines. The northern, east- ORIGINAL POMO 
ern, and central languages are 
fairly close. These represent the 
speech of the great majority of the Pomo. The southern and south- 
western idioms form another and less populous unit, which, however, 
may be equally close to the original, still unified, Pomo languages. 
The northeastern and southeastern tongues are very evidently extreme 
but separate local specializations from a common northern-central 
language before this diverged into these still closely connected dialects. 





Fig. 18.—KF amily tree of Pomo dialects. 


GROUP NAMES. 


The usual designation of a community was by adding pomo (or a 
dialectic equivalent) to the name of the principal site inhabited by 
the community. Thus, Buldam-pomo, Dapishul-pomo, Sedam-pomo, 
Pomo-pomo, Shanel-pomo, and so on. It is this element that has 
given rise to the current name of the stock. It appears also as poma. 
In fact, the latter is perhaps the more usual; but the orthography 
Pomo is so well established that it would be unwise to disturb it on 


228 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


the ground of a minor accuracy. In the southern dialect, the element 
is fo, and in the eastern, na-po, obviously from the same root: in fact 
na-po-mo occurs in the northern dialect, as in Chedil-na-pomo. 


The exact meaning of pomo is not clear. It is not the word for person or 
people or house, except that it enters into some such words in the southeastern 
dialect. It is not known to be used independently ; although the eastern Pomo 
are said to have called themselves Na-po-batin, translated as ‘‘ many ” or “ great 
houses.” The meaning conveyed is often rather of inhabitants than of habita- 
tions—like Yuki -no’m; but the differentiation may well have been less precise 

_in the native language than in our own. Thus, Yuki -no’m reappears in Wappo 
-noma in terms that have the semblance of being village names; and in southern 
Costanoan, ruk, house, is found attached to many town names used as if desig- 
nating the inhabitants thereof. So, too, pomo may have meant ‘‘ town” and 
denoted either its dwellings or its residents. 

The Pomo apply their pomo, poma, fo, na-po to groups larger than village 
communities much as the Yuki do -no’m. When there is a valley or naturally 
defined district that harbors several political units, the neighbors, especially 
the more distant ones, often lump these, for brevity of designation, under the 
one title. Thus the Lower Lake Pomo call the people of the Upper Lake dis- 
trict generically Anam-fo, and the Lake Miwok of Coyote Valley Tiam-fo. 
Other instances are cited in the list of village communities given hereafter. 

Now and then, also, there was a name for a single community that appears 
to have no relation to any of their villages. Usually this occurred where there 
was a well-defined contrast either of a topographical or a political nature. 
Thus, on Clear Lake, the Kuhla-na-po or ‘‘ water lily people” (whence Kulana- 
pan as a synonym of the stock name Pomo) of Kashibadon village; and the 
Habe-na-po (or Kabinapek), the “stone people” of Bidamiwina. 

Six or eight other names of this type are given in the list ef village communi- 
ties below. In general, however, the Pomo seem to have referred by the name of 
its chief settlement to the distinctive little group that they might have in mind, 
or, in cases of more generic expression, to have fallen back on such terms ag 
Bokeya, ‘‘ westerners.” 


POLITICAL DIVISIONS. 


The village community as a political unit comprising ordinarily 
several settlements, but with one principal village in which lived a 
chief recognized by all members of the group, had evidently the 
same form among Pomo and Yuki. Within the tract claimed by the 
community everyone belonging to it was at hberty to hunt, fish, or 
gather plant food, 1t would appear, without limitations of private 
ownership as among the northwestern tribes. At least, such restric- 
tions have never been reported.t| The boundaries of the land owned 


1K. W. Gifford, Pomo Lands on Clear Lake (see bibliography), describes family 
ownership of land among the svutheastern Pomo, although the adjacent eastern Pomo 
of Shigom deny or have forgotten any but ownership by the community. The entire lake 
frontage of the southeastern division was divided into ko or tracts, averaging four or 
five to the mile, and extending inland several miles. Inheritance seems to have been 
from the father to his sons, between whom, or whose sons, a tract might be subdivided 
but would be jointly claimed and defended. Acorns and all vegetal products belonged 
to the owners of a tract; deer and small game did not; but custom discountenanced hunt- 
ing on other men’s land during the acorn season, as likely to be misconstrued. Fishing in 
the larger streams and lake was unrestricted within the community, and often even 
between communities of alien speech. Obsidian and magnesite were also gathered freely 
in territory of foreign communities. 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 229 


by the group were, however, definite; and as regards other groups, 
the rights of property and utilization were clearly established. In 
case of amity and abundance these rights might be waived. ‘Thus 
the Pomo of Shanel and Sedam and the Huchnom of Ukuknano’m 
in Potter Valley used each other’s territory freely. The northeastern 
Pomo were welcome on Little Stony Creek of their Wintun neigh- 
bors, just as Coast Yuki and Kato insisted on no boundary. With 
such laxness between people of utterly alien speech, it is to be pre- 
sumed that groups of identical language were even more liberally 
easy-going. but it seems that visitors were always visitors; that the 
confines of each body were always remembered; and that as soon 
as suspicion or il] feeling arose the crossing of the boundary was an 
offense. 

As to the relation between the main and the subsidiary villages 
of a group, it is likely that the adjustment between them varied 
seasonally, winter bringing the maximum of concentration and sum- 
mer of dispersal. Often a settlement split: a petty quarrel, a shorten- 
ing supply of some food in the vicinity, a death, or mere indifferent 
instability would lead to a living apart without any sense of a divi- 
sion haying taken place. Thus settlements of a few houses sprang 
up, decreased, or were totally abandoned; and then, after the passage 
of a few years or a generation or two, when the memory of the omen 
or disaster or feud that had caused their desertion had weakened, 
might come to be reoccupied. In themselves, the events involved in 
these little shiftings and recombinings were too trivial to be worth 
recording in full in even the most painstakingly minute history. 
But until some instances of such happenings can be concretely fol- 
lowed out as examples typical of the regions in question, our under- 
standing of the motives that ran through and patterned the political 
and social fabric of the California Indians must remain _hazily 
unsatisfactory. 

An instance may make the relation clearer. The principal town of the al- 
ready mentioned Kuhla-napo was Kashibadon; besides which, they had settle- 
ments, at one time or another, at Boomli, Kato-napo-ti, and Hadabutun. The 
Habe-napo metropolis was centered at Bidami-wina, their lesser settlements, 
not all contemporaneous, at No-napo-ti, Shabegok, Hmaragimo-wita, Hagasho- 
bagil, Sedileu, So’-bida-me, Haikalolise, Tsubahaputsum, Hadalam, Lishuikale- 
howa, Manatol, and Halibem. Further, there was an array of regular camp 
sites, without permanent houses, in each division. 


The number of named and located Pomo settlements reported is 
479, which does not exhaust the list of those recollectable by in- 
formants, without counting recognized camping places. The num- 
ber of principal villages or political units was about 75. In the 
northern, central, eastern and southeastern divisions these are de- 


230 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


terminable with fair accuracy from the available data; even the 
boundaries can generally be drawn with reasonable correctness. In 
the other three groups, matters are much less certain, but some facts 
stand out. The knowledge on record is summarized in the follow- 
ing list, which adds also any information as to true group names 
and the like; and is graphically depicted, as accurately as is pos- 
sible, in Plate 36. All known settlements and sites camped at re- 
peatedly are entered on this map; but only the principal village of 
each group has its name added. 


LIST OF VILLAGE COMMUNITIES. 


NORTHERN POMO. 
On the coast: 

Kadiu, at mouth of Noyo River. The Chedilna-pomo are perhaps the people 
ef this village. 

Buldam, at mouth of Big River. 

Kalaili, at mouth of Little River. 

On Outlet Creek, Hel River drainage: 

Mato, northwest of Sherwood. 

Kulakai, at lake south of Sherwood. Shibalni-pomo seems to include the 
people of Mato and Kulakai. 

Bakau, at Little Lake, north of Willits. 

Tsamomda, west of Willits. 

Shotsiu, east of Willits. 

Two other main villages, Nabo or Nato and Chauishak, are mentioned in 
this vicinity in 1851; while the reported name Betum-ki for the valley as a 
whole is from Bitom-kai or Mtom-kai, which in turn is possibly derived from 
Mitoma, a site at Willits, plus kai, “ valley,” or from mato, “large.” Mtom- 
kai-pomo seems to have had native usage aS a generic designation of the Little 
Lake Valley communities—exactly parallel to Yuki Ukomno’m, for instance. 
On upper Russian River drainage: 

Shabakana, Bitadanek, aad Kobida are three sites successively inhabited 
by one group whose home was Forsythe Creek. 

Dapishu or Kachabida in Redwood Canyon. 

Kachake on Mill Creek may have been an independent community. 

Masut or Shiyol, on the West Fork of Russian River near the mouth of 
Seward Creek. 

Chomchadila, on the West Fork near Calpella, which town takes its name 
from the former chief, Kalpela or Halpela. 

Shanel or Seel or Botel, at the north end of Potter Valley on the Hast Fork 
of Russian River. Shanel proper was east of the river, Seel west, and Amdala 
adjoined the latter on the north. The relation of these was like that of the 
wards or suburbs of a city. 

Sedam, downstream in the same valley. 

Pomo, downstream, still in Potter Valley. 

Tsakamo, below, on the same stream, at the mouth of Cold Creek, which 
belonged to the people of T’sakamo. 

Potter Valley as a whole was known as Balo-kai, “ wild oat valley,” this 
valuable grain reaching its northern limit at the head of the valley. Djuhula- 


KRO“BER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA YS1 


kai, “north valley,” is a synonym. Balo-kai-pomo therefore denotes the people 
of a district in which lived three or four ‘“ tribal’ communities. 

Shachamkau, Chamkawi, or Bomaa, still downstream, in Coyote Valley. 
Shodakai is a generic name for the entire valley. 

Komli, at Ukiah, on the united river. 

On upper Navarro River: 

Katuli, above the river at Christine. 

Tabate, farther upstream, but below Philo. 

Lemkolil, on Anderson Creek near Booneville. The people of this district 
were called Pdateya, “ creek-teya,’ in contrast with which those farther up- 
stream, by which the central Pomo on Rancheria Creek are perhaps meant, 
were known as Danokeya, “ rock-keya.’’ The two groups appear to have been 
intimately associated, as is only natural in view of their isolation between the 
more populous coast and Russian River districts. Together, they have some- 
times been known as Komacho-pomo, from a prominent chief Komacho. 

Lower Navarro River and the coast near its mouth were claimed by the 
central Pomo, but appear to have been uninhabited. On the North Fork were 
three sites occupied by the northern Pomo, Chaida, Chulgo, and Huda. These 
may have constituted a community and possessed certain rights down the main 
stream to the ocean. 

On Clear Lake drainage: 

Shanekai, in a small, eievated valley between the heads of an affluent of 
South Eel River and a tributary of Middle Creek which drains into the head 
of Clear Lake. 

Tsiyakabeyo, on this same tributary, may have been independent, but is 
more likely to have constituted only part of Shanekai. 

Mayi, on Scott Creek near Tule Lake, not far from the town of Upper 
Lake. Bochawel, the region from Tule to Blue Lakes, seems to have be- 
longed to Mayi. Haiyau or Kaiyau or Shinal are other names of the valley 
region in which Mayi was situated. The ‘ Ki-ou tribe” with its chief 
Bakula was therefore only the Mayi group. 

Noboral, on Scott Creek northwest of Lakeport, may have been the principal 
home of a people called Moal-kai or Boil-kai-pomo. None of the northern 
Pomo villages im the Clear Lake region were actually on the lake, although 
these people owned a number of camp sites on the shore, and, conjointly with 
the eastern Pomo, visited the important fishing site of Kabel or Habel on 
Rocky Point at the entrance to Upper Lake. 


EASTERN OR CLEAR LAKE POMO, 


Howalek, on Middle Creek near Upper Lake town. Damot was chief at 
the time of settlement. 

Yobutui, on the opposite side of lower Scott Creek from the northern Pomo 
village of Mayi. The two towns were rival but friendly metropolises of the 
region. Djamato was the Yobutui chief. 

Danoha, some miles up an eastern affluent of lower Scott Creek. Guki 
was chief. Connected with this group was Badonnapoti on Bloody Island 
in Upper Lake off the mouth of Scott Creek. Both sites were permanently 
inhabited, but the people were a unit. Intermediate in location, and therefore 
part of the same community, was Behepal or Gabehe, which in the early 
seventies was the scene of an active ghost dance propaganda initiated by 
the Wintun of Grand Island on the Sacramento River. Many Indians were 
killed at Badonnapoti by troops in 1850. 

Shigom, on the east side of main Clear Lake. 


232, BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Kashibadon, at Lakeport on the west side of the lake, was the main town 
of the Kuhla-napo or “ water lily people,’ who ranged southwestward to Adobe 
Creek. 

Bidamiwina was the more recent, Nonapoti the ancient, and Shabegok a third 
center of the Habe-napo or “rock people,’ who lived around Kelseyville be- 
tween the Kuhla-napo and the Yukian Lile’ek. Kabinapek is another version 
of Habe-napo, and the near-by Lake Miwok translated the word into Lupu- 
yama. The Kuhla-napo and Habe-napo chiefs in 1851 were Hulyo and Perieto, 


vd 


as the Indians render their Spanish names. 
SOUTHEASTERN OR LOWER LAKE POMO. 


Kamdot or Lemakma on Buckingham Island, near the entrance to Lower 
Lake. The name Kauguma was applied to the people of this village, of Elem, 
or both. Beubeu seems to have been chief at the time of settlement. 

Elem, on Rattlesnake or Sulphur Bank Island in the bay known as East Lake. 
The group was known as Kamina or Hawina or Kauguma. Notau was chief. 

Koi, Hoyi, Shutauyomanok, or Kaubokolai—the Lake Miwok call it Tuli— 
Was also on an island, near the outlet of the lake. The group has been called 
Mahelchel, which is a Wintun name. 


NORTHEASTERN OR SALT POMO. 


The village groupvs are undetermined. Bakamtati at Stony Ford appears to 
have been the most important town. Cheetido at the salt deposit may have been 
the seat of a separate community, and Turururaibida, above the forks of Stony 
Creek, is sufficiently remote from the others to cause the suspicion that it, too, 
may have been independent, although its proximity to the crest of the moun- 
tains decreases the likelihood of its having been more than an occasional outpost. 
The entire northeastern Pomo area is not too large to have been the territory 
of a single political unit. 

CENTRAL POMO. 
On the coast: 

Kodalau, on Brush Creek, some miles from the beach. Camps belonging to 
this village extended to beyond Greenwood Creek. 

Pdahau or Icheche, on lower Gareia River. 

Lachupda, on the upper waters of the North Fork of Gualala River. 

On Rancheria Creek in Navarro River drainage: 

These seem to be the people already referred to as the Danokeya and as 
part of the Komacho-pomo. Late, near Yorkville, was one of their settlements, 
but whether the principal one, is not known. Bo-keya, “ westerners,” is what 
the Russian River Pomo called these people. 

Three or four settlements at the very sources of Rancheria Creek and across 
the divide on the upper waters of Dry Creek may have constituted a separate 
community, 

On Russian River: 

Shokadjal, in Ukiah Valley. Kalanoi was chief about 18385. 

Tatem, downstream in the same valley. The two villages together were 
known as Yokaia, ‘‘ south (end of the) valley.” 

Shiego, at the mouth of McNab Creek. 

Lema, a mile or two up McNab Creek. The upper Feliz Creek drainage may 
have belonged to these people. 

_ Shanel, near the mouth of McDowell and Feliz Creeks, in Hopland Valley, 
which was called Shokowa-ma as a whole. Sokowa as a tribal name is there- 
fore probably a syhonym of Shanel. 


KROPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA rts’ 


Kahwalau, at the mouth of Pieta Creek. This is specifically the name of the 
mouth of the creek, in a wider sense of the adjacent level area, and followed 
the village to its various sites on the flat, one of which was also called Kabe- 
chehoda. 

Shepda, at the entry of Wise Creek. 

Koloko, at the mouth of Squaw Creek, 


SOUTHERN POMO OR .GALLINOMERO, 


This group was partly missionized and then more or less subjected to Mexi- 
can influences, so that, although many inhabited sites and their names are 
known, the old grouping of these can be traced but imperfectly. 

On Gualala River drainage: 

The topography indicates three units, one comprising Rockpile Creek, an- 
other Buckeye Creek and the mouth of the Middle Fork of the Gualala, and 
the third the upper waters of the Middle Fork. Kubahmoi, Shamli, and Hi- 
walhmu: were villages in the three divisions, but whether the central ones is 
not known. 

On Russian River drainage: 

Makahmo, at the mouth of Sulphur Creek, was the principal village of a 
group most frequently referred to as Musalakon. 

Kalme is mentioned as a division, but can not be located. 

Upper Dry Creek, with its affluent Warm Springs Creek, probably was the 
home of one or possibly two units. 

Shawako, Walnutse in Wappo, on Dry Creek at the mouth of Pifia Creek. 
is likely to have been the center of another group. 

On lower Dry Creek and on Russian River in the vicinity of Healdsburg a 
great number of villages have been recorded, but their grouping is entirely 
obscure. They are likely to have been at least two or three units. Wotok- 
katon was the seat of one of these divisions, aS a prominent chief—Santiago 
or Soto—is mentioned, after whom the village or “tribe” was also called 
Sotoyome. . 

On Russian River, from the mouth of Elk Creek halfway up to Geyserville, 
was a Pomo group, apparently centering at Ossokowi, which came into conflict 
with the Wappo of Pipoholma, as previously related. After peace was restored 
it abandoned its territory, which the Wappo then occupied. The Wotokkaton 
group was involved in this conflict in some measure, and the Shawako people 
at one time or another were in hostilities with the same Wappo. 

South of Russian River, Wilok, which was at the head of Santa Rosa Creek, 
is mentioned as a “tribe” in Spanish times. Other accounts place the prin- 
cipal village in the district near Santa Rosa city, which would make it to 
have been the settlement Hukabetawi. Perhaps two communities should be 
reckoned in place of one. 

Batiklechawi, at Sebastapol at the head of the slough known as Laguna de 
Santa Rosa, was an important town, and therefore presumably the headquarters 
of a division. 

Another group may tentatively be inferred as having occupied the bulk of 
the shores of the laguna. 


SOUTHWESTERN OR GUALALA POMO, 


The groups among this people are even more problematical than those of the 
southern Pomo. Nine have been tentatively delimited on the map—five on the 
coast itself and four on Gualala River and the interior; but except for some 


934 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 78 


villages of consequence, there is no clue as to the number and territory of the 
groups Other than the uncertain suggestions afforded by topography. It is hardly 
likely, however, that there were more than nine units, and there may well have 
been fewer. , 

Kowishal was at Black Point. 

Danaga was at Stewart’s Point. 

Chiti-bida-kali lay north of Timber Cove. 

Meteni is cited by the natives as the old name of the site of Fort Ross. Mad- 
shuinui has also been mentioned. The Russians called the group in this vicinity 
“Chwachamaju,” or in their language Severnovskia, ‘“‘ northerners.” Erio and 
Erussi are perhaps native corruptions of Spanish designations. 

Chalanchawi and Ashachatiu were villages at the mouth of Russian River, 
and no doubt connected. 

Hibuwi was a place of some note on the Middle Fork of the Gualala. 

Potol is a still inhabited site which perhaps was the center of a group on 
Haupt and Hopper Creeks. 


DISTRIBUTION OF THE COMMUNITIES. 


It is clear from this list that, assuming the communities to have 
averaged about the same in population, the members of the Pomo 
stock were quite unevenly distributed, both as regards the seven 
dialect groups and the three environmental regions. ‘The fewness of 
the units on the coast is especially striking. Salt water can have 
had little attraction for this people. ‘They got more to eat, it would 
seem, on a lake than along an ocean frontage of the same extent; and 
5 or even 3 miles on an inland river, with a creek or two coming in 
and some miles of hill country on each side, would hold as large a 
population as 10 miles on the ocean with an even greater extension 
inland. 

It is also noticeable that where two or more communities abutted, 
their principal towns might be close together. From this center 
of population the hunting and camping districts then radiated out. 
Just so among the Yuki: the Ukomno’m villages of U’wit, Pomo, 
Titwa, and no doubt others, were all close together in Round Valley; 
the tracts of which they were the “capitals” reached far out over 
the hills and into smaller remote valleys. Evidently there existed 
no marked striations of highlanders and lowlanders, or poorly and 
unfavorably located groups, within these stocks. Each community 
had its bit of valley and its range of hill or mountain land. 

This distribution is connected with the homogeneity of Pomo cul- 
ture, as compared with that of the stocks of the great interior valley. 
Among the Maidu and the Yokuts, for instance, there were groups 
that held their territory entirely in the plains, others wholly in the 
foothills, and still others in the high mountains. Adjacent groups on 
different levels invariably evinced some divergence of speech. In the 
whole Penutian family, valley dialects stand off from hill dialects, 
either as the primary divisions of speech or as noticeable secondary 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 235 


modifications of other lines of linguistic cleavage. And so, in the 
Sacramento as well as the San Joaquin region, a civilizational dis- 
tinction has constantly to be followed: the lowlanders are richer, 
possess more organization and specialization, and much more com- 
plex institutions than the hill people. 

It may be that the large-scale topography of the great valley and 
Sierra Nevada region as compared with the broken character and 
little patches of level land in the Coast Range region lie at the bottom 
of this difference between the Penutians on the one hand and the 
Pomo and Yuki on the other. But whatever the ultimate reason pro- 
vided by nature, the people of the two areas had adjusted their 
intercommunal lives in distinct ways. 

A majority of the principal villages of the Pomo, in fact of all 
their settlements, lie on the north or east sides of scien Not only 
was the sun grateful, or when too hot easily avoided, so that a southern 
or western exposure was the pleasanter; but the vegetation is invari- 
ably thickest, in all California, on the northern and eastern slopes 
of hills, where ground and foliage hold moisture better through the 
long rainless summer. ‘The same inclination has already been noted 
among the Yurok, the Hupa, and the Chilula. It apples also to the 
Shasta. In the interior, conditions are scarcely comparable. In the 
treeless plains of the great valley the sun did not matter: elevation 
and other factors determined. In the Sierra the streams are usually 
too deep in canyons and bordered by too little level land to furnish 
suitable habitation. The villages. are therefore on crests, or on the 
slopes of ridges. Here, too, open places, and that means sunny ex- 
posures, were sought; but they did not he with direct reference to 
the streams. 

WARS. 


Besides what has been related under the caption of Yuki, Coast 
Yuki, and Wappo, little is known of the wars of the Pomo com- 
munities, either among themselves or with their neighbors. They 
were on the whole, there is little doubt, peaceably inclined. There 
was hostility between the Kuhla-napo and Habe-napo at one time; 
and the southeastern people of Kamdot must have had their quarrel 
with one of these divisions, because they supported the Lile’ek against 
them. The Komli group in the north end of Ukiah Valley fought 
the Yokaia-pomo, that is, Shokadjal and Tatem communities of the 
south end, and was worsted. This was a quarrel between people of 
different dialect. 

This feud may be placed between 18380 and 1885, or earlier. According to 
the Yokaia-pomo, they owned the entire valley, up to the mouth of the East 


Fork of Russian River, but had allowed a body of northern Pomo to settle 
at Komli and utilize the northern end of the valley. A dispute arising about 


936 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


hunting or fishing rights, the southerners attacked the hitherto tolerated in- 
truders and drove them to Seott Valley or Clear Lake, from where the local 
chief, probably of Noboral, finally purchased peace for them. 

The northern Pomo assert that one end of the valley had always been theirs, 
and that the trouble arose not over violations of boundaries but because their 
famous shaman Sikutsha was accused of having ‘‘ poisoned” a man in one of 
the central villages. An attempt was made to obtain revenge by force, but 
Sikutsha escaped to friends in the Upper Lake region. The Komli people as 
a whole had not been drawn into a battle, but were ill at ease, and left their 
village, journeyed up the East Fork to Blue Lakes, and finally settled in Scott 
Valley. 

It is not impossible that both conflicts took place as stated, though at different 
times. 


THE SALT WARS. 


The northeastern Pomo owned a far-famed and prized salt deposit 
that brought them several conflicts. ‘This is a spot near their village 
of Cheetido, less than an acre in extent, on the surface of which 
each summer a layer of salt crystallizes out which is derived from 
brackish seepage from the adjacent hills. Although mixed with 
earthy matter, the salt itself is more than 99 per cent sodium chloride. 

The northeastern Pomo exacted payment; that is, no doubt, ex- 
pected presents, from those who came to gather salt here; although 
they seem sometimes to have extended the right gratis to particular 
friends, There were, however, attempts to steal the salt, either by 
ancient foes or by those who became enemies through the act, for 
the local owners bitterly resented any such endeavors. 


The Potter Valley people were long in the habit of visiting across the moun- 
tains and purchasing salt. A party that attempted to make away with a supply 
secretly was discovered, attacked, and in part destroyed. In revenge the Potter 
Valley people killed certain of the northeasterners who happened to be among 
them, after which they thought it wisest to refrain from attempting to re- 
establish intercourse and secured such salt as they could get from the ocean. 
This was before the arrival of Americans. 

The Clear Lake Pomo—at least the Kuhla-napo, Habe-napo, and people of 
Shigom—were also in the habit of journeying to this region. About 1830 a 
party went over to combine trading with a dance. According to the account 
of the Clear Lake people, this entire party, with the exception of two men, 
was treacherously murdered in the dance house. The scalps were stretched 
over wicker frames hung on poles, ornamented with beads, carried across the 
mountains to a Yuki village probably in Gravelly Valley, and there danced over. 
The reason assigned for this transfer is that the Yuki were more accustomed 
to scalping and could conduct a better dance; but we may imagine that the 
triumphant celebrators felt more at ease from reprisals far away than in their 
own homes, much as the Kato took their Yuki scalps to the coast. 

For something like 10 years no revenge was taken. Then a Clear Lake party 
went to the head of Stony Creek and lay in wait by a dam. When fishermen 
appeared, two of them were killed. Their scalps were danced over on the 
farther side of Clear Lake. This act being avowedly a reprisal, may prove 
little as to established custom. It is said that the Pomo rarely scalped or 
danced over scalps, 


ROMBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 237 


POPULATION. 


The Pomo are to-day the second most populous group in Cali- 
fornia—their 1,200 souls, as reported by the census of 1910, being 
exceeded only by the number of the Mono. At that, the count may not 
have done them full justice, but it is greater than expected. A few 
years earlier an observer thoroughly familiar with the whole ter- 
ritory of the group estimated 800, plus a few on Round Valley Res- 
ervation. About three-fourths are still full blood. 

The ancient population is estimated, for the comparative purposes 
of the present work, at 8,000, or an average of a little over 1,000 for 
each of the seven divisions. If this figure seems low for the northern 
Pomo, it is probably excessive for the southwestern and southeastern 
divisions, and certainly so for the northeastern one. 


At any rate, the total appears liberal rather than close. M’Kee, in 1851, 
before any but the southern Pomo had been seriously affected by Spanish or 
American contact, computed far fewer. His counts on Clear Lake, and possibly 
that on Outlet Creek, are of little value as wholes, because the Indians were 
frightened and many ran off; but he had unusual opportunities for forming 
estimates on the spot. He calculates 1,000 Indians about Clear Lake, 1,200 in 
Sonoma and Russian River Valleys, 450 to 475 in the Outlet Creek region in 
Hel River drainage, and guesses 500 along the coast from Fort Ross to San 
Francisco Bay. The latter number was no doubt excessive even for that day. 
Besides, it comprised chiefly Coast Miwok. The Clear Lake estimate included 
Wappo and perhaps Lake Miwok. This would bring the number of his Pomo 
down to about 2,500. On the other hand, the coast villages north of Russian 
River are omitted and a definite decrease in the south must be allowed for. 
With these corrections, the aboriginal total might possibly be restored to 5,000 
on the basis of M’Kee’s information; so that the 8,000 of the present reckon- 
ing can scarcely be accused of undue parsimony. It may be added that M’Kee 
and his aide, Gibbs, gave every indication of having judged sanely as well as 
utilizing all possible sources of knowledge. Their figures for the Yurok, Hupa, 
and Shasta are below rather than above the mark, but reasonably close to what 
appears to be the truth. 

M’Kee’s figures as to the size of villages are of interest. They are for 
“rancherias ” under the authority of a chief—that is, not for physical towns 
but for the political units that in the present work are called village communi- 
ties, and which might comprise one or several settlements. The Kuhla-napo 
and Habe-napo, two bodies notable among the Indians even to-day, came to 
195 and 84. Four other “tribes” in the Clear Lake region aggregated only 
232. Twenty-five per cent were estimated to have been absent. Even this 
addition brings the average per group to barely over 100. On Outlet Creek 
the villages ran to 75, 77, 89, 80, 59, or about 75 souls each. It may be con- 
cluded that the village community in this part of California normally was 
likely to consist of less rather than more than 100 persons. 

Government reports as to the number of Pomo brought to the Mendocino 
Reservation in 1856 yield about the same figure: From Ukiah Valley, at least 
two communities, over 200; Rancheria Valley, near Anderson Valley, at least 
one community and possibly two, 180; mouth of Sulphur Creek, the Makahmo 
group, 60. 


238 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


Mato, in Sherwood Valley, had 75 inhabitants in 18538, according to the first 
American settler. 

There are early estimates of 300 to 400 people for Shodakai, Coyote Valley, 
and the Russian River Shanel, but these seem excessive, even though the latter 
Was an unusually large community.’ 

On these data one other calculation can be attempted. It has been 
shown that the number of village communities was probably not 
over 75 among all the Pomo together. At the rate of a scant 100 
souls each, the population of the entire stock would come to about 
7,000, or well within the assumed figure of 8,000. 


NUMBERS AND FOOD SUPPLY. 


One derives the impression that the Pomo, and all the stocks in 
the Coast Range north to the Yurok, were not pressed for food; that 
a comfortable margin existed between their needs and what nature 
supplied; and in a measure this is true of all the Californians out- 
side the deserts. First of all, there are almost no references, either in 
myth or tradition, to famines, which find fairly frequent mention 
in the tales of much more advanced groups like those of the Plains 
and the North Pacific coast. Secondly, many bits of specific evidence 
indicate an easy superfluity. It has already been told how com- 
munities in friendly relations welcomed each others’ hunters or 
acorn-gathering women. When they resented poaching, a justified 
moral grievance is implied, and there is no reference to an infringe- 
ment of needs. At that, hostility, or at least suspicion, seems usually 
to have come first, indignation at violation of community hunting 
rights second. When a witch is believed to have poisoned one’s 
brother, one does not look with equanimity upon the witch’s people 
helping themselves to the produce of the land to which one has un- 
disputed claim; and this seems to have been the usual’ course of 
events, not the reverse. Again, when the Pomo of Ossokowi made 
formal peace with the Wappo of Pipoholma, as already related, they 
voluntarily withdrew from their land and invited their late con- 
querors to take it, rather than continue in the vicinity of such doughty 
warriors. It may have been a whole community that thus rendered 
itself homeless and went to live with kinsmen of its own stock, or 
only part of the tract of a community may have been surrendered ; 
in either event, there can have been no serious thought of hunger, 
else residence in the neighborhood of the reconciled foe would have 
been risked, or even the conflict continued. 

It does not follow that the population of aboriginal California 
was increasing at the time of discovery. A high mortality may 


2K. W. Gifford, in a census of Shigom on Clear Lake, recently enumerated 235 indi- 
viduals in 20 houses at the time of earliest recollection of living informants. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 239 


have held numbers steady. Nor is it maintained that only a fraction 
of the resources were utilized: it was rather the bulk; and a material 
increment to the population would undoubtedly have resulted in 
hardship, until new methods of utilization of the food supply had 
been developed. But there was a margin; it was fairly liberal; and 
the variety of resources probably led to its exhaustion only at inter- 
vals, and to acute want still more rarely. The Californian could not 
go for any considerable period without busying himself with pro- 
curing food, in which respect he was handicapped against the In- 
dians that had specialized their food production; but the very diver- 
sity and multifariousness of the suppty, and of his quest of it, while 
robbing him of leisure and of concentration, gave him also compar- 
ative security against want. 

17 





3625°—25 


CHAPTER 16. 
THE POMO: CIVILIZATION. 


Dress, 240; houses, 240; boats, 248; basketry, 244; loads, 247; cradles, 248; 
money, 248; fire, 249; government and descent, 250; death, 258; birth, 254; 
adolescence, 254; marriage and sex, 254; mathematics, 256; trade, 257.. 


DRESS. 


Men went naked or wrapped a skin around the hips. Women’s 
clothing was scarcely more elaborate: the one article of regular wear, 
other than ornaments, was the double skirt. Wherever deer were 
procurable in sufficient numbers, this was probably of skin; but the 
commonest form was of shredded inner redwood bark, willow bark, 
and tule rush respectively on the coast, in Russian River Valley, and 
on Clear Lake. The Pomo are the first people of all those so. far 
described with whom the fiber skirt seems to have been standard. 

Basketry caps were not made or worn. The Pomo carrying net is 
woven into a broad band in front to ease the strain on the forehead. 
Sometimes small, thick, highly polished beads were inserted in this 
band, to roll over the forehead as the load swayed, and prevent a 
sidewise chafing. 

Besides the clumsy soft-soled moccasin usual in California, sandals 
and leggings of tule and perhaps of netted string were worn by the 
Pomo. The use of all these was, however, occasional, as circum- 
stances demanded. No Californian, except possibly in the desert 
tracts, wore any footgear habitually. 

Men wore ear tubes of long, incised bird bones, or wooden rods 
tipped with a bead and small brilliant feathers. The nose was pierced 
for a pin or shaft of haliotis. 


HOUSES. 


The types of dwelling used by the Pomo depend upon the climate 
and vegetation of each district, and their distribution runs across 
the lines of linguistic cleavage. ! 

On the immediate coast and in the adjacent belt of heavy timber 
the living house was built of slabs of redwood bark leaned together 


240 


KFOEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 241 


into a cone 10 to 15 feet in diameter and little more than half as 
high. True planks were not used, and there was no covering of 
earth. An incipient approach to the semisubterranean house is 
found in the fact that there was a center post. This type of dwelling 
was made also by many of the Athabascans to the north of the Pomo, 
and by the Maidu and Miwok. The construction prevented any con- 
siderable size from being attained, and each dwelling seems to have 
been occupied by a single household. 

The Russian River Pomo erected a framework of poles, bent 
together at the top, and thatched with bundles of grass. These were 
attached to horizontal poles on the frame, and each course clamped 
down by another horizontal stick. The shape of the structure was 
sometimes circular, perhaps more often rectangular, or like the 
letter L. ) 

The door seems to have been at the end, perhaps at both. A long 
narrow slot along the middle of the top served as smoke hole. A 
house of this sort shed the winter rains, but scarcely lasted into a 
second season. It was easily built of ample size; and often sheltered 
several families; although interior compartments may have been used 
only after the coming of the whites. 

The Clear Lake Pomo built a similar dwelling, usually elliptical in 
plan, with the door in the side, and with thatching of tule replacing 
the more laborious grass. The long axis measured up to 25 or 30 
feet; poor or old people and individual families were content with 
an humbler abode. The tule used is the circular bago, Scirpus 
lacustris, or the triangular gushal, Scirpus robustus,; or the cat-tail 
rush hal, probably Typha. The inside of the walls was lined with 
mats sewn or twined from stems of one of the varieties of Scirpus. 
On the outside, mats are not reported to have been used, although 
such is the custom of a number of other Californian tribes. 

All these were winter houses. In the rainless summer simpler 
brush shelters sufficed for the more temporary occupation of one spot. 

The shade was a brush roof on four or more posts. It was made 
by the Clear Lake Pomo who were in contact with the Wintun of the 
hot interior valley; perhaps also by the other Pomo. 

The Pomo had a true sweat house, distinct from the assembly or 
dance house, though the two were identical in plan and differed only 
in size, use, and name. A diameter of 15 or 20 feet sufficed for this 
sudatory or “fire lodge,” ho shane or holi shane. The men, besides 
sweating daily, usually slept in this structure which was peculiarly 
theirs and spent much of their spare time during winter within it. 
Evidently the cha or gha, the living house, was for women, children, 
property, cooking, and eating; a man’s normal place was in one of 
the two shane. 


242 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


The dance or assembly house, ke, kemane or kuya shane, literally 
“ singing lodge ” or “ ceremony lodge,” was earth-covered and 40 to 60 
feet in diameter. A large center post was surrounded by a polygon 
of eight smaller ones connected by stringers. Across these stringers 
radiating rafters were laid and fastened with grapevine or withes, 
and on the rafters four circles of poles. Then followed successive 
layers of interwoven sticks placed horizontally, another radiating, 
: mats of rushes, dried grass, mud, and 
earth that had been taken from the exca- 
vation. One entrance was at the south 
end, through a long, descending tunnel; 
another, probably used only in. certain 
ceremonies, was the smoke hole directly 
over the fire. At the rear the wall was 
prepared so that it could be readily pushed 
out to furnish an emergency exit. The 
posts were often crudely painted. (Fig. 
193) 
It is likely that important ceremonies, 
such as the ghost rite and Kuksu initia- 
tion, were made in any one locality only at 





2 


Fig. 19.—Pomo dance house, 


after Barrett: 1, Center post, 
surrounded by eight lower 
posts connected by rafters; 
2, 3, outer and inner doors; 
4, firewood; 5, fire; 6, drum, 
with stake for grasping; 7, 
emergency exit; A, ash ghost 
performers; C, chief; D, 


terms of some years, and were marked by 
the erection of a new dance house for the 
occasion. In the intervals, the community 
visited the performances of its neighbors 
and took part in them. Whether any 
fixed and accepted rotation ever grew out 


dancer about to drum; F, 
fire tenders; M, director of 
dancers; RR, dancers at rest; 
SS, singers; X-Y, visiting 
spectators; Y—4, home specta- 
tors. 


of this custom can not be stated. The 
practice of erecting new dance houses ac- 
counts for the number of pits on some 
village sites; lower Shanel showed five in 
1873. 

Before a dance house was erected the dakoz, or mourners of the 
year, were placated. The village chief received contributions of 
shell money for this purpose and added what he thought would make 
an appropriate total. After delay appropriate to the solemnity, the 
mourners were asked to assemble and formal presentation of the gift 
was made to the spokesman of the loudly wailing gathering. Each 
woman danced with the strings of beads, which were then put aside 
to be offered to the dead. The chief thereupon announced his inten- 
tion, and the mourners replied that their sorrow was no reason why 
the pleasure should not be indulged in by others of erecting a lodge 
and dancing in it. 

The Clear Lake Pomo had taken over from their Wintun neighbors 
the habit of storing their acorns in large outdoor granaries or caches. 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 243 


These were substantially of the type made by the Miwok and other 
Sierra tribes (see Pl. 40), except that the elevated floor was usually 
rectangular and of somewhat greater area. The Russian River and 
Coast Pomo kept their acorns in large baskets in the living house, like - 
the northwestern tribes. 

BOATS. 


On Clear Lake boat-shaped rafts of bundled tule rush were used, 
accommodating three or four or more persons. These balsas, to use 
the customary Spanish word, were trimly modeled in the best ex- 
amples, with rising sharp prow, a stern, and gunwales to prevent 
the waves from washing over the top. They were in every way boats 
except that it was the specific gravity of their content and not their 
displacement that floated them. They could scarcely last more than 
a season or two, but were much less laborious to build than a canoe. 

Russian River is not navigable except in the last few miles of its 
course, and tule balsas were not used in its drainage except in the 
Santa Rosa Lagoon. 

The coast people used a raft of a few logs when needed to cross 
stream mouths and to visit mussel and sea-lion rocks offshore. A 
balsa, of course, is not practicable in the surf, but it is rather re- 
markable and very indicative that a shore people, deriving much of 
their sustenance from the ocean and with the best and easiest of all 
canoe materials—the redwood—at hand in superabundance, should 
have been entirely boatless. This is not a Pomo peculiarity. All the 
coast tribes, from near Cape Mendocino to the vicinity of Point Con- 
cepcion, faced salt water all their lives without ever riding upon it 
except now and then on a few rude logs. But the lack of canoes 
over this long stretch reminds the student how unsafe it is to infer 
from geography to civilization without as thorough knowledge of 
one as of the other, and illustrates incisively the abortive condition 
of the manual arts among most of the California Indians. It is 
true that this coast is forbidding to the mariner. And yet a heavy 
dugout canoe would have been entirely usable and a great conven- 
lence to a people that made no long voyages nor cruised about, but 
could have launched their boats in any minute cove or stream mouth 
and waited for a calm day and quiet surf to make their brief trips 
to some point or rock a mile or two away. This is proved by the 
use which the Yurok and Tolowa made of canoes on a wholly simi- 
Jar coast. It is true that the northwestern canoe is evidently a type 
developed on rivers, but its serviceability on the ocean is manifest ; 
and but for the makeshift character of central California culture, 
which in most material concerns is content with a bare sufli- 
ciency of attainment provided the means remain the lowest and 


944 : BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [RULL. 78 


directest possible, it is certain that the art of canoe building would 
have spread from the Wiyot and Mattole to the Sinkyone and Coast 
Yuki, and thence to the Pomo. It has already been mentioned that 
the Kato knew of the canoe. The characteristic thing is that with 
this knowledge they and their neighbors of the coast were satisfied 
to do without. 

Matters stand differently in two industries—basket making and 
money manufacture. In these the inclinations of Pomo women and 
men toward manual dexterity found vigorous expression. 


BASKETRY. 


Pomo baskets have the name, among Americans, of being the 
finest made in California; according to many, in the world. Such 
comparisons are perhaps best avoided. But it is clear that in a 
variety of ways Pomo basketry has undergone a special develop- 
ment quite unparalleled in California; and so far as concrete evi- 
dence establishes the facts, it tends to corroborate the subjective judg- 
ment cited. 


First of all, there are technical peculiarities. The Pomo are the only people 
in California to employ lattice twining. Along with some of the Wintun 
and Maidu, and in special cases the remote and semisouthwestern Yuman 
tribes, they are the only ones to make use of wickerwork—the technique of or- 
dinary cloth fabric applied to freely handled woody materials. It is true 
that their wicker ware is restricted to a type of seed-beater (Pl. 29) ; but still, 
the occurrence is significant. 

Then they coil and twine to about equal extent; and they are the only 
group to do so. In all northernmost Califormia coiling is never practiced. 
Everywhere south of this area twining is restricted to coarsely utilitarian ob- 
jects—burden baskets, seed beaters, parching trays, cradles, traps and fish 
weirs, and the like. Baskets made for gift or show, those seriously orna- 
mented or worn as caps, and all intended to hold water or to be cooked in, 
whatever vessels, in short, are made decoratively or for permanent use, are 
invariably coiled. The Pomo follow both processes. Their boiling receptacles, 
it is true, are usually twined, their feathered and gift baskets chiefly coiled, 
and to this point their habits might be interpreted as transitional between 
those of the twining and coiling tribes—they following the central method 
but not in its entirety. But that this is an incomplete view of the situa- 
tion is evident from the fact that the Pomo cooking and storage baskets are 
exceptionally well twined and intricately ornamented; and especially because 
of the geographical circumstance, previously commented on, of the Pomo not 
being in a border area, as regards basket technique. Om their north, be- 
tween them and the twining tribes, are the Yuki, as essentially a coiling 
group as any. This distribution establishes that the relatively strong tendency 
of the Pomo toward twining is not due to any immediate influence of 
the northern tribes; they form instead an island of semitwining, cut off from 
the pure twining area by a tract where coiling prevails. In fine, the Pomo 
balance between the two techniques is the result of a specialization on their 
own part. 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 945 


Further evidence of the many-sidedness of the Pomo weaver is to be found in 
the fact that in addition to latticing she employs diagonal twining with fair 
frequency by the side of plain twining, whereas in the northwest diagonal 
twining is known, but the simple twine is the one standard technique. Just 
so, in coiling, other Californians use a foundation either of three rods, or of 
a bundle of grasses, or a rod and welt combination; but only one of these is 
customary to a tribe. The Pomo coil over three rods or over one rod with 
nearly equal frequency. A single rod foundation, by the way, is found nowhere 
else in California, except in a subsidiary measure among the Washo and 
Miwok. 

The complete independence of Pomo and northwestern twining is apparent 
as soon as specific comparison is instituted. The one method of ornamentation 
employed by the northwesterners is overlaying, that is, twining with double 
woof. This is not Known to the Pomo. The shapes, texture, and pattern ar- 
rangements are also quite unlike. Even the materials are mostly different. 
The Yurok use hazel, sometimes replaced by willow, for the warp; conifer roots, 
Xerophyllum, maidenhair fern, and Woodwardia fern for the weft. The Pomo 
warp is willow; pine root, Carew sedge root, and redbud (Cercis) enter into 
the woof. 


The usual rule in California is that a certain technique, or a cer- 
tain variety of one technique, is invariable for an object serving a 
given purpose among one tribe. If a group twines its parching 
trays it never coils them; if it coils its caps it never twines them; 
and vice versa. The Pomo break through this natural inclination. 
Their carrying baskets are twined both simply and diagonally; their 
trays, their cooking baskets, and their storage receptacles are made 
at will in plain, diagonal, or lattice twining; the beaters in twining 
or wicker (Pl. 29). Evidently basket manufacture is no mere utili- 
tarian routine to them, in which they have settled into mechanical 
habits like other tribes, but an art, the mastery of which is a stimulus 
and whose possibilities are played with. 

Various external. devices, intrinsically of no deep moment, but in 
the present case unquestionably significant as a manifestation of 
this creative impulse, have helped to make the finest Pomo baskets 
splendidly showy. 

The most important of these devices is the use of feathers. Black, wavy 
quail plumes may be scattered over the surface of a basket, or fine bits of 
searlet from the woodpecker’s scalp worked into a soft, brilliant down over 
the whole of a coiled receptacle; or both be interspersed; or small woven-in 
beads be included among the feathers. The height of display is reached in 
the basket whose entire exterior is a mass of feathers, perhaps with patterns 
in two or three lustrous colors. A gently flaring bowl of this sort, a luminous 
searlet intersected by lines of soft, brilliant yellow, with a solid edge of beads 
and fringe of evenly cut pendants of haliotis, the whole 12, 15, or 18 inches 
across, radiates a genuine magnificence that appeals equally to the savage 
and the civilized eye. It is not inappropriately that American fancy has 
denominated these masterpieces ‘‘ sun baskets’; although the native has learned 
the designation from the white man. To him they served as gifts and 
treasures; and above all they were destroyed in honor of the dead, It is im- 


246 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


pressive and representative not only of the gently melancholy sentiments 
of the Pomo but of the feelings of the California Indians as a whole, that 
these specimens of the highest artistic achievement that their civilization has 
been able to produce were dedicated to purposes of mourning their kindred. 

As against these elaborate jewels, the ring of plumes that the Yokuts some- 
times insert at the shoulder of their best baskets is but a feeble attempt; and 
even this is not made by most other tribes. 


Only in one respect do the Pomo exercise a greater restraint than 
some other basket makers. This is the employment of color. Their 
twined baskets have patterns in red only; the coiled in either red 
or black, but never in both together; only feather work is now and 
then polychrome. The southern Californians, the Chumash, the 
Yokuts, in the north all the noncoiling tribes, frequently work two or 
even three colors on the background. It is only the far less elabo- 
rate ware of several groups near the Pomo-——the Yuki, Wintun, 
Maidu, Washo, and Miwok-—that is characterized by the same modest 
limitation. 

Even in decorative patterns, which are so endlessly variable, the 
characteristic traits of the Pomo art are traceable. The details can 
not be gone into without elaborate graphic illustration; but, in 
general, it is clear that the Pomo feel themselves freer than other 
groups to follow any type of design arrangement: horizontal or 
banded, diagonal, crossing, vertical or radiating, or isolated. The 
frequency is about in the order named. Elsewhere, one or two of 
these schemes are followed to the practical exclusion of the others. 

Pattern names are descriptive, often elaborately so, with reference to size, 
position, or combination of elements. Their forms breathe no prayers, express 
no wishes, and serve no ulterior purposes; in short, they are not symbolic. 
Their general nature, which may be slightly more elaborate than among most 
other groups, is, however, not distinctive; and the subject as a whole is 
discussed in the ehapter on the Yokuts. 

Only at the start of their baskets the Pomo sometimes, for religious rea- 
sons, place an initial design or shayoi; and if the pattern is an encircling 
band, they scrupulously leave a break of some sort in its course, that they 
may not be struck blind. This gap, or suggestion of an interruption, they call 
dau, hwa, or ham. It is not observable in the basketry of any other nation in 
California, with the exception of the Yuki; and whether it has magical import 


with these people, or is only a by-product of their clumsy handling of the coiled 
pattern, is not known. 


Pomo men perform the coarser labor of openwork twining in 
most instances. Not only portable traps and weirs (Pl. 33), but 
cradles, wood-carrying baskets, and the like, issue from their fingers. 
It is the women, relieved of this dull and heavy practical industry, 
who were stimulated to attempt the achievement of a true art. 

Men and women generally twist the weft in different directions in twining. 


It would be absurd to think of inherent sex impulses in this connection. It is 
even doubtful whether a sex consciousness or habit enters into the matter, 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA. 247 


The grade of work, the pliancy of the materials handled, may be the determin- 
ing factor. 


The perfection with which the Pomo woman combines fineness and 
evenness of stitch, especially in her coiled wares, is truly remark- 
able. So far as texture goes—and this, after all, is the side on which 
manual skill tells most—the Yokuts, Tiibatulabal, Koso, and Chumash 
work is not inferior; in fact, comparatively coarse-working groups 
like the Maidu attain splendid evenness and closeness. But the 
combination of this quality with minuteness of foundation and weft 
is reserved for the Pomo. Elsewhere, 30 wrappings per linear inch 
make an unusually fine basket; among the Pomo this is rather com- 
mon, and 60 stitches, and even more, can be found. 

Strictly, the traits here enumerated are not confined wholly to 
the Pomo. In certain measure, in some instances in their entirety, 
they apply also to the basketry of half a dozen of the small groups 
that adjoin the Pomo: the Huchnom, Wappo, Lake and Coast Miwok, 
and southern Wintun. But these peoples are all fragments of larger 
stocks; each of them was inconsideérable in size as against the Pomo; 
and they formed a fringe around that central nation. It may there- 
fore be concluded with fairness that whatever is peculiar in this art 
is essentially Pomo; and that historically they were the creators, 
their neighbors the imitators, in this localized achievement. 


LOA DS . 


Whenever the textile art is spoken of in California mention of the 
carrying basket is soon forthcoming. This article is of universal 
occurrence. Its invariable shape is conical. Its precise form is more 
or less peaked; its weave changes from locality to locality; and it is 
made in closely knit and openwork forms—often side by side among 
the same people, according to the service intended. But it is always 
a basket; only in the extreme northeast and southeast do rawhide 
receptacles appear beside it or stick frames replace it. Some tribes, 
though the minority, occasionally insert four heavier rods for stiffen- 
ing. Now and then the head strap is fastened to the structure. But 
usually the carrier is a basket and nothing more, without wooden 
reinforcement, and without attachments of any sort; the strap or net 
is simply slung around it. ‘The constance with which the type of 
this utensil is adhered to throughout California is remarkable in view 
of the diversity to which back carriers are subject in other parts of 
the world and even in North America, and stamp the device as one 
of the fundamental ones of the region, besides serving as a definite 
illustration of the hold which basket activities had on Californian 
civilization to the exclusion and virtual suppression of every other 
cultural means that might have been a competitor. 


948 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The burden basket is supplemented by the carrying net, also slung 
from the forehead. The Pomo being situated near the northern limit 
of the distribution of this implement, its form and use can be better 
discussed in subsequent chapters. But it may be well to note here 
that the net and the basket together, with the paucity of canoes, and 
the nonuse of dogs, stamp the entire California region as one of trans- 
portation by human carriers. The load is also placed in distinctive 
fashion—always on the back, never on the head—and regularly hung 
from the forehead, rarely from the chest. 


CRADLES. 


The Pomo cradle is a well-marked subtype of the northern Cali- 
fornian sitting cradle, as contrasted with the lying form universal 
in the central and southern parts of the State, and described in 
a chapter on the Yokuts. It is made of rather heavy warp sticks laid 
close and twined together. The bottom, in which the child: is set, 
is round; the sides are straight. ‘The northwestern cradle has a more 
boat-shaped effect. Its bottom comes to a wedgelike and appar- 
ently useless end, the child not being set into this but on a few lash- 
ings across the upper part of the end. Throughout, the opening is 
smaller than the periphery. A strong but obscure stylistic influence 
isevident. More to the east, among the Shasta and northern Wintun, 
a third and simpler subtype is in use. This is httle but an ovai bas- 
ketry bowl, rather flaring, with a loop handle at one end. There is 
no great step from this form to the entirely flat base of the lying 
cradle, and less yet to the soft enfolding case of rushes into which the 
infant is first laid among many tribes. 

Hoods are occasionally used with the sitting cradle, but are never 
an integral part of the fabric. They are not arches, as in the lying 
cradle, but a separate little cone of openwork basketry, hung or tied 
so as to allow a skin or mat to be laid in front of the child’s face. 

The center of dispersion for the sitting cradle, at least so far as 
California is concerned, is likely to have been among the northwestern 
tribes rather than the Pomo. This appears not only from the north- 
western subtype being the most elaborate, but from the general dis- 
tribution of the utensil. 

The middle cradle in Plate 35, a Wintun piece, approximates the 
Pomo type. 

MONEY. 


The Pomo were the principal purveyors of money to central Cal- 
ifornia. ‘The chief source of supply was Bodega Bay, in Coast Miwok 
territory, where a large clam abounded; although the northernmost 
Pomo seem to have got their stock from the Athabascan coast about 
Shelter Cove. The shells were broken up, ground approximately 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 949 


round on sandstone, bored, strung, and then finished by being rolled 
ona slab, The value varied according to the diameter of the disks; 
according to their thickness; and according to the degree of polish. 
Old strings were prized highly. The handling of a lifetime im- 
parted a gloss unattainable in any other way, and was appreciated 
as fully by the natives as by any ethnographic collector. 


The value of this money varies greatly in different parts of the State. The 
older Pomo valuation of $2.50 for 400 beads, quoted below, gives less than a 
cent a bead, or perhaps $1 a yard. The southern Maidu reckoning 40 years 
ago was a full twenty times as high for large disks, at least four or five times 
as much for the smallest size. Still farther away, however, among the Miwok, 
Yokuts, and southern Californians, the value sinks heavily once more. Per- 
haps the San Joaquin Valley supply was derived from a more abundant source 
in the south, in which case price would be in direct proportion to distance and 
rarity. It is clear that the interesting economic relations involved depend for 
their understanding on a knowledge of where the raw material was obtained, 
by whom it was worked, and by what routes transported. 


According to Yuki statements, dentalium shells reached at least 
the northern Pomo. They do not, however, seem to enter seriously 
into Pomo reckoning or their enumerations of wealth; and it is to be 
presumed that dentalia, at least in whole pieces, did not reach them 
in sufficient quantities to become standardized into an important cur- 
rency. 

There was, however, another form of money that was prized highly 
by the Pomo and the stocks as far away as the Sierra Nevada. 
These are cylindrical beads, from 1 to 3 inches in length, of a 
variety of magnesite found at White Buttes, near Cache Creek, in the 
territory of the southeastern Pomo. These were ground down, per- 
forated, baked, and polished. The heating changes the color of the 
stone from a dull white or streaked gray to a lustrous buff, salmon, 
or red, often beautifully banded or shaded. These cylinders, which 
the Indians often call their “ gold,’ as compared to the more numer- 
ous “ silver” disks of clamshell, were too valuable to be sold by the 
string and were negotiated for individually or inserted like jewels 
or as finishing pendants in lengths of the shell beads. The material 
seems quite similar to the meerschaum of our pipes. 

These magnesite cylinders were called po, pol, or fol by the Pomo; ship or 
“scars” by the Yuki; chuputa by the Coast Miwok and awahuya by the Lake 
Miwok; and turul or tulul by the Wintun; and they were known at least to 
the northern Miwok of the Sierra. The value also increased with remoteness. 
A eylinder an inch long and a third in diameter was worth five American dol- 
lars to the southern Maidu; the Pomo would scarcely have paid this for any 
but the largest and finest pieces. 


FIRE. 


Besides the usual drill, the Pomo had a fire-making device not yet 
reported from any other tribe. Two lumps of quartz were rubbed or 


950 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


rapidly struck against each other and the shower of sparks caught 
on tinder. 

The pump drill, which the modern Pomo use for bead boring, 
though not for fire making, was not invented by them, but adopted 
from the Spaniards. 


GOVERNMENT AND DESCENT. 


Pomo official authority was vested in a manner that has not been 
definitely reported elsewhere in California, though it may well have 
obtained. The chiefs, cha-yedul, cha-kale, a-cha-pte, or gahalik— 
each dialect, in fact, possessed a quite different word—were of two 
classes: the major, chayedul bate, or “ great chiefs,” and the lesser, 
malada chayedul, or “ surrounding chiefs.” The former was the head 
of the community—not only his own town, it appears, but the group 
of little settlements that constituted a political unit. His office, among 
the northern and eastern Pomo, was hereditary, whereas a record that 
appears to relate to the central Pomo states expressly that he was 
chosen by general consensus of the inhabitants from among the minor 
chiefs. These minor chiefs represented neither political nor geo- 
graphical but consanguineous units; and they succeeded a near kins- 
man. Each body of blood kindred living in one spot had as its head 
one of these lesser chiefs, and the total of these formed a sort of in- 
formal council that cooperated with the head chief. General consent 
was requisite for any decision in this council, as among so many 
American Indians. In fact, it is probable that unanimity within the 
entire community was sought for, and that any matter would continue 
to be debated as long as a single individual contested the project, and 
that when a recalcitrant acquiesced it was rather from deference to 
public sentiment at large than from want of admitted right to main- 
tain his stand. 

The inheritance of office among the Pomo is veiled in some contra- 
dictions. The information which makes the community chief elective 
and only the head of a group of kinsmen derive his position by de- 
scent, specifically cites the sister’s son and not the own son as the in- 
heritor. Even though the remainder of California always reckons 
in the male line, this attribution of the matrilineate to certain of the 
Pomo is so definite that it can hardly be conceived as wholly lacking 
in foundation. Moreover, there is a certain slight corroboration in 
the fact that the Wappo, and perhaps the southern Pomo, denominate 
several of their kindred by terms which fit perfectly with matrilinear 
institutions, but whose origin would be very difficult to understand 
under a patrilinear status with which they would conflict. Now, it 
is true that the Wappo at present have no recollection of clear-cut 
matrilinear practice; but this terminological suggestion of its former 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 251 


prevalence among them does fit in rather nicely with the quoted ref- 
erence to matrilinear inheritance of Pomo chieftainship. Renewed 
inquiry has brought some confirmation from the southern Pomo, not 
wholly conclusive, it is true, because flatly contradicted by most in- 
formants from the northern, eastern, and central divisions, but yet 
sufficient to indicate some local and incipient or vestigial inclinations 
toward the accordance of priority to the female line in kinship. 
This matrilineal tendency, manifest so far as known only in the in- 
heritance of chieftaincy in one Pomo group and in a few terms of 
nomenclature among an adjacent Yukian branch, stands out wholly 
unique not only in California but on the whole Pacific coast of the 
United States. 

The northern, eastern, and central Pomo, on the contrary, say that 
the son succeeded the father;' that the impulse to have the office 
remain in the lineage was so strong that in default of a son the suc- 
cession often devolved upon a daughter, or her husband; and that 
nephews were chosen only if there were no direct heirs, and that 
even then precedence was given the brother’s son over the sister’s 
son. For instance, in one of the communities near Sherwood, the 
chief, on aging, wished his son-in-law to succeed him. This could 
not have been felt by the people to be amiss, since they began to as- 
semble beads and property to contribute for his formal installation. 
Before this took place, however, he died; and the office passed in 
time to his son, the grandson of the old incumbent. The young man 
would have passed the title on to his son if the old life had con- 
tinued. 

These statements seem to refer to community chieftaincies. It is 
hardly likely that the matter would have been so closely regulated 
where nothing more was involved than the leadership of a small body 
of kinsmen living together. Such leadership, however autocratic in 
special cases, must necessarily have been more or less informal. But 
hereditary succession to the community chieftainship clashes with 
the reports of “election” to the office; unless the explanation be in- 
voked that succession was indeed by rule of inheritance or wish of 
the incumbent, but that the public was formally consulted for ap- 
proval, participated in the installation, and might cause the with- 
drawal of an unpopular heir apparent. Such a procedure might well 
in some instances resemble an election and yet be far from it in fact. 
That a feeling for inherited social status was fairly strong among 
the northerly divisions is shown by the circumstance that besides 
ga-halik: or chiefs the eastern Pomo recognized da-halik, “ queens ” 

1A recent eastern Pomo informant makes the suecession indeterminate, with pref- 


erence given the son of the late chief’s oldest sister. Apparently the incumbent’s 
wishes counted considerably, especially when he retired on account of advancing age. 


Sane i BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


or women chiefs, and guma-halik or chief’s children. Whenever pos- 
sible, marriages were contracted between such guma-halik. 

The authority of the head chief was slight, in that he exercised 
but few of the powers of an officer of a civilized government. ‘To 
compensate, his prominence was assured, and his opportunities for 
prestige limited only by his personality. He welcomed visitors, en- 
tertained them, and had a dignified and distinguished place reserved 
for him on all public occasions, especially in ceremonies, over which 
he may be said to have presided, though the actual direction was in 
the hands of others. His greatest prerogative was publicly lectur- 
ing his people—* preaching” the modern Indians appropriately call 
it. Standing in a conspicuous place, he shouted to them in a pe- 
culiar jerky delivery, in detached statements, with endless repeti- 
tions, mingling instructions as to-some matter in hand with generic 
advice as to behavior, and particularly dilating on what custom had 
made obvious since time immemorial or on sentiments that everyone 
already entertained, such as the intention to enjoy a dance and feast. 

In case of war, a chief of sufficient influence could end hostilities 
by a gift of shell money to the head of the enemy. The recipient 
usually considered himself morally bound not only to accept the 
donation but to reciprocate it without diminution, thereby bringing 
the conflict to an end. It is evident that in wars between entire vil- 
lage communities the head chiefs acted in this way. See, for in- 
stance, the Wappo account of their war with the Pomo. But in case 
of feuds it is expressly cited that the minor chiefs had the power to 
conclude the enmity in the manner stated whenever they saw fit. 
Again, however, it is needful not to read too much of our ideas into 
this statement. The chief who was a member of a group of blood 
kindred would hardly prefer peace to revenge for his people unless 
the situation stood so unfavorably that his relatives themselves 
thought it best to desist; which would mean that after all the de- 
cision rested not with him but with all members of the body involved. 

It is tempting to connect the Pomo head chief with the Yuki group chief, 
and the “blood family chief” of the former with the “‘ town chief” of the lat- 
ter. It has been set forth how the Pomo of one community lived more 
or less irregularly in smaller bodies, often at a distance of some miles from 
their principal or permanent town. If the people who thus separated them- 
selves for a season or for a few years were in the main a group united by con- 
sanguinity, the head of each of these ‘‘ families” would also be the head of a 
settlement or village. Such a conjecture does not seem unreasonable, and if 
substantially correct, the Yuki ‘‘ town chief’ would also have been in effect 
a “family chief,” and the difference in organization between the two stocks 
would lie chiefly in our nomenclature, or in an accident of the manner of ap- 
proach of the matter by students. 


In much the same manner the Yokuts, who are tribally organized, seem 
not to feel themselves materially different from their nontribal neighbors in 


kK ROUBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 953 


social scheme, and it is quite possible that there is no intrinsie distinction 
except in the circumstance that among the Yokuts the community, the body 
politic, as such, has a name and a slight dialectic separateness, which facts 
in our eyes superficially endow them with a quite unique sense of national 
cohesion that they may actually possess in only a slight measure. It is 
through the just appraisal of subtle differences such as these that the true 
nature of the socio-political development of the California natives will be 
illumined as further information flows in. 

A similar relation obtains between the “ peace chief” and the ‘‘ war chief,” 
as the Americans have denominated them, among the Yuki, for instance. The 
former is simply the chief; the latter no chief at all, but the leader in what- 
ever fighting there may be, without any loss of prerogative to the chief, even 
in the thick of war time. 


DEATH. 


The dead were burned by the Pomo. Some marginal fragments of 
the stock may have practiced burial also. There was no subsequent 
anniversary ceremony comparable to the Maidu burnings or the 
elaborate rituals that prevail among the south-central and south- 
ern tribes. The widow cut or burned off her hair and smeared her 
forehead with pitch and ashes. Kyewitnesses report that pieces of 
flesh were sometimes snatched from the corpse during its cremation 
and devoured. This would seem scarcely credible were it not that 
the same custom is reported from the Juanefio, of southern Cali- 
fornia. At that, the distance between the two nationalities is great, 
and nothing of the kind has been asserted of any intermediate 
tribe. | 

Seed or acorn meal was sprinkled to the dead for some time after 
their burning. As balls of flour were also thrown at certain cere- 
monial performers, it seenis that the Pomo belonged to those tribes 
that made meal offerings. It is probable that this practice was more 
or less general in southern California, though the circumstance that it 
has been mentioned only scatteringly indicates that the act was either 
infrequent or, as seems more likely, conducted without the impres- 
siveness of which it was capable. The custom is, however, lkely to 
be an ancient one; of southwestern origin or perhaps dating to the 
remote civilization which underlies those of California and the 
Southwest, and to have spread from the southern parts of the State 
about as far as the Pomo. It has never been reported among the 
tribes on their north. 

The decrepitly aged are said to have been sometimes strangled 
with a stick pressed down at each end. Disposal of the senile infirm 
has been reported so often from the eastern desert tracts of Cali- 
fornia that it must have been fairly frequent; but in these regions 
sustenance was scant and life difficult. Among the affluent Pomo the 
practice must have been rare. 


254 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [RuLa. 78 
BIRTH. 


Birth observances were of a widespread type. The baby was 
subjected to prolonged steaming, as by the Shasta. The water in 
which it was washed was thrown out of the house gently, and by some 
person other than the father or mother, else rain resulted. The 
mother used the scratching stick, for fear her nails would leave per- 
manent marks. She was fed, so as to avoid picking up her food; 
and ate no meat. The father observed a mild couvade, as among 
so many Californian tribes. He did not le in, but for four days 
remained in the house. After this, he began to go out, but not to 
any distance, and at first carefully kept from mingling with any 
crowd. He did not hunt for some two or three months. 


ADOLESCENCE. 


The Pomo, at least those of the eastern group, assert that they 
held no adolescence dance, the girl merely beginning the monthly 
observances which she was to follow through her mature life. The 
feeling of all California Indians in regard to the exceptional super- 
natural power inherent in girls at this period is so deep-seated that 
it is scarcely likely that the occasion was allowed to pass without 
some accentuation of the subsequently recurrent taboos. ‘These were 
numerous, explicit, and of the usual type. Lf the woman scratched her 
head with anything except a special bone or stick, she would shed 
her hair. If she washed, her face wrinkled; should she work on 
a basket, she would become blind. If she went to fetch water, she 
might see a monster in the spring; and eating meat would make 
her sick. Her husband also refrained from hunting or gambling, 
and from at least certain religious participations. Evidently her 
condition was essentially potent for evil and easily transmissible. 
She occupied a separate hut. 


MARRIAGE AND SEX. 


Marriage was by exchange of gifts rather than true purchase. 
The groom presented beads and deerskins to his parents-in-law, and 
they might reciprocate with baskets, but it is significant that there 
was no exact fixing of a valuation, no admitted property right in 
the wife, no going into debt if the payment were insufficient, no re- 
straint of divorce until the exact price had been refunded. With 
all their developed arithmetical powers, the Pomo did not bargain 
and exact at marriage like the northwestern tribes. The simple ex- 
change of gifts appears rather as an expression of good will and 
dignified but affectionate etiquette. It can not be doubted that the 
Pomo and the Yurok type of marriage have a basis in common and 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA * 255 


are historically connected. But their institutional and emotional 
flavor were thoroughly distinct; just as bride purchase meant quite 
different things to the Kwakiutl and the Dakota. 

The eastern Pomo call the first and principal payment for a wife 
da-nakil. This brought the young husband into his bride’s home. 
After a month or two, the couple were escorted by the bride’s family 
to the husband’s house, and gifts made by them to its inmates. This 
was a formal visit with entertainment. Before long, the husband 
took his wife back to her people, bringing new gifts to them, though 
less valuable ones than the da-nakil. This procedure was repeated 
several times. The final abode of the couple was, wholly by their 
preference, either with the husband’s or the wife’s parents or apart 
from both. Between settlements at a distance, the reciprocal visits 
were continued for some time, and the presents were considerable. 
A man that married at home gave less and dispensed much more 
quickly with the etiquette of residing occasionally with his father- 
in-law. 

The northern Pomo seem to have followed very similar customs, 
and expressly state that until the birth of the first child, the abode 
of husband and wife fluctuated between the houses of their respective 
parents, but that after this event the couple usually began to inhabit 
a house of their own. This contrasts with the rather fixed rule of the 
neighboring Huchnom that the husband settled permanently with 
his wife’s people. 

The northern Pomo observed very strictly the custom of a taboo 
of shame and reticence between husband and mother-in-law. She 
kept her face covered or turned away from him as long as she lived. 
A man and his father-in-law were less scrupulous and conversed. 
Polygamy was practiced without much restriction, even cowives 
who were not kin living sometimes under one roof. 

In the eastern division plural marriages were more frowned upon, 
and the mother-in-law taboo was much weaker. Bride and groom 
had their faces washed by each other’s mothers. They are some- 
what bashful toward them as well as toward their fathers-in-law, 
but do not avoid their presence. They are polite by speaking to 
them in the plural, and the old people reciprocate. Relatives-in-law 
of one’s own generation are not accorded this deference, but a man 
may continue the expression of respect to his parents-in-law even 
after his wife’s death. In place of calling his father-in-law by this 
term of relationship or simply “thou,” he says to him: mal butsigi 
hibechal, “ye old-man them.” As this instance shows, some curious 
logical inconsistencies of grammatical number and person are not 
shrunk from in adherence to this practice. Even the downright 


3625°—25——18 


956 . BUREAU OF AMERICAN: ETHNOLOGY [BuLL, 78 


pronoun of the third person is used alone: Hibek, “ they ” or “ those,” 
is said for ma, “thou,” almost exactly as the German employs “ Sze” 
for the familiar “du.” The native development of this device on 
substantially the same lines as in modern European languages 
is an interesting instance of independent origin of cultural devices. 

The Pomo do not share the custom followed in some parts of Cali- 
fornia, as among the Yana and Mono, of observing shame and main- 
taining silence toward their sisters. Bashfulness toward blood kin- 
dred would be ridiculed, they declare, as being treatment proper 
only toward a bride, and shame would be construed as a symptom 
of sexual love. This association evidently holds true of their actual 
attitude. As a man and his wife can hardly be timid toward each 
other long after marriage, they transfer the emotion to each other’s 
nearest kin. : 

The status of Pomo women was rather high. Besides the inclina- 
tions to matrilineal descent already discussed, there may be cited 
the native mention of titular women chiefs; the admission of some 
women to the secret society, with a tradition of at least one com- 
munity having once had a woman head for the society; the joint 
“ preliminary ” initiation of boys and girls; the attribution by the 
eastern Pomo of ownership of the house to the oldest wife among the 
several households inhabiting it; and perhaps the fact that men 
relieved women from the manufacture of coarse burden baskets. The 
impression is one of definitely greater social equality of the sexes 
than among the northwestern tribes. 

Another trait that must possess a certain cultural significance is 
the presence of sex gender in the Pomo demonstrative pronoun. It 
is entirely obscure how this feature could have originated, especially 
since sex is expressed grammatically by only a very small number of 
American Indian languages, and no other one in California or per- 
taining to the Hokan family. 


MATHEMATICS. 


The Pomo are great counters. Their arithmetical faculties must 
have been highly developed. ‘They counted their long strings of 
beads. ‘Methods of measuring such as most California tribes use 
were probably also in vogue, but must have been less usual, since 
they have not been described. In early days of contact with Cau- 
casian civilization the unit of exchange was 400 clam-shell beads for 
$2.50. After the introduction of the pump drill the beads were 
manufactured more readily, and the value of the same unit quan- 
tity fell to $1. <A tale relates that the first bear shaman gave 
40,000 beads in pretended sympathy for the victim whose death he 
had caused. The use of these enormous figures is not incredible, 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 957 


A unit of 100 fours being once established, a reckoning to 100 such 
units presented no great difficulty to one who was interested. The 
significant thing is that the Pomo were interested. They evidently 
liked to deal with numbers, which had come to have a meaning to 
them and whose mere size did not terrify them. That they were a 
wealthy people would accordingly go without saying, even if we did 
not know that they were the principal purveyors of the standard 
disk currency to north-central California. It can also be inferred 
that this advance did not proceed without a corresponding devel- 
opment in other fields of the intellect or a reflection in many of their 
institutions. 

There is nothing to show that the Pomo multiphed or divided in 
our customary sense of these operations. But constant dealing with 
units and higher units—fours, tens, hundreds, or four hundreds— 
must have resulted in a frequent familiarity with the result of many 
combinations of fairly large figures and some facility in dealing with 
new ones. 

The Pomo calendar, with its tendency toward counting, has been 
discussed in connection with the Huchnom calendar in Chapter 13. 


TRADE. 


Little is on record as to intercommunal trade relations. The Kuhl- 
anapo and Habenapo of Clear Lake received trade articles as fol- 
lows: From the north came iris fiber cord for deer snares; arrows; 
and sinew-backed yew bows, the native backed bow being of moun- 
tain mahogany; from the east, magnesite; from the south, clam 
shells; from the west, mussels, seaweed, hahotis shells, and furs of 
small seals (“ water bear”) or possibly sea otters. Tor these objects 
the Clear Lake people gave fish, acorns, skins, and magnesite. 


CrHaprer 17. 
THE POMO: RELIGION. 


Shamanism, 258; bear shamans, 259; ceremonial system, 260; Guksu cere- 
monies, 261; Hahluigak, or ghost ceremony, 263; coyote ceremony, 265; 
thunder ceremony, 265; Dama ceremony, 266; dances, 266; the modern 
ghost dance, 269; mythology, 270; type of culture, 271. 


SHAMANISM. 


Little is known of the manner in which the Pomo medicine man 
acquired his power, except that it might be derived from one’s father 
or from a shaman whom the novice had assisted and who fell heir 
to his teachings and paraphernalia. The power was also received 
directly from the spirits, but this method is less frequently men- 
tioned and appears to have been relatively less developed than among 
most other tribes. In short, pure shamanism was more or less over- 
shadowed by fetishism and ritualism among the Pomo. 


The fetishism is particularly evident in the importance attached to the sacks 
owned by a certain class of medicine men. These were animal skins containing 
bull roarers, obsidian, colored pebbles, bones, roots, sticks covered with snake 
skins, shaped amulets of stone, dried lizards, snakes, coyote feet, or any 
deformed or unusual object. The type of this outfit is that employed by the 
Plains Indian shaman. The bag was thought extremely powerful: its shadow 
would kill a child on which it might fall. 

The ritualism appears in the use of these things. The contents of the sack 
were laid by the fire. The medicine man shook his cocoon rattle and began a 
song and dance. Handing the rattle to his assistant, who also took up the 
melody, he danced over the patient. Selecting one of his amulets, that had 
been sufficiently warmed, he pointed with it to the four directions—or the four 
‘‘ winds,” as the Pomo say—and thrust it against the seat of pain, then followed 
with another and another. This was done for four nights, during which the 
medicine man fasted and drank no water. The seemingly regular’ presence 
of an avowed assistant gives the entire procedure an unusual flavor. | 

It is probable that the actions performed with each fetish object were more 
elaborate than here stated. For instance, a bear doctor, before putting on his 
accouterment, began by dancing up to each part of it four times from each of 
the four directions. This scheme was multiplicatively enlarged by dancing 
also with the object, toward the place of its deposit, and holding it in the 
left instead of the right hand; after which the entire cycle was repeated in 
reverse order, making all told 170 successive movements, each performed four 
times. The singing assistant kept the complete tally of 680 with sticks. This, 


258 


=} 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 259 


again, is a type of procedure the like of which has not been reported from any 
other Californian group.’ 
BEAR SHAMANS, 


The grizzly bear shaman’s activities are reported on by the Pomo 
much as by the Yuki and Maidu. Incased in a complete bearskin, 
his body wrapped with belts of beads serving as armor, and with a 
horn dagger concealed on him, this nefarious being roamed the hills 
in search of his human prey, not sparing even people of his own 
town, if he owed them the least grudge or if their spoliation seemed 
sufficiently profitable. 

But the Pomo accounts of their “ bear doctors” are remarkable 
in making no reference whatever to the animal as the source of the 
magical power enjoyed. Their bear doctor was not a person who 
possessed the bear as his guardian spirit, but one who owned the skin 
suit and necessary outfit, and had learned its use from a human in- 
structor. In short, he was the possessor of a fetish that increased 
his strength and endurance, and not a shaman at all, if the native 
information available may be relied on. This fact is of interest be- 
cause the shamanistic character of the bear doctor is very plain 
among the Yuki, whose practice of the art closely resembles that of 
the Pomo, while with tribes like the Yokuts the material parapher- 
nalia appear to be wholly dispensed with and the doctor, through 
his t2pné or mana, turns his own person into a bear’s body. ‘There 
‘an thus be no doubt that the basis of the behef throughout California 
is shamanistic, and that the bear doctor falls into a class with the 
malignant shaman or evil witch. 

Pomo descriptions of the apparatus used are so detailed that they 
must have some foundation in fact, which is confirmed by at least 
one model in amuseum. At the same time it is impossible for a man 
to travel considerable distances on all fours with any speed; to fight 
as well while cumbered with heavy wrappings and a bulky false head 
over his own, as when stripped for action; or to gain an advantage 
through being armed only with a dagger. Now and then the repute 
of the dreaded human bears might have paralyzed a hunter and 
made him fall a terrified victim; but more often the bear man him- 
self would have succumbed. It can only be concluded that there were 
bear doctors; that they believed in their powers; that they possessed 





1T,, 8. Freeland, Pomo Doctors and Poisoners (see bibliography), makes clear the 


Pomo discrimination of the k’o’o-gauk, “poison man” or bewitcher, as against the 
shaman who cured and was not held responsible for his patient’s death. The shamans 
were of two kinds: k’o’o-bakiyalhale ‘‘ performers for the poisoned ’’—‘“ singing” or 


“ outfit’? doctors in colloquial English—who used the sacks and paraphernalia, and 
had been taught their knowledge by an older man; and madu, the ‘“ sucking” or ‘“‘ dream ”’ 
doctors, who had had a supernatural experience and followed the methods more usual in 
California and no doubt of greater institutional antiquity. It is interesting that the madu 
were less numerous and less well paid. Sacks belong also to the Guksu society. See 
below. 


260 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


actual disguises and found pleasure in donning these and acting the 
animal in privacy or in the company of their assistants or like-minded 
associates; but that their feats of slaughter existed chiefly if not 
wholly in the imagination of themselves and their public; unless 
indeed, as one hint suggests, the bear doctor was not a shaman at all, 
but a bear impersonator in more or less public exhibitions of the 
esoteric ritual society. 


CEREMONIAL SYSTEM. 


The general religious organization of which the Pomo form part is discussed, 
for all the tribes involved in it, in chapter 26 on the Wintun. In the present 
connection there will be mentioned chiefly the principal traits peculiar to the 
Pomo. . 

Very little is known of the form which the secret society takes among the 
Pomo. It may have been somewhat less definitely organized than among the 
Wintun and Maidu. But any divergences along this line remain for positive 
determination by study. 

The Pomo cali a dance, as such, he or ke, “ sing.’ A ceremony, on the other 
hand, that is to say, a four days’ complex of dances, including separate im- 
personations, was called haikil (or by some dialectic or grammatical equiva- 
lent) which means ‘“‘stick hang.” This designation is probably derived from 
the apparatus employed -when invitations were sent out to other villages. 
Several short sticks, equal in number to the days until the beginning or close 
of the ceremony, were tied together in a little parallel screen which was hung 
by a string from the end of a wand. Each day one stick was detached. Some- 
times an acorn or fishtail was fastened to the bottom of the little mat. In 
this case acorns or fish were presented to the visiting chiefs at the conclusion 
of the ceremony, in value equivalent to the shell money which they had 
brought with them and given to the resident chief. 

The ritualistic features of Pomo dancing, at least so far as the spirit im- 
personators are concerned, are closely similar to what are known of the cor- 
responding practices of the Yuki, Wintun, and Maidu. The impersonators 
dressed outdoors at a distance. They were summoned from the roof of the 
dance house by means of calls which they answered, each according to his 
character.. Each entered the assembly house, usually progressing backward, 
and performed his dance separately. The middle of the house, from the door 
to the drum at the opposite end, was the dancing place, but the focus of the 
performer’s activity was the vicinity of the drum itself. Spectators sat on the 
right and left of the house behind the side posts. The dance step was mainly 
an alternate raising of the knees, the foot being stamped with violence. The 
drum was usually leaped over, sometimes jumped on. Most of the spirit im- 
personators were led and directed by special officials who were themselves in 
costume, and in a measure participated in either the dancing or the singing. 

The ritualistic circuit among all tribes was antisunwise. The cardina! 
directions were named in identical order, but the Pomo commenced with the 
south, the Wintun with the west. The ceremonial number among all tribes is 
invariably four, except for an occasional amplification to six. 


Among the Yuki a simple form of the esoteric system prevails, 
based primarily, perhaps wholly, on two rituals. The Pomo scheme 
is ampler, approximating that of the Wintun and Maidu. Its Yuki 
affinities, however, are revealed by the fact that while the Pomo prac- 


Ce, i eS 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 261 


tice a fair number of ceremonies, these fall into two groups. One 
of these groups, into which the Awsksu or Guksu character enters, 
corresponds to the Yuki Taikomol ceremonies. The other, the 
Hahluigak or ghost ritual, is a close counterpart of the Yuki Audk’?/al 
rites. 

These are the eastern Pomo designations. The northerners about Sherwood 
say dasan ke and chaduwel ke; and mention the te ke as equivalent to the 
Yuki and Huchnom feather dance, and the yew ke as the one made at a girl’s 
maturity. 

Of these two sets of rituals, the one which is perhaps most fre- 
quently referred to in reports is the ghost ceremony, which possessed a 
similar status not only among the Yuki but probably among all the 
minor groups west of the Wintun among whom the Pomo are cen- 
tral and culturally dominant. Among the Sacramento Valley tribes 
the ghost ceremony is either unrepresented or reappears in so changed 
a form that its identity with the Pomo prototype has not been 
noted. 

The kernel of the Pomo system is, however, associated with the 
Guksu rites. This is clear from the fact that the old men in charge 
of the Guksu also direct the ghost ritual, whereas the reverse 
does not obtain. The head of these old initiates had charge of the 
feathers and other paraphernalia used in the ghost ceremony, while 
his companions helped to dress and paint the ghost dancers. 


GUKSU CEREMONIES. 


Few spirits were impersonated by the Pomo. They were Guksu, 
the principal; Shalnis, his associate; and, less frequently, a few ani- 
mals. Guksu was thought to live in a large dance house at the south 
end of the world; Shalnis or Madumda at the east; while the corre- 
sponding gods at the north, west, above, and below were whirlwind, 
water, sky or thunder, and earth occupant or spirit. 

The last-named four were not represented in ceremonies. Shalnis 
was impersonated by one dancer only, and thé Guksw by several. 
Shalnis is described as readily moved to anger. 

The meaning of the word Shalnis is not known. The apparel of 
the impersonator, however, suggests him as similar to the Jd/oki 
of the Wintun and Maidu. A feather-covered mantle of network 
fell from the crown of his head so as to conceal entirely his identity. 
Any visible portions of his body were painted black, and he carried 
a plain black staff. 

The Guksu, as with other tribes, wore the “big head” ornament 
of radiating feather-tipped sticks, though formerly this seems to 
have been replaced by a smaller tuft of feathers supplemented by a 
band of yellow-hammer quills. Attached to his head he wore a long 


962 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Burt 78 


nose or horn of feathers painted red. He carried a double bone 
whistle and a long staff tipped with feathers. 

A sort of initiation that formed part of the Guksw rituals was 
called Gahagaha, which means “ cutting,” and which was performed 
upon children. The cuts were made on the first and last days of a 
ceremony, by means of a sharp-edged shell drawn across the back of 
the prostrate child. There was no insistence on the children restrain- 
ing themselves in their pain, but every precaution was taken to 
prevent them from looking up during the act. They were also for- 
bidden to look up into oak trees for fear they should blast the crop 
of acorns. Ideas of this kind are strongly developed in the ado- 
lescence ceremonies for girls among most of the tribes of California. 
It is accordingly not surprising that the Pomo inflicted their hurt 
on girls as well as boys. As women, however, were not admitted to 
some sacred rites in the dance house, the ceremonial action must have 
been thought to have a different effect according to the sex of the chil- 
dren. At that, it is almost certain that the cutting alone did not make 
a small boy a full member of the organization. From what we know 
of parallel conditions among the Yuki and Maidu, we may infer 
that a second initiation was gone through toward early manhood. It 
is possible, therefore, that the Pomo cutting ceremony for boys was 
intended only as a preliminary preparation for the future final 
rite, and that its immediate purpose for boys as well as girls was to 
insure their speedy growth and vigor, as indeed the Pomo themselves 
declare. 

There are only hints as to the second or more esoteric initiation. 
Its central feature may have been a stabbing or shooting with spear or 
arrow. What sort of devices were employed in this exhibition, and 
how crude or skillful their execution was, can only be conjectured. 
After a pretended wounding the initiates were healed. In some in- 
stances the use of the bow and arrow is reported. In others a spear 
was thrust at the subject, who stood behind a screen of brush. Still 
other descriptions refer to spears apparently thrust directly into the 
naked body. It would seem that demonstrations of this type may 
have been given as an exhibition of supernatural power rather than 
as an initiation, since women are mentioned as having been thus 
operated upon. 

The opening of one ceremony was marked by the ritualistic bringing in 
and erection of a large pole in front of the dance house. While some of the men 
climbed this pole balls of seed meal were thrown at them. The actions per- 
formed in connection with this pole are probably old, but modified by recent 
“ shost-dance ’”’ movement introductions. Among the Wintun, also, outdoor pole 


rituals are intimately connected with the modern ghost dance. On the other 
hand, the climbing of a tall post must have some ancient foundation, since it 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 2638 


is found as far away as southern California, although there in connection with 
mourning ceremonies. 

At least once on each day of larger ceremonies the Guksw impersonators 
appeared from outside and danced in the assembly house. The intervals be- 
tween their exhibitions were filled out by the people eating, gambling, or witness- 
ing other dances, . 


There is a definite association to the Pomo between the Gu/:sw and 
the curing of disease, although the doctor or shaman as such must 
be sharply distinguished from the Guisu impersonator. The patient 
was approached by the Guisw in full costume, danced over, and then 
prodded or pried with the staff, particularly at the seat of pain. Or, 
the Guksu blew his whistle—which represented his speech—at the 
affected spot. This rite is practically identical with the Z'athomol 
doctoring of the Yuki, but has no known parallels among the Win- 
tun and Maidu. 


HAHLUIGAK OR GHOST CEREMONY. 


The ancient ghost or Hahluigak ceremony must be carefully dis- 
tinguished from certain recent modifications worked in surviving 
Pomo and Wintun cults by what is historically known to Americans 
as the “ ghost-dance movement,” or, rather, the earlier wave of this, 
which originated in Nevada about 1870 to 1872 and swept over north- 
ern California. 

The Hahluigak expressly excluded women from participation, and 
even from witnessing what went on within the dance house. Some- 
times four poles were planted around the house to form an exterior 
barrier that must not be crossed by any but the initiated. The ghost 
performers frequently conducted themselves in as terrifying a man- 
ner as possible, and it scarcely seems open to doubt that in a 
measure they attempted to instill fear into nonmembers. On 
the other hand, the assumption that the prime purpose of this cere- 
mony was to keep the women in subjection by threats and terroriza- 
tion is obviously a crude assumption of the kind that often enters 
into the naive thinking of civilized white men not in sympathy with 
Indian mentality. That the Pomo dancers frightened their women, 
and deliberately so, is no doubt true, but that a sacred four days’ 
ceremonial should essentially be a device for keeping wives faithful 
and obedient is surely an interpretation foreign to native psychology. 

While it is generally stated that every uninitiated person was 
scrupulously excluded from the dance house during any performance 
of the ghosts, the Pomo, like the Coast Yuki, affirm that old women 
were nevertheless among the spectators. Whether these attended in 
virtue of their age, or whether there was any formal rite of admit- 
tance, is not known. 


264 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Among the Yuki only one kind of Awlk’tlal has been reported. It 
is characteristic of the general cultural relation of the two stocks that, 
the Pomo impersonators are of two kinds—the Hahluigak, or ghosts, 
and the Vo-hahluigak, or ash ghosts. The latter, who gave demon- 
strations of their power over fire, appear to have been the higher 
class. During the dances of the ordinary ghosts, it is true, the ash 
ghosts served almost in the capacity of attendants to them. It may 
be more just, however, to understand them as being present in the 
‘apacity of watchers to see that the ghost ceremonies were conducted 
properly. Their own exhibitions were conducted chiefly at night. 


On his head the ghost dancer wore a net filled with down, a feather tuft, a 
band of yellow-hammer quills that followed the crown and hung down behind, 
and a circlet of pepperwood leaves. No other regalia were worn except a 
girdle and sometimes a necklace of the same foliage. The entire body -was 
covered with paint. The most common pattern was a horizontal banding, but 
the style of application, as well as the colors used, were left to the choice of 
each performer. ‘There was no covering for the face, although the combination 
of shadowing leaves and crudely smeared paint no doubt effectually disguised 
identity. 

The ash ghosts were more simply dressed. Their ornaments were restricted 
to a few feathers. on the head. A screen of leaves to hide the face is men- 
tioned. The body was completely painted. 

The badge of authority of the ash ghosts was a crooked stick, the butt of 
which was fashioned to represent the head of a crane. 

When the ghosts arrived before the dance house the fire tender or headman 
who called them addressed them thus: 


napo putsal giwale village healthy run to! 
mayawale-kale putsal giwale girls healthy run to! 

hahalik putsal giwale chiefs healthy run to! 

dahalik putsal giwale chieftainesses healthy run to! 
kawik putsal giwale children healthy run to! 


In form this invocation closely resembles the Wintun ritual orations. 

At times the ghosts carried living rattlesnakes, and on approaching the dance 
house at night they are reported to have worn on their heads some sort of 
flaming device. It is not altogether clear whether these statements refer to 
the ordinary or the ash ghosts. 

Even the ordinary ghost dancers would scatter coals of fire about the house 
when angered, but outright exhibitions, such as eating live coals and plunging 
the hands into the fire, were reserved to the ash ghosts. They designated 
coals of fire as their bw or edible bulbs, and were called bu-hiemk or “ bulb 
watchers.” 

Both classes of impersonators acted as clowns in Some measure. Their 
speech was reversed, and they followed instructions in an opposite sense. If 
they were to go to the west of the drum, for instance, it was necessary to direct 
them to the east. The ash ghosts in particular adhered to some of the practices 
of the Yuki huld’ilal in rendering their appearance grotesque, stuffing their 
cheeks, proppjng their eyelids, and stretching their mouths. Any manifesta- 
tion of laughter by the spectators caused anger and the exaction of a fine of 
beads. The fire in the dance house was considered the property of the ash 
ghosts. Any man who wished to light his pipe or to leave the house while the 
ash ghosts were performing paid for the privilege with false shell money of tule, 


wt, a 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 265 


On the other hand, the ash ghosts could claim any visible property to which 
they took a fancy and pay for it in this same worthless currency. 

The ash ghosts also threw boys across the fire as a sort of initiation. This 
act in itself can hardly have constituted the youths into ash ghosts, but was 
possibly performed as a preliminary to their becoming such subsequently. 


At times a woman of wealth would be told that her dead husband 
or brother would appear to her. She might be torn between fear and 
desire; if she yielded to the latter, she was directed to give beads 
for him to carry back with him. The old men then selected an 
initiate as like the deceased as possible in figure and concealed him 
in a hole covered with leaves. His body was painted black and white: 
his hair and face were completely whitened. As he raised himself 
from the excavation, the blanching completely disguising his fea- 
tures, the poor woman thought that she recognized her beloved, 
whitened by the ashes of his funeral pyre, and burst into tears and 
wailing. 

While it is not so stated by the Pomo, it is quite likely, from a 
Miwok and Wintun parallel, that this deception took place in the 
gloom of the dance house, and that the excavation was the hollow 
under the sacred drum. The practice also throws light on the status 
of women toward the society and the circumstances of their admit- 
“tance to its rites, as well as suggesting why the fire-playing imper- 
sonators were called “ash” ghosts: the Pomo were a cremating 
people. 

COYOTE CEREMONY. 


The coyote ritual, 7202 or Gunula according to dialect, is very little 
known. It is mentioned as a dance by the Pomo, but several con- 
siderations indicate it as a ceremony. Both Wintun and Maidu 
recognize a coyote ceremony. The Pomo participants were but 
slightly adorned, except for a complete coat of white paint; which 
is also the distinguishing mark of certain Miwok clowns who seem 
to represent coyotes. Finally, the Pomo coyote dancers carried 
twigs which were held so as to obscure the face as much as _ pos- 
sible. This attempt at disguise appears to rank them in native 
estimation as spirits. Whether, however, there was a separate four- 
day ceremonial in which these coyote impersonators were the lead- 
ing performers, or whether they merely entered into other rituals, 
is not clear. They are said to have been accompanied in their 
dancing by women. 


THUNDER CEREMONY. 
The Aalimatoto, or thunder ritual, has no known parallel among 


other stocks. It is possible that it may be a well-known ritual whose 
identity among the Pomo has been disguised by a distinctive name. 


266 - BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The costume of the thunder dancers was simple, their body and 
face paint applied chiefly in vertical stripes. 


DAMA CEREMONY. 


The Dama was a ceremony of much consequence and sacredness, 
but appears to have gone out of use early, and little is known about 
it. The name may possibly be derived from dam, meaning “ feather 
down.” In this case a mythological reference is not unlikely, since 
the Yuki believe the Creator to have made himself out of a down 
feather. This was a full four days’ ceremony with acrobatic dis- 
plays that suggest those in the creeper and other Maidu dances. The 
participants crawled on the dance-house ceiling, descended the center 
pole head first, and displayed other feats of agility on ropes. It 
is said that one of them, having his power challenged, and a price 
having been named, once lifted the center post of the house out of 
its place and laid it on the ground, later putting it back. 

Such displays, however, were not entirely limited to the Dama 
among the Pomo, since participants in the ghost dance would some- 
times dive headlong through the roof door. They could do this in 
safety because of a net stretched out to receive them; but to the 
women anc children outside it must have appeared as if the ghost 
were dashing himself upon the hard floor 15 or 20 feet below.’ 


DANCES. 


The various he, or dances, were performed by the Pomo either as 
interludes in the major rituals or separately on occasion. ‘They com- 
prise, besides those listed in the table in chapter 26 on the Wintun, 
the Hoho, Shokin, Tutaka, and Yaya, which are more or less simi- 


2. S. Freeland, Pomo Ceremonials, MS. records, University of California, gives new 
data on the eastern Pomo ritual system. These people danced in a thatched house; only 
the dama-hai was made in the earth-covered house customary elsewhere. The secret 
society was limited to members of certain lineages and such other individuals as they 
took in, but included some women. Members were known as matutsi or spirits and had 
each a bag similar to the shaman’s sack; the head of the society was the yomta. 
There was not more than one yomta per political community. Initiation occurred 
about puberty, by the yomta, in a private place; there was nothing corresponding to 
the formal woknam or “ school” of the Yaki. The gaha or cutting of boys and girls 
with a bit of shell drawn across their backs was a health-giving rite rather than an 
initiation into membership. The ritual season, in contrast with the Sacramento Valley 
custom, was in summer. Ceremonies numbered barely half a dozen, and came without 
rigorous order, usually, however, vinning with the budu-bahar in which a pole was 
climbed and ending with the Thunder rite, in which the bull roarer was swung. Im- 
personations, also known as hai, were scarcely as numerous as ceremonies, the most im. 
portant, who appeared in all rituals except the Hah-lwigah, being the Guksu. There 
was also a bear impersonator, whose description seems to absorb much of the puzzling 
functions hitherto attributed to the bear shaman, The Hah-luigah took in all men, 
initiation, during a ritual, being on boys before puberty, and women being rigorously 
excluded. There were no impersonators except the ghosts and ash ghosts. The latter 
were matutsi of the general ritual organization, and direction of ghost rituals was in 
the hands of the yomta, 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 267 


lar; the Yo, or south dance, known also to the Coast Yuki; the 
Lehuye, Helahela (possibly connected with the Maidu turtle dance), 
Macho, Karaya, Sawet, Taugu, Macho, Sitaya, Badjusha, and M omi- 
momt. Women as well as men participated in all of these. In fact, 
the only dance, other than spirit impersonations, restricted to men 






























































pe OLE AE 











Fig. 20.—Sections of head bands of yellow-hammer quills. a, b, Pomo; 
ec, Yuki; d, Chilula. (Compare Pl. 58.) 
was the Hiwe,; except the /dam, which is perhaps only a variant 
name of the dance characterizing the ama ceremony. On the other 
hand, the only dance made by women only, besides an apparently 
modern JJ/ata or “ woman” dance, was the Lole. 
The standard costume, worn with but little variation in the great majority 


of these dances, was that of the Yuki K’op or La“lha"p wok, and spread, with 
only minor changes, as far as the Miwok: a feathered net hanging down the 


[BULL 78 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 


268 





pest aF sh Cot 4, tH ddl lrUtAClaltt® Uh 


nN 
> 





é 


Nig, 21,—Central Californian dance headdresses. a, Yuki; 6, c, Pomo; d, e, Miwok,. 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 269 


back from the armpits; a tuft or bunch of owl or hawk feathers skewered to the 
hair within the head net; a sewn band of yellow-hammer quills (Fig. 20), worn 
either across the forehead or along the top of the head and hanging down the 
back; and a pair of “ plumes,” each forking into two slender pliant rods, feather 
wrapped or tipped, and often with little dangling mats of yellow-hammer quills 
attached (Fig. 21). In a few dances a head net filled with fine down was 
worn, or down was stuck to the face. A whistle might be blown. A long rattle 
of cocoons or a bunch of twigs held up to conceal the face was occasionally 
carried. In general, however, these additions were used in dances of particu- 
lar character, especially those in which spirits were represented. 

Women wore all or part of the men’s regalia, but possessed one ornament of 
their own: a thick forehead band from projections on which little mats of 
orange quills swayed. 

The styles of face and body paint were far more variable than the feather 
costumes, and most of the dances seem to have been characterized by distinc- 
tive patterns. 

In the same way, the steps were much the same in nearly all the dances, 
while it is probable that-the songs differed so as to be immediately recognizable 
to the native. 


It is significant that the characteristic dances of the less cultured 
tribes of northern California, those made on the occasion of a girl’s 
adolescence, the constituting of a shaman, and the preparation or 
celebration of a fight, are all either wanting or weakly developed 
among the Pomo. 


THE MODERN GHOST DANCE. 


The ghost dance that originated in Nevada one or two years 
before reached the eastern Pomo in 1872, it seems. It was continued 
for some years, after which its concepts and practices largely merged 
into what remained of the ancient ceremonial system. For about 40 
years past, accordingly, Pomo dances, lke those of the Wintun, 
have been a blend of two quite separate strains. 

The ghost dance was under the leadership of dreamers or prophets 
who communicated in dreams or trances with the spirit world of the 
dead and with a great creator or superdeity. These propagandists 
and instigators were called maru, whereas ordinary dreaming is 
hadwm. Women sometimes became marw. ‘There was no order of 
maru and of course no initiation, the idea being very clear that the 
maru’s authority and power sprang directly from his achievements, 
and that these depended on his inherent individual faculties. The 
maru would dream of wazmaz, “ our father,” the one supreme god, 
and receive orders from him how to conduct rituals and what to com- 
municate to the people. The world was soon to end, it was universally 
taught. The believers would live, doubters and apostates turn to 
stone, at that time. No doubt the whites were included in the latter 
category, so that the movement was in a sense a revivalistic one. But 


270 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY Ruin. 78 


it is clear that this renaissance was based on the concept of an antith- 
esis to the whites far more than it was an attempt to rejuvenate 
the old native life as such. The movement was a reaction against 
smothering by the intrusive American, a convulsive, defensive gasp, 
not a new impulse of vitality in the old channels. This is shown by 
the fact that the ghost dances, the maru he, were distinguished from 
the hintil he, the “ gentile ” or ancient native rituals. New ceremonial 
patterns were evolved, such as banners; women and children were 
admitted; and this last feature was felt to be an innovation in the 
direction of American manner, because the new rites were often called 
‘““ whisky dances,” not because intoxication was favored, but because 
whisky was to the Indian the most insistent symbol of his contact 
with civilization. There is curiously little reference to the return 
of the dead. This element is the one that surely had the deepest 
emotional hold on the eastern Indians in the ghost dance of 1890: it 
was the prospect of seeing father or husband or brother once more 
that stimulated them more than the cosmic cataclysm that impended 
or the ensuing return to the old unconfined life. This side must have 
been less developed in California in 1872, else the references to the 
movement would make more mention of it. 

So far as the eastern Pomo know, the ghost dance originated in the 
east. This is much more likely to mean the southern Wintun of the 
Sacramento Valley than the Paiute of Nevada, of whoin they seem 
never to have heard. The other Wintun gave the dance to those of 
Long Valley, from where it was carried successively to the southeast- 
ern Pomo of Sulphur Bank, the eastern Pomo at Kelseyville, thence 
to the Pomo of the coast, and to the mixture of tribes in Round 
Valley. 

In conclusion, it may be added once more that this modern ghost 
dance has no connection at all, except in our terminology, with the 
old ghost or Hahluigak ceremonies. Not only was the character 
of the two sets of practices thoroughly distinct, but the Indians are 
clear and emphatic on the point. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


Pomo mythology knows of a high and wise deity Madumda, in the 
sky, whose younger brother, the coyote, enterprising, mischievous, 
reforming, and tricking, formerly roamed the earth, begot children, 
fanned a world fire, created human beings, stole the sun for them, 
and transformed the animals into their present condition. Coyote, 
accordingly, is the real creator, so far as the Pomo recognize one. 
Madumda is so inactive that he scarcely forms a full counterpart of 
the Yuki Taikomol, Wintun Olelbis, Maidu Initiate-of-the-Earth ; 
but he 1s of their type. It is possible that he and Kuksu, who is also 


KRODBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA O71 


mentioned in the ordinary tales, entered more prominently into 
unrecorded esoteric myths connected with the dance organization. 


TYPE OF CULTURE. 


The Yuki have already been designated as a people whose civili- 
zation partook of a largely different color from that of the north- 
western groups. With the Pomo, nearly all vestiges of specific 
northwestern traits are left behind. But they possessed not only 
a thoroughly central Californian civilization, as shown for instance 
by their participation in the Kuksu religion: they had worked into 
its fabric innumerable specializations and refinements of their own: 
their superb basket industry, their count of beads, certain approaches 
to a matrilineate, linguistic devices of social significance, and the 
like. These individualizations were not only developed by them to 
a point of definiteness, but borrowed, in large measure, by the smaller 
groups that are clustered about the Pomo; so that the civilization 
must be reckoned a distinct and rather notable subtype of the wider 
central culture that extended from Mount Shasta to Tehachapi Pass. 
19 


3625°—25 





Cuapter 18. 
THE COAST AND LAKE MIWOK., 


Relationship, 272; groups of the Lake Miwok, 272; groups of the Coast Miwok, 
273; numbers, 275; civilization, 275; discovery by Drake, 275; native cus- 
toms in 1579, 275; the problem of identification, 277. 


RELATIONSHIP. 


Two branches of the Penutian Miwok that are best considered in 
anticipation of their congeners lived apart from the bulk of the 
stock, in the basin of Clear Lake and along the coast north of the 
Golden Gate: ancient emigrants of enterprise toward the west, or rem- 
nants of a once wider distribution of the group. The latter conjec- 
ture seems perhaps more plausible. In miles, it is no great distance 
from the nearest members of the Plains division of the Miwok to 
these two outposts; and the gap of dialect, particularly from Plains 
to Lake, while considerable, is nothing exceptional as such things 
go in California. The Coast speech, on the other hand, is the nearest 
of all Miwok dialects to Costanoan in its organization; which fact is 
not surprising in view of the circumstance that there is only a mile 
of water between the most proximate points held by the two groups. 

Within Coast Miwok, the speech of Bodega Bay can be distin- 
guished from the talk of the remainder of the area; and the latter 
also may have comprised subdialects. But all differentiation is un- 
important. 

GROUPS OF THE LAKE MIWOK. 


The Lake Miwok were squeezed in between Pomo, Wappo, and 
Wintun. They held the drainage of a couple of small streams flow- 
ing into the very lowest mile or two of Clear Lake, and the southern 
bank of Cache Creek, the lake outlet, for a short distance beyond. 
Here, in the valley where the American town of Lower Lake now 
stands, they had several settlements, with Tuleyome as metropolis. 
But none of these villages was actually on the lake and they do not 
seem to have navigated it as extensively as the adjacent Pomo. 
( PUT) 

To the south, over a divide, are the headwaters of Putah Creek, 
which drains Coyote Valley. Here lived a second group in several 
villages, of which Oleyome, “coyote place,” was perhaps the prin- 


272 


K ROBBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 273 


cipal. This region was named after the coyote in all the surround- 
ing languages—thus, Pomo Gunula-hahoi or Kliwin-hoi according to 
cialect—just as the district of Middletown, on one of the affluents of 
the upper Putah and in Wappo possession, was “ goose land” or 
“goose valley.” 

Both these little Lake Miwok groups occupied natural territories 
and are likely to have constituted political units of the kind described 
among the Pomo, but there is no definite information. 

There may have been a third group of the Lake Miwok in Pope 
Valley, where there is mention of a “ Reho tribe.” This region has, 
however, been assigned also to the Wappo. Plate 27 shows the dis- 
puted area. | 

GROUPS OF THE COAST MIWOK, 


The Coast Miwok have also been spoken of as comprising three 
“tribes”: the Olamentko of Bodega Bay, the Lekahtewut between 
Petaluma and Freestone, and the Hookooeko of Marin County. 
Likatiut was, however, a village near Petaluma; the name Olamentko 
may be misapphed from Olema or Olema-loke near the head of 
Tomales Bay; and Hookooeko may be a similar local designation ex- 
tended, after contact with the whites and when the population had 
shriveled, into a quasi-ethnic significance. It is likely that the three 
names rest on place names that distinguished as many political units; 
but there must have been more than three of these among the Coast 
Miwok, and the selection of any of them as denotations of larger 
linguistic or national bodies seems somewhat fortuitous. 


Marin County and its environs are extraordinarily diversified in coast line, 
nature of the shore, topography, exposure, temperature, and vegetation, and 
much of the district must have been unusually favorable for native occupation. 
Settlements clustered mostly about estuaries or their vicinity. Bodega Bay 
was surrounded by several. Others stretched along the sunny side of Tomales 
Bay. Point Reyes peninsula seems to have been uninhabited. A reference by 
the narrator of Drake’s voyage to a settlement three-quarters of a mile from 
the landing may point either to a permanent village or to a summer camp site. 
Bolinas Bay probably had at least one village. Thence south, to beyond the 
Golden Gate, cliffs made the shore unsuitable for residence; but, once in San 
Francisco Bay, Sausalito and the shores of Richardson Bay were inviting. 
Beyond, San Rafael and the adjacent shore were attractive. In the region 
of Ignacio and Novato, hills and bay sloughs are still in proximity, and there 
are records of several settlements as well as abundance of shell deposits. On 
San Antonio Creek—the eastern one of the two streams so named—were 
Olompolli and its outposts. Petaluma Creek, from the head of tidewater up, 
also drew to it a number of little towns, of which Petaluma and Likatiut were 
perhaps the principal. The ridged and forested interior of the peninsula con- 
tained several villages, all on or near running streams; but the preponderating 
majority were in the bay districts enumerated. It was evidently more con- 
venient to live in the open, close to the supply of mussels, clams, fish, and water 
fowl, and occasionally visit the hills to hunt, than to live in the shade inland 


+4 


974. BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


and travel to the shore. Mollusks perhaps made a more dependable if less 
prized diet than venison. 

Sonoma Valley up to about Glen Ellen has been attributed to the southwestern 
Wintun as well as the Coast Miwok. The evidence is so directly conflicting 
that a positive decision is impossible. 

Tehokoyem or Chocuyen has been used as a designation for the Coast Miwok 
jn Sonoma Valley or in general. Its origin is unknown. Other “ tribal ”’ denomi- 





Keess can 


Duncan's Pt 


Pakahuwe 
reeston per alawe-yorn 
5 eal Oye-yom! 
Pulya-lakum Bavnron Ch*Wsuwutenne 
Ho-takala Bodegagkennekono 
Bodega Bay s by ee 8 Valley Fg rd 
AES. Hi aE ats, sEwapalt 
OBR fF 0 
oe ot 


ie , 
ep Ee Susuli | 


; Tulméa 
Utumia 


STomales Tuchayelin 
Saklokf Shoto o-wi Likatiu 
as Et 


- Tomales Pt 


Amayelle 


Cx. 
Ss \oMarshall 
o 2) 


eEcha-kolum 
\e Novato 
eS +O 


Xa 
Nicasio Ignacio 
oO 
~ 2a ae 
poner Puyuku ; 
dm Olera-loke Shotomko-chas 


Ewue 





THE COAST MIWOK 


BOwRIaFi@S: — = 5 - = - «2&7 
Bodega Dia/ecr __.---.= =e 
Possibly Winton... 24 

FOOUVAR UIT AG CS mre oe 


American Jowns..---4------ 





SanFrancisca 


O 

















Fig, 22.—Coast Miwok territory and settlements. (After Merriam and Barrett.) 


nations, such as Timbalakees, Petalumas or Yolhios, Olompalies, Tamalanos 
or Tumalehnias, Baulines, and Oleomi, appear to have no other basis than 
village hames. If a generic term of native origin were desirable to introduce 
for the group as a whole, Micha, ‘* person,’ or Micha-ko, ‘‘ people,’ would be 
most appropriate. 

Similarly, Hotsa-ho might be coined as a designation for the Lake Miwok, 
if there were need. 

The southern Pomo call the Bodega people: Akamtata; the Wappo, those 
about Petaluma: Onwalisa. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 975 


igure 22 summarizes what is known of the territorial history of the Coast 
Miwok. 
NUMBERS, 


The population of the Lake Miwok can safely be estimated to 
have been not in excess of 500; the Coast branch may have num- 
bered 1,500. There remain a handful of scattered survivors. The 
missions have played their usual part. The nearer Coast Miwok were 
first taken to San Francisco. Later, San Rafael and then Sonoma 
were established in their territory and Pomo, Wintun, and Wappo 
mingled with themselves. The Lake Miwok fared a little better, 
being more remote. But they also can muster only a dozen or two 
to-day. 

CIVILIZATION, 


Of the recent culture of both groups little has been recorded. 
They were undoubtedly closely allied to the Pomo in their habits. 
This is particularly clear of the Lake Miwok, who made feathered 
baskets and earth-covered dance houses scarcely if at all distin- 
guishable from those of the Pomo. The Coast group, being in contact 
with the most southerly Wintun and northerly Costanoans and with 
only one division of the Pomo, and inhabiting a larger and more 
pecuhar territory, may be presumed to have evinced more independ- 
ence of civilization; but even among them particularities are likely 
to have consisted chiefly of minor matters. In any event it would 
be erroneous to infer any resemblance with the interior Miwok from 
the connection in origin demonstrated by speech. Culturally the 
Coast and Lake Miwok were tributaries of the Pomo, not of their 
own Valley and Sierra kinsmen. 


DISCOVERY BY DRAKE. 


The Coast Miwok are the third body of California Indians to have 
been discovered by white men and the first with whom English- 
speaking people came in contact. Thirty-seven years after Cabrillo 
sailed up the Santa Barbara Channel, in 1579, Francis Drake spent 
five weeks in a bay on the California coast repairing his little 
“ Golden Hind,” and’ entered into close touch with the natives. San 
Francisco Bay was for a time believed the scene of this experience, 
but opinion has now settled in favor of a lagoon inside of Point 


Reyes, christened Drake’s Bay in consequence, 
NATIVE CUSTOMS IN 1579. 


The principal narrative that has survived of Drake’s circumnavi- 
gation is surprisingly detailed in its account of the inhabitants of 
“Nova Albion.” The passage is a somewhat prolix mixture of nar- 


276 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


ration and depiction, and, as it has been reprinted several times, 
need not be recited in full; but some quotation and commentary on 
the native customs mentioned may be worth while. It can be said 
that in general the culture described agrees very closely with that 
existing among the Pomo and their neighbors in the past century. 

The dwellings were the typical semisubterranean structures of north central 
California: 

“Their Houses, which are dug round into the Earth, and have from the 
Surface of the ground, Poles of Wood set up and joined together at the top like 
a spired Steeple, which being covered with Earth, no Water can enter, and 
are very warm, the Door being also the Chimney to let out the Smoak, which 
are made slopous like the Scuttle of a Ship: Their Beds are on the hard 
Ground strewed with Rushes, with a Fire in the midst round which they lye, 
and the roof being low round and close, gives a very great Reflection of Heat 
to their Bodies.” 

Dress accords equally well: “The Men generally go naked, but the Women 
combing out Bulrushes, make with them a loose Garment, which ty’d round 
their middle, hangs down about their Hipps: And hides what Nature would 
have concealed: They wear likewise about their Shoulders a Deer skin with 
the Hair thereon.” ‘The Common People, almost naked, whose long Hair 
tied up in a Bunch behind, was stuck with Plumes of Feathers, but’ in the 
forepart only one Feather like an Hord.” The ‘ King” had “on his Head a 
Knit work Cawl” (the net cap of central California), ‘“ wrought somewhat 
like a Crown, and on his Shoulders a Coat of Rabbet Skins reaching to his 
Waste ’—the usual woven blanket of fur. Even the net cap filled with eagle 
down that the Yuki, Pomo, and other tribes wore until recently seems to be 
described: “ Cawls with Feathers, covered with a Down growing on an herb, 
exceeding any other Down for Fineness.” 

Absolutely typical Pomo basketry of the ornate type can be recognized: 
“Their Baskets are made of Rushes like a deep boat, and so well wrought 
as to hold Water. They hang pieces of Pearl shells” (haliotis), “ and some- 
times Links of these Chains” (disk beads) ‘‘on the Brims, to signify they were 
only used in the Worship of their Gods: they are wrought with matted down 
of red Feathers” (of the woodpecker’s scalp). 

The money of central California is also unmistakable, although the shell 
was taken to be bone, and the half mediaeval imagination of the English enacted 
sumptuary regulations of which the Indians were certainly ignorant. ‘“ The 
Chains seemed of Bone, the Links being in one chain was almost innumerable, 
and worn by very few, who are stinted in their Number, some to ten, twelve, 
or twenty, as they exceed in Chains, are therefore accounted more honourable.” 
This is only one of several passages which reveal a curiously naive blending 
of the most accurate objective description with far-fetched interpretation. 
All the references to the King, his Guard, the Sceptre or Mace Royal, the 
Crowns, and the like, are of course fancies; but as soon as the objects them- 
selves are pictured or the King’s actions narrated, aboriginal California re- 
appears in its most pungent flavor. Thus: “ Their chief Speaker wearied him- 
self, and them with a long Oration, using such violent Gestures, and so strong 
a Voice, and speaking so fast that he was quite out of Breath. Having done, 
all the rest bowed their Bodies very low and reverently to the Ground, crying 
Oh.” And again: “Sent two Ambassadors before, to tell the General their 
Hioh, or King, was coming; one of them in delivering his Message spake low, 
which the other repeated Verbatim with a loud Voice, wherein they continued 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 277 


about half an Hour.” And later: “After Silence, he who carried the Sceptre, 
prompted by another assign’d by the King, repeated loudly what the other 
spake low, their Oration lasting half an hour, at the close whereof they 
uttered a common Amen, in Approbation thereof.” 

The “ Bunch of Feathers, like those of a black Crow, neatly placed on a String 
and gathered into a round Bundle, exactly cut, equal in length,” tallies closely 
with Pomo and Maidu specimens used in the Kuksu ceremonies. 

“Their Bows and Arrows (which are their only Weapons, and almost all 
their Wealth) they use very skilfully, yet without much Execution, they being 
fitter for Children than Men” (which would be an exact description from the 
point of view of the powerful English archer); “‘ though they are usually so 
strong, that one of them could easily carry that a Mile together without Pain, 
which two or three Englishmen there could hardly bear” (not a remarkable 
feat for a people whose only accustomed transport was on their backs). “ They 
run very swiftly and long, and seldom go any other Pace: if they see a Fish 
so near Shoar as to reach the Place without swimming, they seldom miss it.” 
Diving for fish in the ocean has not been reported for any Californians, but 
several tribes are said to have taken salmon by hand in pools of consid- 
erable depth. 

Only the “ canoe,” in which one man put out to meet the ship and in which 
others subsequently appear to have paddled when the English boats ‘“ could 
row no way, but they would follow them,” presents a discrepancy. There is 
no authentic record of true canoes on the whole coast from near Cape Mendo- 
cino to the vicinity of San Luis Obispo. Either custom changed after Drake’s 
day or his ‘‘ canoe” is a loose term for the tule balsa, which was often boat 
shaped, with raised sides, especially when intended for navigation. 


There is no doubt that, hke Cabrillo among the Chumash, Drake 
was received with marked kindliness. Only the extreme veneration 
accorded him is difficult to understand. The simplest explanation 
is that the Indians regarded the whites as the returned dead. Such 
a belief would account for their repeated wailing and self-laceration, 
as well as the burned “ sacrifice ” of feathers. 


THE PROBLEM OF IDENTIFICATION. 


The evidence on the final test—speech—is too scant to be conclusive, 
but is at least favorable to the interpretation of Drake’s friends hav- 
ing been Coast Miwok. The herb “'Tobah” which was presented in 
little baskets is, of course, tobacco, and the “ Root called Patah 
(whereof they make Bread, and eat it either Raw or Baked)” re- 
fers to the Brodiaea and other lily bulbs consumed in quantities by 
all Californians. The word, however, stands for “ potato,” as ‘“ To- 
bah” does for “tobacco.” It is to be noted that the narrative does 
not specify who called the plants thus. Three interjections are men- 
tioned: “ Gnah,” when the natives wished their visitors to continue 
singing; “Oh I,” uttered when the English read their prayers; and 
“Oh,” at the conclusion of their own speaker’s oration. The last 
two find some reflection in the exclamations 0, yo, or zyo, commonly 
used to-day by the Coast Miwok and Pomo as evidences of public 


278 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 


approval. The only real word mentioned in such a way as to indi- 
cate that it was native is “ Hioh,” King. If this was pronounced 
“hayo” or “haio,” with the so-called long sound of English “1,” 
it has a fair parallel in Coast Miwok hozpa, “ chief,” and a closer one 
in Sierra Miwok haiapo. 

Documentary evidence has recently led to the theory that Drake’s 
landing occurred some 10 degrees of latitude farther north than has 
generally been believed. The question thus raised is for historians 
and geographers to solve. Should their views be favorable to the new 
opinion, it would follow that an attempt would have to be made to 
fit Drake’s Indian descriptions to the customs prevalent farther north, 
Whether this could be accomplished with equal success seems very 
doubtful. The Pomo-lke baskets alone present an almost insuperable 
obstacle. If Drake’s occupation of a more northerly portion of the 
coast is confirmed on other grounds, the interpretation of his voyage 
that will therefore almost necessarily follow is that he touched at 
two points, and that the native culture noted by his men in the 
south was, in the condensed narratives that have been preserved, at- 
tributed to the inhabitants of the more northerly harbor. <A theory 
of the prevalence of a perfectly characteristic central Californian 
culture in the region of Cape Flattery only two centuries before white 
men came permanently into both districts can not possibly be enter- 
tained, in whole or in part. 

The ethnologist thus can only conclude that Drake summered on 
some piece of the coast not many miles north of San Francisco, and 
probably in the lagoon to which his name now attaches. He is as- 
sured that the recent native culture in this stretch existed in substan- 
tially the same form more than 300 years ago, and he has tolerable 
reason to believe that the Indians with whom the great explorer 
mingled were the direct ancestors of the Coast Miwok. 


Craprer 19. 
THY SAAS TAN ‘GROUP: 


SHASTAN GROUPS: Recognition, 279; the ‘‘ Sastean”’ division, 280; possible con- 
nections with non-Shastan groups, 280; the “ Palaihnihan”’ division, 282. 
THE NEw RIVER SHASTA, 282, THE KoNoMIHU, 283. THE OKWANUCHU, 284. 


SHASTAN GROUPS. 
RECOGNITION. 


The six Shastan languages are, in the light of present knowledge, 
the northernmost members of the scattered family designated as 
Hokan. <As a group they are also one of the most divergent subdi- 
visions of the family. A tendency to change and specialization has 
penetrated even within the group, nearly all of whose members are 
so different from one another that some analysis is required before 
their kinship is perceptible. 

On older ethnological maps only two languages appear in place 
of the half dozen now recognized: the Sastean and the Palaihnihan. 
The one is the Shasta, the other the Achomawi, but to the former 
were attributed territories subsequently discovered to have held 
three other idioms, while under Palaihnihan Atsugewi had been 
merged into Achomawi. The reason for the long ignoring of the 
three languages adjacent to the Shasta is simple: no vocabularies 
were recerded, the tribes being numerically insignificant, and in 
one case on the verge of extinction when the white man came to 
northern California. Now they have dwindled so far—in fact, to 
all practical purposes perished—that when we are hungry for any 
bits of information that would help to untangle the obscure history 
of these remnants of what may once have been greater peoples, we 
must content ourselves with brief, broken vocabularies and some 
general statements about their speakers obtained from the neigh- 
boring nations. 

For the long hiding of the identity of the Atsugewi under that of 
the Achomawi no such valid reason exists, since the Atsugewi people 
survive to-day to the number of several hundred. Nor was a simi- 
larity of the two tongues the cause of the fault. Kindred, indeed, 
they are, in the sense and measure that French and Spanish are 
related; but they are also at least as different. Idioms in which 7 


279 


280 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 


corresponds to n, w to p, p to k, and m to 7, are not so similar that 
they are confounded by those interested in them. In fact, a bare 
third of the more usual stem words seem to the unaided ear or eye to 
be common to Achomawi and Atsugewi; and on the pioneer student’s 
basis of overlooking trifles, there would have been almost as much 
justification for separating Atsugewi from Achomawi and erecting it 
into a separate family as for keeping Achomawi and Shasta apart, 
as ethnologists did for half a century. What lay at the bottom of 
this inconsistence was that the Atsugewi live in a region topo- 
graphically tributary to the larger Achomawi habitat; that the two 
tribes were in close association and friendly; and that they followed 
very similar customs. No one troubled to make a speech record, 
native statements minimized the difference, and the situation was 
conveniently simplified, as compared with what a little inquiry would 
have revealed as being true. 

Substantially, the Shastan habitat falls into two nearly equal 
halves—a western, the old “ Sastean,” in Klamath drainage, and an 
eastern, the former “ Palaihnihan,” in the drainage of the Pit. As 
the two systems of waters reach the ocean nearly at the Oregon line 
and at San Francisco, respectively, the outlook and connections of 
the two areas were obviously far from identical. 


THE ‘** SASTEAN ” DIVISION. 


The overwhelming body of people in the eastern or “ Sastean ” half 
were the Shasta proper or Shastika, on the Klamath River and its 
tributaries above the Karok and below the Klamath-Modoc. They 
ran over, also, into the Rogue River headwaters in Oregon. 

Fairly close to them in speech, in fact clearly a Jater offshoot of 
the Shasta themselves and not one of the original divergent branches 
of the general Shastan trunk, were the Okwanuchu, outside the 
drainage area of the Klamath and in that of the great central valley 
of California. They held the heads of the Sacramento and McCloud. 

At the source of Salmon River, an affluent of the Klamath, and 
of New River, tributary of the Trinity, which is also an affluent of 
the Klamath, was the little nation which in default of a known native 
name has come to be called the New River Shasta. 

The third of these decayed Shastan groups, the most divergent, 
and the earliest to perish completely, were the Konomihu, on the 
middle course of Salmon River. 


POSSIBLE CONNECTIONS WITH NONSHASTAN GROUPS. 


It is not without significance that in the same region was another 
and distantly allied Hokan, though non-Shastan, tribe that survived 
only in minute proportions at the time of discovery: the Chimariko. 
Crowded against each other and into the deep canyons of a jagged 
country, the coexistence of these three fragments is certainly not 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 281 


without historical significance, which the imagination can sense 
though an ever-lost knowledge forbids it to penetrate. 

In fact, another Hokan division, the Karok, also lived adjacent, 
so that five groups of the same ultimate origin jostled each other in 
this rugged region: the perished New River Shasta, Konomihu, and 
Chimariko, wedged in between the surviving and more broadly 
spread Karok and Shasta. It is quite possible that when comparison 
of all the Hokan languages shall have progressed farther, these five 
idioms may appear to form a single larger group or subfamily, and 
that even the few bits of knowledge available concerning several of 
them will suffice to indicate a new arrangement for the group: 
Konomihu might prove to have its nearest congener in Karok, and 
New River in Chimariko, rather than both in Shasta, for all that it is 
possible to judge to-day. Or such a classification might prove the 
three little peoples the remnant of one Hokan wave or layer that was 
later almost submerged by another that brought Karok and Shasta 
into the vicinity; or the Karok may be the representatives of one 
stream, the four others of a separate one; or still different affiliations 
and consequent conclusions as to origin and movements may be 
imagined. It is useless to speculate at the present time when only 
a small part even of the scanty recorded material on the several 
languages has found its way into print. 

The situation is one of those not infrequently arising in which the 
philologist, and only he, can come to the ethnologist’s or historian’s 
rescue. A dozen randomly preserved facts from the history or civili- 
zation of a nation are almost certain to be so disconnected as to allow 
only of the most general or doubtful inferences; the same number of 
words, if only they and their meanings are carefully written down, 
may, if there are more fully known cognate tongues, suffice to deter- 
mine with reasonable assurance the provenience and the main out- 
lines of the national existence of a lost people. The student of 
history who permits the difference of material and technique of the 
sister science philology to lead him into the lax convenience of dis- 
regarding it as something alien and useless, withdraws his hand 
from one of the most productive tools within his reach—on occasion 
his only serviceable instrument. 

Bearing on the jostling of the three perished and two larger but 
divergent Hokan peoples in this congested section of California, 
and the probability that time has wrought concentrated even if 
slow changes in the ethnic conditions of the area, is the fact that it 
is in this vicinity that four great stocks meet and touch: the Atha- 
bascans, as represented by the Hupa and other members of their 
Pacific coast branch; the Algonkins, in the shape of their most west- 
erly branch, the Yurok and Wiyot; the Penutians, of whom the 
Wintun are the most northerly, at any rate in California; and the 


282 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 78 


Hokan family, of whose many far-stretched divisions along the 
Pacific coast from Tehuantepec up, our very Shastans are the ex- 
treme northern representatives. Again, a present interpretation in 
detail would be pure speculation, tempting though it is to undertake ; 
but it is clear that this extraordinary agglomeration not only has a 
meaning but that it bears a significance which may some day carry 
us back into remote periods. : 


THE ** PALAIHNIHAN ” DIVISION. 


The eastern or “ Palaihnihan” branch of the Shastan complex 
comprises the before-mentioned Achomawi and Atsugew1, one occu- 
pying the larger part of the valley of Pit River, and the other the 
remainder. The Pit joins the Sacramento and McCloud; in fact has 
a much longer course and more extensive catchment basin, and 
carries more water, so that it must properly be regarded as the real 
head of the entire Sacramento River system. The Okwanuchu on the 
McCloud are therefore in the same drainage as the Achomawi- 
Atsugewi. But their speech indicates their primary affinity with the 
Slincoe and they must accordingly be regarded as an offshoot from 
the latter, which has drifted or been crowded over the watershed. 


Tur New River SHASTA. 


Of the three minor Shastan tribes the New River people were per- 
haps rather nearest to the major group in speech, although at that 
their tongue as a whole must have been unintelligible to the Shasta 
proper. 

Their designation is somewhat of a misnomer. ‘They held only 
the upper waters of the torrent known as New River; from the forks 
down the stream was Chimariko. (Fig. 8.) The larger part of their 
habitat was the area of the upper Shatter, both ‘worse of which they 
occupied to within half a dozen miles of the junction. Both these 
tracts are inconceivably rugged; except along the tops of the in- 
numerable ridges, it is doubtful if there is a single 5-acre patch of 
level land in the whole ownings of the tribe. The streams carry 
water the year around, and in winter rage in volume; but they rush 
in twisting beds of rocks. The entire territory lies high; and the 
divide between New and Salmon Rivers is snow-covered the larger 
part of the year. It was a craggy home that these people called their 
own. 

There must have been deer, salmon, and acorns in tolerable abun- 
dance, if little else; but the population was sparse. In 60 years the 
tribe melted away without a survivor, leaving only a fragmentary 
vocabulary and conjectures as to their mode of life. There could not 
have been more than two or three hundred souls when the American 
‘ame In 1850; and there may not have been so many. 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 2983 


The Hupa seem to have called them Amutahwe. This would make 
a convenient designation for them if ‘* New River Shasta” were not 
already in use. Dyjalitasum is probably not their Chimariko name, 
but the Chimariko appellation of New River, probably from the set- 
tlement at its mouth. 
Tue Konominv, 


The Konomihu are the most divergent of the marginal Shastan 
tribes. In fact, it is still questionable whether their speech is more 
properly a highly specialized aberration of Shasta or of an ancient 
and independent but moribund branch of Hokan from which Karok 
and Chimariko are descended together with Shasta. 

The principal Konomihu village—apparently called Shamnam by 
the Karok—was between the forks of Salmon River in Siskiyou 
County, on the right side of the south branch just above the junction. 
They owned some 7 miles up the south fork, 5 up the north, and 4 
down the main river, where the Karok mention Hashuruk. This 
may mean that the Konomihu maintained settlements at these points, 
in which case their hunting claims are likely to have extended 2 or 3 
miles farther. But their territory was exceedingly restricted at best, 
and devoid of rich or even tracts. Below them on the Salmon were 
the Karok; above, the New River Shasta. These two tribes entirely 
shut them off from the outside world, so far as the map shows; but 
they maintained relations and intermarried with the Shasta proper. 
te eee 1) } 

Salmon River was mined over in the early fifties, and the indus- 
try is still not defunct. This usually meant trouble between In- 
dians and whites, and helps to account for the total disappearance 
of the Konomihu. But their population must have been very small 
when the American came, else they would have made more of an 
impress. 

The Salmon River Indian population of to-day is Karok, and 
mostly mixed blood, much of it heavily diluted. It is all drawn in in 
the train of the white man. 

Konomihu is their own name. The Chimariko call them Huno- 
michhu, which sounds like a variant of the same word, but might 
be from Chimariko hwnoi-da, “north.” The Karok group them 
and the New River Shasta together as Mashu-arara, “ Salmon-river 
people.” 

IKKonomihu customs were like those of the Shasta, not of the Karok. 
They wore fringed and painted buckskin clothes, including leg- 
gins. Their carrying receptacle was of skin, and water vessels were 
of the same materials. They made few or no baskets; such as they 
had, they got from the Karok. Their creator was the coyote. These 
are all specific traits of the Shasta, and mark this little people off 
sharply from the nearer Karok. 


2984 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The house was a conical lean-to of bark, slightly excavated. This 
is a much inferior structure to the Shasta one, which in turn is a 
sort of imitation of the Karok house. The type of sweat house is 
unfortunately not known. There was no dance house. The Karok 
dances were not made by the Konomihu. This might be anticipated, 
since the whole character of these dances demands wealth, which 
this poor little group of mountaineers was not likely to possess. 

They did get some dentalia along with their baskets from the rich 
people of the Klamath, though what they could offer in exchange 
except the furs and deerskin clothing which they traded to the 
Shasta for disk-bead money would be difficult to conjecture. Elk- 
horn spoons and steatite dishes of Karok type were used by the 
KKonomihu; where they were manufactured is uncertain. 

The dead were buried. 

Fish are said to have been taken only or chiefly with spears. The 
rapid, tumbling streams would afford more frequent opportunity 
for the use of the harpoon than of nets. Acorns, the statement goes, 
- were crushed in wooden mortars; which if true is quite unexampled 
for this part of California. 


THe OKWANUCHU. 


The Okwanuchu held the upper Sacramento from about the 
vicinity of Salt and Boulder Creeks to the headwaters; also the 
McCloud River and Squaw Creek from about their junction up; 
in other words, the heads of the streams draining south from the 
giant Mount Shasta. The upper waters of the McCloud were 
probably not permanently settled; whether Okwanuchu or Acho- 
mawi had the better fortified ancient hunting rights there is not 
certain; the line on the map makes no pretense as to proved ex- 
actness. The entire Okwanuchu habitat is a mountain region, cut 
and broken, but not as rugged as some areas in the northern coast 
ranges; and very heavily timbered—as usual in California, with 
conifers. 

The dialect is peculiar. Many words are practically pure Shasta; 
others are distorted to the very verge of recognizability, or utterly 
different. . 

It is not known whether Okwanuchu is their own name or what 
the Shasta called them. The Achomawi and Atsugewi knew them 
as Ikusadewi, or Yeti, from Yet, Mount Shasta. 

There may have been a few dozen or two or three hundred 
Okwanuchu two generations ago; not more. There is not one now. 
There are Indians on the upper Sacramento and McCloud to-day; 
put they are Wintun, who have come in with the American, and 
their current name, “ Shastas,” means nothing more than that they 
live in Shasta County or near Mount Shasta. 


CHAPTER 20, 
THE SHASTA. 


Designation, 285; habitat and divisions, 285; trade, 287; population, 287; cul- 
ture, 288; houses, 289; manufactured objects, 290; basketry, 291; money, 
292; clothing, 292; food, 298; games, 294; social rank, 296; law and mar- 
riage, 296; war, 297; birth, 299; adolescence, 299; death, 300; shamanism, 
301; ritual, 304; myth, 304. 


DESIGNATION. 


The origin of the name Shasta, made famous by the great extinct 
voleano to which it now attaches, is veiled in doubt and obscurity. 
It seems most likely to have been the appellation of a person, a chief 
of some consequence, called Sasti. 

Besides the now standardized form of their name, the Shasta have 
been known under the appellation Saste, Shasty, and Shastika. The 
Jatter contains the native nominative suffix. The Achomawi and 
Atsugewi call them Sastidji, which seems to be a native coinage 
from the name given by the whites. The Achomawi also employ 
Nomki-dji, which appears to be a similar formation from a Wintun 
root, and Ekpimi, which may be a native term but denotive of a 
locality. The nearer Wintun say Waikenmuk, which has reference 
to their northerly location. The Karok call the Shasta language 
Tishraw-ara-hi; the group itself they designate as Tishraw-arara, 
the branches on Salmon River as Mashuh-arara. The Takelma in 
Oregon know the Shasta as Wulh or “ enemies.” 


HABITAT AND DIVISIONS. 


The Shasta held the Klamath River between the Karok and the 
Lutuamian Klamath and Modoc; to be specific, from a point between 
Indian and Thompson Creeks to a spot a few miles above the mouth 
of Fall Creek. They occupied also the areas drained by two con- 
siderable southern tributaries of the Klamath, Scott River and Shasta 
River. Their limits in this direction were formed by the watershed 
that separates from the Sacramento, Trinity,and Salmon. Eastward, 
their boundary was also marked by drainage; roughly, it ran north 
from Mount Shasta to Mount Pitt in Oregon. Finally, Shasta ter- 
ritory comprised a tract on the north side of the Siskiyous, in Oregon, 


285 


286 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


on the affluents of Rogue River known as Stewart River and Little 
Butte Creek. 

This habitat must be described as mountainous. The plateau which 
forms its base is from 2,000 to 4,000 feet above the sea, with peaks and 
ridges rising well up into the snow line during much the greater part 
of the year. The food supply is not particularly favorable. Oaks 
begin to approach their northern and eastern limit, and are less 
numerous than down the Klamath and in the Sacramento drainage 
system. The Klamath is but little smaller than among the Yurok 
and Karok. In considerable part it is bordered by little strips of 
valley, whereas among the lower peoples it is so confined in its 
canyon as to afford few spaces for towns except narrow sites on old 
river terraces. The result is that the Shasta traveled mostly on foot, 
the Yurok by boat. 

The Shasta territory falls into four natural drainage areas of about 
equal size. The people within each tract were marked off by certain 
peculiarities of dialect and custom. There is no precise record of 
these distinctions, but they do not seem to have been considerable. 
The Rogue River division was called Kahosadi; that on the Klamath, 
Kammatwa or Wiruhikwairuk’a. The Scott Valley people were the 
Truaitsu ; those of Shasta Valley, the Ahotireitsu. The term “ Kikat- 
sik” sometimes refers to the Scott and Shasta Valley groups com- 
bined, sometimes to the former alone. 

The people of each district were thrown by circumstances: into 
closer internal association. Each group looked up to the richest 
man within its confines as the one most to be respected. There was 
little that could be called governmental unity within the groups. 

The known Kammatwa settlements were, in order up the Klamath, and always 
on its sunny northern side unless the contrary is specified: Chitatowoki, Ututsu, 
Asouru, Sumai, Arahi (south side), Harokwi, Kwasuk (south side), Aika, Umta- 
hawa, Itiwukha, Ishui, Awa, Waukaiwa, Opshiruk, Ishumpi, Okwayig, Hras 
(south side), Asurahawa (south side), Kutsastsus. 

Among the Jruaitsu, Orowichaira and Itayah are known. 

Ahotireitsu towns were Ihiweah, Kusta, Ikahig, Asta, Ahawaiwig. 

The Scott and Shasta Valley divisions, or villages within them, 
were sometimes in embittered feud. 

It has been thought that the position of the Shasta with reference 
to the minor Shastan fragments bordering them on the south might 
indicate that their drift had been from the north across the Siskiyous 
toward a submersion of these more ancient Californian relatives of 
theirs. But the revelation of their affinity to the great Hokan family 
negates this theory, since it makes the Shasta proper the most north- 
erly member of the wider group to which they belong, and their Ore- 
gonian subdivision on Rogue River the extreme outpost of the 
family. Whatever minor and more recent fluctuations the Shasta 


Paks 


eS ee 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 287 


may have been subject to, it therefore seems impossible to avoid the 
conclusion that in all probability their general movement in the past 
has been from the south northward. The particular shiftings of all 
the northern Hokans, the Karok and Chimariko and Yana as well 
as the six Shastan groups, with reference to the family as a whole, 
to each other and to alien tribes, give every indication, on the ground 
of topographic as well as linguistic relations, of having been intricate. 


TRADE. 


There was considerable trade down the Klamath with the Karok; 
and possibly through their territory. Dentalia, salt or seaweed, 
baskets of all kinds, tan-oak acorns, and canoes were the articles 
that came to the Shasta. In return they gave obsidian, deerskins, 
and sugar-pine nuts. From the Wintun to the south the Shasta had 
less that they could get. They did, however, receive acorns, and 
gave for them the same goods which they traded to the Karok, plus 
some of the dentalia which they themselves purchased. There was 
considerable intercourse with their own kinsmen and the Athabas- 
cans on Rogue River. Oaks become scarce or cease near the northern 
line of California, and any surplus of acorn flour that the Shasta 
possessed found ready takers among these Oregonian people. In 
return a stream of dentalia—which came, of course, ultimately from 
the same source on the far northern coast as those which traveled up 
the Klamath—flowed up Rogue River into Shasta possession. With 
the Modoc and Klamath Lake peoples on the head waters of the 
Klamath the Shasta traded comparatively little. 


POPULATION, 


The numbers of the Shasta were sparse. A Government field cen- 
sus in 1851 yielded 24 towns on the Klamath, 7 on the Scott, and 19 on 
the Shasta River, or 50 settlements of an estimated average popu- 
lation of 60. This figure is too high, however, since many villages 
comprised only two or three houses. Even the populous Yurok 
averaged only 45 souls to a town. If we allow the Shasta 40, their 
total is 2,000. If this figure is posited for the California Shasta 
alone, exclusive of those on Rogue River, it is likely to be a full allow- 
ance. 

For to-day there are no reliable statistics; but the reduction since 
1850 has been heavy, even for California. The 1910 census names 
255; but as Shasta has become the designation of any Shasta County 
Indian, or any native of the vicinity of the peak, and the Indians 
have largely accepted this terminology, the figure has no ethnic 
meaning. Nearly all of the most northerly Wintun pass as “ Shastas.” 


20 





Penne Or 


288 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


The number of survivors to whom the true tribal epithet apples 
is scarcely likely to be in excess of 100, if indeed it reaches that 


figure. 
CULTURE. 


Shasta civilization is a pallid, simplified copy of that of the Yurok 
and Karok, as befits a poorer people of more easily contented aspi- 


on 9 9 9) a S39) Oe 
Ce 2a) Te 





a LD a By 
foe i) Kee 
Ssqjcacsscacaca | Ef [eos — 
2 A 
(Ses CS Cee es eS eo = 


Fie. 23.—Plan of Shasta house. a, Posts; 0, plate logs; c, vertical 
planks of end walls; d, low side walls of earth lined with bark; e, 
roof planks; f, fireplace and smoke hole; g, inner, h, outer door; 
wood room to left of doors. (After Dixon.) 


rations. There are some evidences of eastern influences from the 
Columbia River and Great Basin region, but less than among the 
Achomawi and far fewer than the Modoc evince. In many features 
there is an approach to the customs typical of central California : not 
to the complex institutions of the Sacramento Valley, but to the 
cultural background of the peripheral hill tribes such as the Yana, 
the mountain Maidu, the southern Athabascans, and the adjacent 
Wintun. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 289 


In short, the Shasta constituted a fringe of both the northwestern 
and the central civilizations of California, with more leanings toward 
the former. They displayed national peculiarities, of course; but 
these usually take the aspect of modifications rather than elabora- 
tions, 

HOUSES. 


_ ‘The house is a case in point. It is essentially the Yurok board 
house with many of its most distinctive traits retained; but altered 
also in the direction of simplicity of construction. The ridge pole 
is double, but the roof comes to a single crest, as in the Yurok poor 
man’s house. ‘The ridge poles as well as side plates rest on posts, 
as in the central Californian dwelling. The Yurok practice of laying 
them into notches in the end walls argues heavier planking and a 





' 
t 
' 
' 
' 
' 
’ 
’ 
' 
‘ 
} 
‘ 
‘ 
' 
! 
' 
1 
y 
‘ 
' 
' 
' 
‘ 


; 
‘ 

‘ 
‘. 
s 


- 


Fie. 24.—Cross section of Shasta house. a, Posts; b, plate logs; c, roof planks; 
d, side walls of earth, lined with, e, bark; f, fireplace pot; g, bed of pine needles ; 
h, storage space. (After Dixon.) 


more painstaking workmanship in spite of its theoretical structural 
inferiority. The Shasta dig out the whole interior, adding a small 
shallow pit for the fireplace. Thus the Yurok distinction between 
the deep central sitting and sleeping place around the fire and 
the elevated storage shelf surrounding it is lost. Evidently the 
Shasta had less to store. Their house also had no real side walls. 
Earth was piled up to reach the eaves, and this lined interiorly with 
slabs of cedar bark. Even the poorest Yurok in the degenerate days 
of the present would think he had sunk below decency if he introduced 
mere bark into any part of his home. The door was made by omitting 
the lower half of one of the boards in the end wall and hanging in 
a mat—a much simpler proceeding than the northwestern one of 
carving a round hole in a 4-inch plank and providing a wooden slide 
panel. The four roof rafters appear to have been logs—a central Cali- 
fornian habit. ‘The true northwesterners hewed theirs out into beams 
set on edge. (Figs. 23, 24.) 


290 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


The Yurok entrance passage or wood room was retained by the 
Shasta; but it was essentially a porch outside the house, and its 
entrance was not closed by any door. 

The Shasta lived in their permanent houses only part of the year. 
The summer camp was a roofless windbreak of brush. 

There was a small menstrual lodge. 

The sweat house, literally “large house,” was the man’s sleeping 
place in winter. It does not seem to have been a dance house like 
the round “sweat house” of the central Californians, but, on the 
other hand, was resorted to for gambling, which no Yurok would 
have done, and for ordinary assemblages. 


yy, 


The plan of this “large house” was part central and part northwestern in 
character. The size, up to 80 and 40 feet in length, was central; the rectan- 
gular shape, northwestern. The roof was of planks covered with pine needles 
and earth—clearly a compromise between two independent motives, since rough 
poles will answer as well as boards to support a layer of dirt, while a good 
plank roof needs no earth finish. A center post, connected with one at each 
end by the ridge pole and holding up a roof that slopes but slightly, are Yurok 
and Karok features. The door was close to the middle of one of the ends; it 
was cut in a circle through a plank and closed by a wooden slide, as in the 
northwestern living house. A second opening was in the roof, as in the Sac- 
ramento Valley. The floor was either of packed earth, as in the latter region, 
or of split lumber, as lower on the Klamath. 


It is clear that this Shasta “large house” is not a survival of an 
undifferentiated form from which the Yurok and Maidu types of 
sweat houses have gradually been elaborated. One can not have seen 
the two latter and know the intimacy of religious associations with 
each, and be aware of the regularity with which each of their fea- 
tures recurs among tribe after tribe, without being firmly impressed 
with the conviction that the Shasta structure is a hybrid makeshift, 
the hesitating product of a people who, historically speaking, did not 
know their own minds. 

Even the function of this edifice was vague. When a Shasta really 
wanted to sweat he did not enter the “large house” which he had 
helped his headman to build, but crawled into a sweat lodge of 
Plains type, a small hemisphere of pine bark and skins thrown over 
a few bent willows; unfortunately, it 1s not reported whether he 
smoked or steamed himself in this. With neither dances nor sweat- 
ing taking place in the “large house,” the most specific uses of this 
structure, by either central or northwestern standards, were lost. 


MANUFACTURED OBJECTS. 


Among utensils identical with those of the Karok, or closely 
similar, the following may be mentioned: Pipes with stone bowls; 
spoons, though these were often of wood in place of elk horn, and 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 291 


simple in decoration; acorn mush paddles, also with rudimentary 
carving; acorn meal brushes; cradles, some of which approach the 
shallower northern Wintun form; probably bows; ring-and-pin games 
of salmon vertebre; and the deer-hoof rattle of the Tolowa and 
Wailaki. The lack of the wooden clapper and cocoon rattle is also 
shared by the Shasta and Karok. The pestle evinces only occasion- 
ally an approach to the ringing of the northwest, and that at the 
tip in place of two-thirds of the way to the butt; and it is short and 
inclined to be asymmetrical, 

An ingenious device was followed in boring pipes. Sticks of a certain hard 
kind were stood in a little salmon oil, which was drawn up by the softer core, 
After one end of this had been picked out with a bone point, a grub from a 
piece of dry salmon was pushed into the excavation, and confined with a daub 
of pitch. By spring the prisoner had either died or eaten his way out along 
the oil-soaked pith to the other end. ; 

The Klamath is fairly favorable for navigation in Shasta territory. 
Yurok redwood canoes were occasionally bought from the Karok, and 
now and then rough imitations were made at home out of sugar-pine 
logs. 

The stone mortars which are found in their land are never used by 
the Shasta, who, like all northern Californians, pound in a basketry 
hopper set on a slab. 

String was either of iris or Apocynum fibers. 


BASKETRY., 


Shasta basketry has disappeared. The reduction and breaking up 
of the stock may account in some measure for the perishing of this 
art. It is, however, the native industry which among other tribes 
is usually retained after all others have vanished. It is therefore 
difficult to understand why basket making should have gone out of 
use so completely among the Shasta, except on the suspicion of the 
correctness of their own statements to the effect that they always 
depended in considerable measure on trade with the neighboring 
Kkarok for their supphes of woven vessels. Even this relation of 
dependence is an anomaly in California. 

Such ware as the Shasta manufactured was entirely of Yurok and 
Karok type. The materials, technique, patterns, shapes, and uses were 
the same. Even such pattern names as have been recorded show 
approximation to those of the Karok. 

Besides the usual cone-shaped basket, the Shasta made another 
carrying receptacle of rawhide on a wooden frame, they say. The 
seeds struck into this were beaten with an implement whose network 
was also of skin. Taken in connection with the buckskin clothing, 
there is here undoubted evidence of an eastern influence upon the 
Shasta. | 


292, BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 
MONEY. 


Dentalium shells were traded from the Karok and the Rogue 
River Athabascans of California; they seem to have been measured 
and rated in the same way, but had a higher purchasing power. 
Searlet woodpecker scalps also served as currency; but those of the 
large bird possessed only twice the value of the smaller crests, 
whereas among the Yurok the ratio was six to one. The central 
Californian disk bead of hard clamshell was less prized than den- 
talia; its measure was a long fathom, drooping to the navel. 


CLOTHING. © 


Clothing was the same as that worn lower down the Klamath, 
with the addition of some elements that must be ascribed to eastern 
influences. Women’s costume was identical with that of the Karok, 
except that in some instances the braided front-apron was replaced 
by a buckskin, and that occasionally a rude unsleeved shirt or gown 
of deerskin was added to the two-piece skirt. 

The men’s costume comprised a similar shirt with short sleeves, 
leggings, and moccasins. all of buckskin. ‘This is the description 
which the Shasta themselves give of their ancient clothing, but it 
is doubtful on the one hand how far the account may refer to more 
recent conditions obtaining since the presence of the whites caused 
a greater intermixture of diverse tribes and, on the other hand, 
how far this dress may have been truly Shasta but worn only on 
special occasions. The buckskin shirt is said to have varied from a 
true garment to nothing more than a deerskin. The leggings ex- 
tended from ankle to hip and were worn with the breechclout. The 
Hupa knew leggings, but wore them only for hunting deer in the 
snow-covered mountains, and did not extend them beyond the knee. 
On the other hand, a full-length legging is reported from the 
Achomawi, a people related in origin to the Shasta, similar to 
them in degree of culture, and virtually their neighbors on the east. 
The moccasin was sewed with a single straight seam up the front 
and carried a heavy sole of elk or bear skin. For winter wear the 
inner sole was cut out and the foot rested upon the fur side of the 
bearskin. Sometimes the winter moccasin was made large enough 
to allow the foot to be wrapped with squirrel skin, wild-cat fur, 
or moss. This stuffing of the shoe has parallels among the Modoc 
and Achomawi. At the same time the soled moccasin is not Cali- 
fornian. It is accordingly a question whether its use by the Shasta 
is to. be ascribed to extra-Californian influences from the north or 
east or is to be set down merely as a modern improvement. In 
any event it is unlikely that the Shasta habitually wore either the 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 293 


moccasin or the legging. Both articles were probably reserved for 
travel, especially in winter. 

Men allowed their hair to grow long. It either hung loose or was 
gathered on top of the head by means of a bone pin, according to 
occasion. 

Women wore their hair in two wrapped clubs in front of each 
shoulder—in Yurok style. 

The villages in Shasta Valley used the central Californian head 
net; the other divisions did not. This may be an incident of the 
recent introduction of Awkswu dance costumes from the Sacramento 
Valley. 

Tattooing was identical with that in vogue down the Klamath. 
The operator was an old woman who was paid; the instrument, a 
flake of obsidian. The entire chin was scratched with parallel cuts 
at one time, and the operation repeated after an interval, if neces- 
sary. ‘Tattooing was in some measure a puberty rite. It was per- 
formed shortly before the girl’s adolescence, and her dreams during 
the night following the first operation were believed to be presages 
of her career. 


FOOD. 


The acorn most esteemed by the Shasta, as apparently by most 
tribes who could secure it, was that of the tan oak (Quercus densi- 
flora). The Shasta obtained this in quantity, however, only by 
trade with the groups lower down the Klamath. Of native species, 
preference was given to the black oak (Quercus californica), and 
next to the white (Quercus garryana). Black-oak acorns were 
treated as by the Yurok, with one exception: Leaching is said to 
have been done on an elevated platform of sticks covered with pine 
needles, on which was a layer of sand. This looks hke a compro- 
mise between the usual northern method of leaching directly in 
the sand and the southern, and sometimes central, device of employ- 
ing a basket or layer of fir leaves without sand. A step in the acorn 
preparation process that has often been overlooked is the removal 
of the membrane covering the kernel. The Shasta rubbed this off by 
hand, which was probably the procedure elsewhere also. A surplus 
of black-oak acorn-meal dough was often dried for storage or trade. 

The treatment of white-oak acorns was the same, bat the mush 
from them was somewhat slimy and less esteemed. Live-oak acorns 
(Quercus chrysolepis) were buried in the shell in mud until they 
turned black. The Yurok similarly lay acorns in water for a pro- 
tracted period. The Shasta ate these darkened kernels cooked whole 
or roasted them in ashes. P 

Manzanita berries were crushed for cider, as by the Wintun, 
Yokuts, and other tribes. Meal made from the dried and pounded 


994 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULD. 78 


berries was sometimes mixed with acorn-flour soup. Sugar-pine nuts 
were steamed in an earth oven, then dried and stored. After being 
eround they were either eaten in cakes or mixed with dry powdered 
salmon. 

Salmon was split and lightly smoked for drying. It was kept 
either in thin slabs or completely pulverized. This salmon dust was 
stored in large, soft baskets or sacks of tule. No such pliable rush 
baskets have been reported from the culturally so much better pre- 
served Karok, Yurok, or Hupa. Crushed salmon bones and crushed 
deer bones were similarly stored, to be made into soup in winter. 
Venison was hung up and smoked to dry, but bear meat was boiled 
first. 

Salt is said to have been obtained from the Karok: seaweed is 
likely to have been meant. 

Fish dams were built across the Klamath River at the mouths of 
Shasta River, Scott River, and—by the adjacent Karok—at Indian 
Creek. The Yurok made only two dams, and the Karok not more 
than three, it appears. Each of the Shasta dams was the property 
of one family. To the head of this family belonged all the salmon 
that were caught in the willow fish traps placed in the openings. 
Custom prescribed, however, that he should give to everyone who 
asked for them as many fish as could be carried away. All were also 
at liberty to spear at the dam. 

The Shasta salmon net differs only in details from that in use by 
the Yurok and Karok. It is a long, flowing bag attached to the base 
of a triangle of poles the upper end of which is held by the fisherman 
who sits on the scaffolding projecting over an eddy in the stream. 
The chief peculiarity of the Shasta net seems to be that its frame is 
held in place along one side by a grapevine rope tied to the shore, and 
on the other side by a sliding loop that passes over a stake in the 
water. 

The Shasta believed that the first salmon to reach them each sprin 
was sacred from the medicine and prayer put upon it in the Yurok 
ceremony at the mouth of the river, and that it must therefore be 
allowed to pass. Any succeeding fish were caught, but none could 
be eaten until the first one taken had been completely dried and had 
been eaten by those assembled for the fishing. It has not been re- 
ported whether any further ceremony attended this regulation. The 
corresponding rituals among the downstream tribes are of great 
sanctity and their esoteric features are jealously guarded. 

Dogs were carefully trained for hunting, and when proficient were 
kept in sheltered kennels behind the living house. A blowfly song 
and a grizzly bear sang were sung to them, to increase their power of 
scent and their ability to frighten game. They were employed in 





KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 295 


driving deer into the water, into corrals with snares in the openings, 
and apparently through the snow. 

The elk being rather too large an animal to be successfully snared, 
was most frequently run down in winter, the hunter following it on 
snowshoes and dispatching it with arrows. 

If the arrows of several hunters struck the same deer, that one 
was reckoned as having killed it whose arrow first found the mark, 
whether mortal or not. Part of the flesh was always given away, 
but the hide and legs were retained by the slayer, for feac that if 
they came into other hands his luck might be lost to him through 
these portions being brought in contact with a woman in tabooed 
condition. Perhaps the risk was thought to be greater as regards 
those parts that were not promptly consumed. At that, it is unlikely 
that a hunter would have allowed any of the meat of his kill to go 
into a house upon the friendship of whose inmates he could not 
thoroughly rely. 

For a year after he began tc hunt a boy never ate any game of his 
own killing for fear of his luck leaving him permanently. From 
his very first quarry his entire family refrained. When the year 
was up the boy was whipped with his own bowstring by his father. 
This was evidently a minor puberty rite, since whipping with the 
bowstring formed an essential part of the more elaborate puberty 
ceremony of the Achomawi. Among the Yurok whipping with a 
bowstring was thought to be the only means of self-protection against 
a supposedly dead person who pushed his way out of the grave and 
who was then as invulnerable as he was destructive. 


GAMES. 


The Shasta play the guessing game both in its central Californian 
“orass” and its northwestern “many-stick” forms. It is inter- 
esting that men use the former and women the latter. Outwardly 
the men’s game resembles the northwestern type, since it comprises 
15 or 20 slender rods. As only two of these, however, one marked 
and one unmarked, are used at any one time, the use and manipula- 
tion of the pieces are like those of the central tribes. The men 
play for 14 counters, the women for 10. It is reported that these 
counters are not, as usual in California, in a neutral pile at the start, 
but that half are in possession of each contestant, as among our- 
selves. A man stakes his last two counters as a unit on the result 
of two consecutive guesses, in the second of which he must make 
choice from among three bundles of grass. If either guess is correct, 
he keeps both counters and wins his turn to play. 

Dice have not been reported, 


2996 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Double-ball shinny was a woman’s game, as in most of California, 
whereas among the true northwestern tribes it was played by the 
men. 

The hoop and dart game was known to boys, who shot with arrows 
at a rolling disk of pine bark. 

The ring and pin game was played with salmon vertebre. The 
number of bones was 12, each representing a month, and play 
occurred during the wane of the moon, to hasten its death during 
the long winter. 

3 SOCIAL RANK. 


In a sense it can be said that Shasta chieftainship was hereditary 
in the male line, but the implication of the designation is mis- 
leading. The chief was the head of the richest family in the district, 
and his succession to the “title” was only incidental to his in- 
heritance of the family’s wealth.. The son is said to have succeeded 
only if there was no surviving brother. One family was recognized 
as preeminent in each of the four geographic divisions into which 
the Shasta are grouped. 

The functions of this so-called chief were governmental only 
in so far as they could be exercised in relation to property. He acted 
as mediator in quarrels by influencing the adjustment of the pay- 
ments due for injuries. If the payer was poor or embarrassed, the 
chief frequently advanced him the necessary compensation or even 
met the claim against him. The obligations accruing in this way 
must have had far-reaching effect in enhancing the power of the 
rich man. In the same way the chief avoided participation in war- 
fare so far as possible, but became prominent as soon as terms of 
peace came to be discussed—that is, when monetary settlement was 
undertaken. This has many central Californian analogues. 

Slaves were held by the Shasta as by the northwestern tribes, but 
were probably even less numerous than there. It is said that they 
were acquired in war. The northwestern slave normally entered his 
condition through debt. 


LAW AND MARRIAGE. 


Legal regulations were probably less refined, and the compensation 
accorded smaller, among the Shasta than among the Yurok, but the 
basis of equity was identical. Injuries of all sorts, from loss of 
property and petty theft to murder and killing in avowed warfare, 
were settled by payments. The blood money payable for every indi- 
vidual was exactly the same as the amount paid for his or her mother 
by her husband. This is an efficient device which might well have 
been the custom of the northwestern tribes, though it has not been 
reported from them. It is, however, possible that the Shasta were 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 297 


readily content with such a simple and fair solution, whereas the 
mercenary tendency of the Yurok and Hupa may have actuated them 
to attempt to secure all obtainable compensation in every case. Like 
the northwestern tribes, the rule of the Shasta was that a fair offer 
of blood money might not be declined, and that its acceptance abso- 
lutely forbade any subsequent revenge. 

If vengeance was exacted on one of the blood kin of the murderer 
before settlement was made, the victim on each side was paid for. 
If the murderer or a member of his family met with a serious acci- 
dent soon after the killing, this was attributed to the natural wishes 
and prayers of the family of the victim, who were thus given credit 
for having attained their desired vengeance and were as fully lable 
for the wound or death as if they had physically inflicted it. 

Marriage was by payment or specified contract to pay, and people’s 
social status depended upon the amounts paid by their fathers for 
their mothers. A rich man might buy his son a wife of high standing 
while he was still a small boy. Although the marriage was not con- 
summated for many years, payment was made immediately. Should 
the betrothal be broken by the death of the girl or for any other 
reason, full repayment was of course requisite. Young men of 
medium wealth were assisted by their relatives in accumulating the 
property necessary to obtain a wife. If the amount thus gathered 
remained insufficient, the youth often received his wife on promise 
to make up the amount later. A poor man lived with his father-in- 
law and hunted and worked for him until considered to have liqui- 
dated his debt. It seems, however, that, as by the Yurok, such a 
union was not regarded a marriage in the full sense, since in case of 
outright purchase the husband always took his wife to his own house. 

Not long after marriage the bride’s relatives visited her in state at 
her new home, and the visit was then reciprocated by the husband’s 
people. On each occasion the ornaments and clothing worn by the 
guests were presented to the hosts. This interchange of property 
seems to have been something in the nature of a matching of liber- 
ality, to have been conducted without bargaining or stipulation, and 
to have had, therefore, no direct relation to the marriage payment. 

The levirate followed as a natural consequence upon the monetary 
basis of marriage. The wife having been paid for, her return to her 
kin on the death of her husband would have been equivalent to a 
loss of wealth to his family. For this reason she was married to a 
brother, or to another relative in case of there being no brothers. In 
the same way, if the wife should die, particularly without issue, she 
must be replaced by a sister or other relative. Accepting the native 
premises, such a substitute wife should, according to our logic, be 
furnished free; but the Shasta, like the Yurok, paid a small amount 


298 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


for her. It is stated that a widower must remarry within his wife’s 
family unless released by them; but this can hardly have been much 
else than theory, since there would have been no reason for a man’s 
buying himself a wife out of a new family when he had one available 
with little cost in the old. 

A divorce was a reexchange of the woman and the property paid 
for her. For infidelity or barrenness the husband could exact divorce 
or a sister in his wife’s place. Without such cause, he was not at 
liberty to demand the return of the: purchase payment, although 
he was, of course, free to send his wife back to her family without 
claim, if he were sentimental enough. In no event, however, could 
a woman remarry whose price had not been refunded. If she went 
to live with a new husband it was he rather than the woman’s kin 
who was held responsible for payment and likely to be killed if it 
were not forthcoming. 

It would seem that adultery was Considered a sort of irremediable offense, 
since it is said that payment was not even offered, and blood revenge taken as 
soon as possible. The slayer in such a case, too, paid but a nominal price for 
his victim. A husband who lived with his father-in-law, in other words was in 


debt to him for his wife, was entirely without redress in case of adultery com- 
mitted against him; but possibly some claim rested with the woman’s father. 


The normal price paid for a woman of average standing is said 
to have been 15 or 20 full-sized dentalium shells, 10 to 15 strings of 
disk beads, and 20 to 30 woodpecker scalps, with one or more deer- 
skins added for good measure. This is not more than a half or a 
third of the amount that the Yurok would consider appropriate, they 
paying 10 strings of medium-sized dentalia, or about 125 all told, 
plus other property amounting to half as much or more in value. 
The lower price establishes the Shasta money as more valuable and 
themselves as correspondingly poorer. 


WAR. 


War was chiefly conducted by raiding hostile villages. A pre- 
paratory dance would be held for several nights. The members of 
the prospective party stood in line, carrying bows or knives, and 
stamping one foot: Position and step are characteristic of all the 
dances of the northwestern tribes. Women stood at the ends of the 
line. They are said sometimes to have accompanied the party. That 
they then actually succeeded in cutting the enemy’s bowstrings is 
more likely to be a tradition than a fact. They may have gone along 
in order to carry food and to cook. The warriors were elaborately 
painted with circular spots. They sometimes wore elk skin or rod 
armor similar to that of the Hupa and Yurok, and a headband or 
helmet of hide, such as the Hupa and Karok seem also to have 


known. (PI. 18.) 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 299 


BIRTH. 


Customs concerned with birth are of the Yurok type. Delivery 
takes place in the woman’s hut. The mother remains in this hut for 
a month. For the first five days she uses a scratching bone for her 
head. The father for the same period observes restrictions of the 
kind followed by the northwestern tribes for purification. There is 
nothing, however, that gives the impression of any form of the 
couvade; although the father, from fear of prenatal influences, 
hunted less and less as the time for birth approached. 

Delaved delivery was remedied by songs which are clearly equiva- 
lents of the northwestern formulas. These songs are in narrative, or 
at least refer to myths. They are private property sold for high 
amounts. | 

For the first five days infants were steamed over baskets of water 
kept boiling as constantly as possible. It seems that this practice 
is connected with the northwestern habit of giving the child food in 
only nominal quantities for the first five days. The umbilical cord 
was either burned or carefully wrapped and secreted at a distance 
from habitations. 

Up to the age of about 3 years children had all their hair burned 
off close to the head. For girls this process was continued over a 
stripe from the forehead to the nape until they attained adolescence. 


ADOLESCENCE, 


Both boys and girls had their ears pierced amid simple ceremonial 
observances shortly before puberty. This custom seems a weakened 
reflection of the corresponding Achomawi practices, 


The observances for waphi or adolescent girls are mainly, but not wholly, of 
northwestern type. The girl’s period of fasting and seclusion is 10 days, and 
each night she participates in a dance made for her. She wears a band or 
visor of blue-jay feathers like those used by the Karok to shield the eyes. She 
is forbidden to look upon fire, sun, Moon, or human beings. She does not speak 
except perhaps to whisper to her mother. She may not wash or comb her hair, 
can scratch her head and eyes only with a bone, and wears moceasins contin- 
ually—perhaps because the only activity besides dancing permitted her is to 
gather wood for the dance fire and for every house in the village. She sleeps as 
little as possible, with her head in a mortar basket. While in her hut she holds 
and occasionally shakes a deer-hoof rattle, the implement associated with this 
class of observances throughout the greater part of northern California. 

A curious and unexplained symbolic reference to the east pervades the whole 
of this ceremony. The girl faces east while in her hut. She faces east while 
dancing. The dancers mostly look in the same direction. On the morning after 
the tenth night the girl’s blue-jay band is very gradually removed from her 
eyes, being successively lifted and replaced more and more. At high noon it is 
at last wholly taken off and thrown toward the east. This act marks the real 
conclusion of the ceremony, although it is followed by the dance of war prep- 
aration. 


300 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY =: [BULL 78 


The adolescence dance itself is conducted on a much more sump- 
tuous scale by the Shasta than by most other tribes, evidently because 
it is one of their few opportunities for indulging in rhythmic ritual. 
It takes two principal forms, a round dance and one in which the 
men lock arms and rock sideways while women hold on to their belts 
from behind. ‘There is also a welcoming dance to parties of visitors. 
The last night was one of freely tolerated license. To maintain 
this ceremony for 10 days, and then repeat it in full on two subse- 
quent occasions, meanwhile feeding all visitors from other villages, 
entailed great expense on the waphi’s parents. 

The Shasta relate one curious belief which they formerly entertained. All 
dreams of an adolescent girl during her first ceremony were omens and were 
confessed to her mother. Should she dream of a disaster, such as a conflagration 
or the death of a member of the village, the impending calamity could be 
averted only by the family’s decking her in her finery and burning her alive. 
This custom can hardly have had an.existence outside of native opinion. 


DEATH. 


A person dying indoors is taken out through a hole in the roof 
instead of the door. If possible, interment takes place in the middle 
of the day. While the corpse is lying outdoors, a fire is kept burn- 
ing near it, and it is moved about at short intervals. Relatives and 
friends wail and dance about the body with fir staves in their hands 
or fir branches attached to their bodies. For a man slain in war, 
bows, arrows, and knives are substituted for the branches. The body 
is rolled in skins and laid full length and on its back in the waist or 
shoulder deep grave with the head to the east. Friends and kindred 
bring small quantities of currency of which part is destroyed or 
placed with the body, the remainder returned to them. Sometimes 
the grave is undercut and the corpse put into the recess at the side 
and blocked in with stones before the grave is filled, to prevent 
depredation by bears. This practice was probably rendered necessary 
by the fact that some of the Shasta cemeteries were at a distance 
from the village, whereas the true northwestern tribes bury their dead 
close to the town and often in its middle. The branches worn in the 
dance were used to line the grave, and the staves to erect a paling 
around it. If a man died at a distance, he was either cremated 
or buried in the local graveyard. In the latter event his relatives 
would subsequently pay the residents for the exhumation of his bones 
and transportation to his ancestral cemetery. 

Near relatives, or possibly only those who had come in contact with 
the corpse, were considered unclean and fasted and sweated for 
five days. The Shasta, however, make no mention of any purifica- 
tion formula such as the northwestern Indians deemed absolutely 
indispensable on the occasion, 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 801 


The hair that was shortened as a sign of mourning was either 
burned off or cut and preserved, to be made into belts. A widower 
kept his hair short until he remarried. A widow, in addition, 
rubbed charcoal and pitch on her face and head. This disfigurement 
was maintained for several years, unless she married a relative of 
her husband at the expiration of a year. Widows, widowers, and 
parents who had lost a child wore a mourning belt made either of 
their own hair or of willow bark. The hair belt is also an Achomawi 
institution. The northwestern tribes use neck strings neatly braided 
of basket material. 

SHAMANISM. 


Shasta shamanism and ideas of disease and control of spirits are 
very similar to those obtaining among the northwestern tribes. 

The shaman was almost always a woman. The power usually 
came by inheritance; but it is necessary to bear in mind that the 
natives do not seem in the least degree to have thought of the office 
as hereditary. The inception of the acquisition of supernatural 
power was invariably by dreams, and in these dreams a former 
ancestor who had herself been a shaman frequently or regularly 
appeared to the woman. ; 


Catastrophic dreams also soon asserted themselves, and after a time swarms 
of yellowjackets were seen. This last type of dream was regarded as a con- 
clusive proof of impending shamanistic power, the insects being interpreted 
as spirits. During this period of dreaming the woman ate no meat and avoided 
its sight and smell so far as possible. If she refused to take notice of her 
dreams or to refrain from meat, it was believed that she would inevitably 
fall ill, whereupon a practicing Shaman being called in, the cause would be 
announced. <A persistent refusal of the dreamer to accept the power thrust 
upon her by the spirits would result in her death. 

About this period, also, it was customary for the prospective shaman to be 
addressed by a voice and to see a spirit aiming an arrow at her heart while 
he commanded her to sing. This occurrence might take place while the woman 
was at work or in the presence of her family. She at once fell down in a sense- 
less seizure in which she remained for some time. During this period the 
spirit taught her his song, which she repeated faintly while appearing to moan 
or whine on the ground. In the evening she gradually revived and sang her 
song loudly, upon which the spirit told her his name and place of abode. She 
then called out his name, while blood repeatedly oozed from her mouth, after 
which she rose and danced. She was then carried 10 times around the fire, 
or swung over it hanging by her knees from a rope, or underwent some other 
treatment that the spirit had directed. 

For three days and nights thereafter she danced. After this the spirit reap- 
peared and warned her that he would shoot her with his “pain”; if she were 
strong enough to bear the pain in her body she was to be his friend. As the 
pain entered her she again fell in a catalepsy. After reviving she drew the 
pain out of her while dancing, and displayed it to those present. She mani- 
fested her power over it by making it disappear into her forehead, pressing 
it into her shoulder or ear and extracting it from the other, and so on. The 


302 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLE. 78 


dancing continued altogether for five nights from the time of the first appear- 
ance of the spirit. On the last night or two, other spirits appeared and shot 
her with their pains, until she might have four or five. The pains were kept 
in the shaman’s body. Her power depended upon the number as well as the 
size of the pains. All shamans had at least three, which were kept in the two 
shoulders and in the back of the head, but some carried a larger number. 

After the visit the shaman, except for 10 days of fasting, enjoyed a period 
of rest, until she had accumulated a considerable and apparently specified 
stock of ritualistic paraphernalia consisting mainly of certain skins, bird tails, 
feathers, baskets, and paint, usually in groups of ten. One year or several 
might elapse while these objects were assembled. 

The first winter thereafter the novice summoned her friends for a final 
dance, to which one or two experienced shamans were also invited. This dance 
was held in the living house, not in the sweat house, as by the northwestern 
tribes. During the dance her spirits reappeared to her and inspected the para- 
phernalia which she had prepared. After three days of dancing the novice 
was a fully qualified shaman. 


The guardian spirits were of the shape of men but smaller size. 
Each one inhabited a definite locality. The “ pains,” of which each 
spirit owned one, were small clear objects, pointed at each end. It 
was their presence in the shaman’s person that made her able to dis- 
cern spirits, converse with them, see pains in other people, and 
extract them; but it was the residence of a pain in nonshamans that 
caused sickness, it preying on the body and sucking the blood lke a 
parasite. Disease and the power of curing it thus had the identical 
cause. It is, therefore, no wonder that the acquisition of shamanistic 
power was a trying ordeal. 

It is notable that the Shasta called the “spirits” and the “ pains” 
by the identical name: aheki. The distinctive English translations 
are justified only by the confusion which the use of the single native 
term would have caused in the presentation of the foregoing beliefs. 
It is possible that a similarly undifferentiated nomenclature pre- 
vailed among the northwestern tribes. All the accounts which these 
give of their shamanism are very difficult to understand; the 
“ pains” and “ devils” mentioned, even in the Indian idioms, seem- 
ing at one moment to be objects and in the next personalized spirits. 

Stone pipes, mortars, and in some measure pestles, such as abound as relics 
of the past in most of California, were greatly feared by the ordinary Shasta 
and prized by their shamans. They were said to be aheki, or to indicate the 
proximity of the abode of an aheki, and to be endowed with the power of 
gradual locomotion over or under ground. 

On the death of a shaman, the pain aheki returned from her body to the 
spirit aheki who had sent them into her, to be retained until the same spirits 
manifested themselves, in all probability, to one of her descendants. There 
were, however, spirits who had no affiliations with a family, or had abandoned 
them. Such unattached aheki might associate themselves with any shaman. A 
few of them, in fact, acquired many and influential friends in the spirit world 
in additon to those which their mothers and grandmothers had possessed. Such 
powerful shamans would sometimes convey part of their ability even to people 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 308 


who had not dreamed—for a sufficiently large price—by pressing one or more of 
their private pains into the recipient’s forehead, whereupon the novice could 
see and hear the corresponding spirits. The course of dancing must, however, 
be performed by such buyers of the spiritual exactly as by natural shamans. 

The Shasta shamans seem to have been unusually unreserved about their 
spirits. They announced the name and place of residence of their spirits not 
only when they first acquired them, but in approaching a patient. This is 
evidently part of the professional stock in trade. 


To cure, the shaman sucked out a clotted mass, in order to clear 
the body, though she had already seen the pain inside and weakened 
and drawn it near the surface by her songs. The final extraction, 
contrary to the custom of most Californian tribes, was not by sucking. 
The shaman danced before the patient and suddenly, with a rush, 
seized the pain and pulled it out with her hand. 

If the shaman broke the pain in two, the hostile shaman who for hire or 
from malevolence had shot it into the sufferer’s body died at once. Evidently 
not all illness was thought to be the result of such witchcraft, and certain pains 
were believed to proceed from malice of their own or their owning spirit, since 
in many cases the shaman threw the pain back to its spirit owner, burned it, or 
swallowed it. 


The repeatedly unsuccessful shaman met the usual fate: a justified 
violent death. The Shasta, however, were peculiar in compelling the 
doctor who had lost her patient to restore only half the fee. The 
legal reasoning that justified this compromise is difficult to reconcile 
with all that is known of the attitude of the Californian Indians 
toward their doctors. 

A shaman who had a rattlesnake spirit cured snake bites. The 
cover of her pipestem and a headband which she wore were of rattle- 
snake skin, and around her neck were tail rattles. She painted with 
dust. After sucking and dancing, she reported the appearance and 
actions of the rattlesnake spirit, and finally his words, which chiefly 
related to the gifts he desired for himself and the doctor; after 
which the patient, or a relative, must entreat the spirit for pity. 

The same procedure applied to victims of grizzly bear attacks: 
the bear spirit was addressed by the patient. The grizzly bear 
shaman, who simulated the animal while dancing, was a man, not a 
woman. He extracted the bear’s tongue from the wound. 

Women who knew songs to prevent snake bites were sent for every 
winter and went through all the houses of the village after the chil- 
dren were asleep, chanting their exorcism. It is not clear whether 
these women were rattlesnake shamans or had inherited or bought a 
self-sufhcing formula such as those which answer so many of the 
needs of the Hupa and Yurok. At any rate, the practice is a faint 
vestige of the far-away Yokuts public annual rattlesnake-doctors’ 
ceremony. 


3625°—25 


21 





304 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


RITUAL. 


The Shasta, strictly speaking, have no community dances, no wor- 
ship for its own sake or the good of the world. When they dance, it 
is for a specific purpose, for the use of a particular individual or 
assemblage of individuals. They dance to prepare themselves for 
war, to help a girl at the crucial period of her adolescence, to acquire 
shamanistic power, or to cure a sick man; and there they stop. It 
is the dozen times iterated story of the relation of the poor high- 
landers to their more organized neighbors. The contrast is pecu- 
liarly striking, because the Shasta on the Klamath were close neigh- 
bors to the Karok at one of the most renowned centers of northwest- 
ern ritual, Inam at Clear Creek. The Shasta visited and watched 
here, but seem never to have thought of imitating. 

No formal victory or scalp dance has been reported from the 
Shasta. This negative evidence can probably be accepted, since the 
lack of such a dance is typical-of the northwestern culture. The 
“war dance” is one of incitement and preparation, or made on the 
occasion of a formal settlement of peace. 

The earlier ghost dance reached the Shasta from the Modoc about 
1872 and was passed on by them to the Karok and perhaps the 
Wintun. Associated with another wave of this movement seems to 
have been the introduction into Shasta Valley of the “big head” 
dance of the Sacramento Valley Kuksu system, via the Wintun on the 
south. 

Five or its multiple ten is the only ritualistic number of the Shasta. 
It is not associated with the cardinal directions. 


MYTH, 


Shasta mythology consists of tales of magic and adventure, with 
an interlarding of coyote trickster stories, but without order, se- 
quence, or more than incidental explanations of the present condition 
of the world. 

The individual stories and episodes recounted by the Shasta are 
in great measure the same as those of the Achomawi and neighboring 
tribes; but they lack the systematized if crude cosmogony that occurs 
in the myths of these groups. There is no creator and hardly any 
version of a creation. Nor is the sharp impress of the idea of an 
ancient prehuman but parallel race visible as among the Karok and 
Yurok. The disintegration of Shasta culture in the past two genera- 
tions may have aided the more rapid decay of the reflective than of 
the anecdotal parts of their traditions; but the qualities described 
must have attached to the mythology in considerable degree even 
before the modern break-up began. 





CHAPTER 21. 


THE ACHOMAWI AND ATSUGEWL. 


THE ACHOMAWI: Habitat, 305; divisions, names, and population, 306; war and 
trade, 308; food, 309; industries, 310; dress, 310; money, 311; dwellings, 
311; social institutions, 313; ritual, 318; shamanism, 314; mythology, 315; 
place of culture, 315. THr ArsuGrEwr, 315. 


THe ACHOMAWI. 


HABITAT. 


The territory of the Achomawi comprised the drainage of Pit 
River—an eastern affluent of the Sacramento much larger than the 
so-called main river—from near Montgomery Creek in Shasta County 
up to Goose Lake on the Oregon line; with the exception of the ter- 
ritory watered by three southern tributaries, Burney, Hat, and Horse 
or Dixie Valley Creeks, along which the Atsugewi were lodged. 

Like the northwestern Californians and the Shasta, the Achomawi 
were a stream people. Their villages were all on Pit River itself or 
on the lower courses of its afiluents. The back country was visited 
and owned, but not settled. A solid color on the map accordingly 
gives a one-sided impression of the relation of many Californian 
tribes to their habitat. 

This is particularly true of the Achomawi, all of whose territory 
is high and comparatively barren as soon as the streams are left 
behind, while a large part of it, particularly to the north of Pit 
River, is pure waste lava. 

For this reason the boundaries of Achomawi land are of little 
significance compared with an understanding of the narrow tracts 
actually dwelt in. 

On the north, toward the Modoc, the Achomawi territorial limits are particu- 
larly vague and immaterial. We know merely that they hunted to Mount 
Shasta and Medicine Lake; but the Modoc may have gone as far or farther south 
in legitimate pursuits. The essential relation was that the settlements of the 
one people were on Lower Klamath and Rhett Lakes and Lost River, of the 
other on Pit River, with a great emptiness between. 

The shores of Goose Lake, out of which Pit River flows, have been claimed 
in their entirety for the Achomawi, the Modoc, and the Northern Paiute. As 


there appears to be no specific mention of villages of any of the three groups 
as actually on the shores of the lake, the uncertainty has been compromised oa 


205 


306 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


the map by extending the Achomawi to it and giving the bulk of its shores to 
the Paiute. The mountains west of Goose Lake would seem to have formed 
the western boundary of the Paiute; but we do not know. 

The range between the Achomawi South Fork of Pit River and the Paiute 
Middle and Lower Lakes can hardly have been other than a recognized limit. 
Still farther south and west the undrained Madeline plains and Eagle Lake 
Basin offer difficulty to the cartographer. The latter has been variously as- 
signed to Achomawi, Atsugewi, Maidu, and perhaps Paiute, though no authority 
appears to have asserted that any of them lived on the lake drainage. The 
region is more similar in its character to the territory of the two northern 
groups than to the Maidu range; and of the two northern and allied peoples, 
the Atsugewi had the nearer habitations in Dixie Valley. 

Our knowledge also fails to suffice for the drawing of a real line between 
the Achomawi and the Atsugewi, except that the former, on Pit River, held 
the mouths of the three streams along which, farther up, the iatter lived. 
Beaver Creek is between Dixie Valley Creek and Hat Creek, but is specifically 
assigned to the Achomawi. The reason for this distribution is evidently the 
fact that Beaver Creek flows parallel and close to Pit River, while the other 
streams come in from a distance and.at right angles. 

On their lower Pit River range the Achomawi border on Yana, Wintun, and 
Okwanuchu. The stated boundary between Achomawi and Okwanuchu cuts 
across the headwaters of the McCloud, which may be true, but would be bad 
Indian custom unless the Achomawi had villages on these headwaters. The 
recorded line perhaps signifies nothing more than that the Okwanuchu had no 
villages there. At that, it is hardly conceivable that they should not have 
hunted on these upper courses, and the real question would seem to be whether 
the Okwanuchu and Achomawi avowedly shared the right of visit to the district, 
or whether the former owned the tract and the latter poached on it when they 
felt themselves strong enough. 

As to Mount Shasta, there were no Achomawi near it. That they hunted to 
it, and did so within their rights, is likely. It was customary for great peaks 
to be regarded by Californian peoples as the starting points of their several 
boundaries. 


DIVISIONS, NAMES, AND POPULATION. 


We know no Pit River villages. Some 8 or 10 group names on 
record are given below. They refer collectively to the people of 
natural areas, such as valleys or drainage basins. It is needful not 
to apply habits of interpretation formed from acquaintance with 
eastern tribes to these names. There is little to show whether or not 
the villages in any such area felt themselves united politically; in 
other words, whether it would be justifiable to reckon them as tribes. 
Ixven the names appear to be geographic and not national, much as 
in a larger view we speak of Sudan or South American peoples. It 
is even doubtful whether the inhabitants of each valley used their 
name, except as now and then they might on occasion copy the 
practice of outsiders. To themselves they may have been only the 
people of this and that particular village. But when they thought 
of the inhabitants of the next basin, and particularly of those still 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK: OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 807 


farther away, they no doubt generally spoke of them under their 
generic designations. 

A similar situation has been described among the Yuki. The 
apparent difference between these people and the Achomawi, on the 
one hand, and, say, the Miwok on the other, may be a reflection of 
a (ifferent topography, rather than of another type of political 
organization. Where the country falls into naturally habitable 
basins separated by unsettled tracts, group names spring up. Where, 
as among the Yurok, villages are threaded along a single stretch 
of river. or, as with the Miwok, scattered indiscriminately over a 
broken but generally uniform country, all parts of which are about 
equally favorable to permanent location, the larger group names 
have less occasion to arise. It is only where we encounter definite 
group consciousness not based on topography but frequently tran- 
scending it, and expressed in an individual dialect and a group 
name, as among the shifting but solidary Yokuts divisions, that. we 
can begin justly to speak of tribes. Everywhere else the only recog- 
nizable political unit remains the small cluster of adjacent villages 
recognizing the authority of the same head man. Whether the 
Achomawi divisions, such as the Ilmawi and Hantiwi, were such 
unit communities, corresponding to the Pomo political groups that 
have been enumerated, or comprised each several communities, there 
is little present means of deciding. 


These are the divisions: Madehsi, lowest on Pit River, along the big bend; 
Achomawi, on Fall River; Ilmawi, on the south side of the Pit, opposite Fort 
Crook; Chumawi, in Round Valley; Atuami, in Big Valley; Hantiwi, in lower 
Hot Springs Valley; Astakiwi, in upper Hot Springs Valley; Hamawi, on the 
South Fork of Pit River. 

Of the several subdivisions, the Astakiwi or Astahkewa are said to have been 
named after a principal village near Canby, Astake, ‘“ hot spring.” The Atuami 
have also been recorded as the Tuhteumi and Hamefkuteli, though there is no 
f in Achomawi or any adjacent language. All three of the supposed synonyms 
may in reality refer to the people of three villages rather than to the Big 
Valley people as a whole. The Madehsi are called Puisu or Pushush, “ east- 
erners,” by the Wintun whom they adjoin; and the name Yucas or Yuki has 
also been. recorded for them from the same source, though without specific 
force, since Yuki means merely “ foreign” or ‘ foe” in Wintun, and in ethno- 
logical usage has come to be restricted to the entirely distinct people in the 
Coast Range on the other side of the Wintun. A group known as Idjuigilumidji 
were called Akowigi by the Atsugewi. Itami seems to be a synonym for the 
Achomawi division. 

On the basis of speech conditions elsewhere in California, it may be sus- 
pected that the Achomawi language was not identical from lower Pit River to 
(;o0ose Lake; but nothing is on record concerning dialectic variations. 

In native parlance, Achomawi is the name only of that part of the group liv- 
ing in the basin of Fall River. For what ethnologists call the Achomawi, the 
Atsugewi generic term Pomarii, which denotes all the people speaking the same 
language—the Hamawi, Atuami, Ilmawi, and others, as well as the Achomawi 


808 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY fru. 78 


proper—would therefore have been a more appropriate designation. But 
Achomawi is so well rooted that a new term would cause confusion. The uni- 
versal local denomination “ Pit Rivers” is appropriate even if it is inelegant 
and without native flavor. 

The Maidu call the Achomawi Kom-maidiim—that is, ‘snow Maidu,” more 
literally, “snow people.” The old book name Palaihnihan is said to be based 
on Klamath-Modoe Palaikni or P’laikni, “ mountaineers,” which may perhaps 
be taken as the specific name of the group in that Oregonian tongue. The Yuki 
know a few Achomawi transplanted to Round Valley reservation as Shawash, a 
name that is of interest only in that it evidences the southward extension of 
the Chinook jargon, or fragments of it, as far as northernmost California. 
Siwash (‘“ sauvage’’) is jargon for Indian and not a Yuki or Achomawi word. 
The two peoples did not know of each other’s existence until the Americans 
threw them together. 


The Achomawi population in 1910 was almost 1,000, three-fourths 
still full blood, according to the Government’s reckoning. About a 
tenth had drifted out of the Pit River Valley into Oregon or re- 
mained at Round Valley Reservation. The thinness of the American 
population over their habitat has unquestionably preserved the 
Achomawi in a more favorable proportion than tribes in densely sét- 
tled districts; so that, instead of a tenth or a fiftieth, we may reckon 
their present numbers as constituting perhaps a third or more of the 
original population. This may be set roughly at 3,000 for the 
Achomawi and Atsugewi combined. 


WAR AND TRADE, 


The Modoc, and with them their close kinsmen the Klamath, 
fought the Achomawi. Their proximity to northern tribes who 
formerly kept slaves, and to the great intertribal market at The 
Dalles, made the taking of slaves from the Achomawi profitable to 
these Oregonians, and stimulated them, at times, to raid for booty. 
The Achomawi had the usual Californian point of view: a stranger 
would usually be killed on principle because he was a stranger, and 
a neighbor would be attacked when he had given grievance. But 
war for the fun of the game, or for gain, was foreign to their ideas, 
so that they would be actuated to retaliate against the Modoc only 
by revenge; and as they scarcely even made the attempt, it is likely 
that fear tempered their desire for vengeance. Specific evidence 
as to Achomawi relations with the Klamath-Modoc is, however, con- 
flicting. An American writer speaks of the Astakiwi and Hantiwi 
as much harried by the northerners, while the near-by Atuami were 
nearly exempt. Yet the Atsugewi of Hat Creek remember Modoe 
or Klamath attacks in which women were carried off. It is not un- 
likely that local feuds underlay the warfare here as elsewhere in 
California, and that slave raiding was a superadded and later feature, 
encouraged by the introduction of the horse. We do not really know. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 809 


With the Atsugewi and Wintun to the southwest the Achomawi 
were friendly. How they stood with the Okwanuchu and Yana on 
the west and the northern Paiute on the east seems not to have been 
recorded. In some measure the Achomawi served as transmitters 
in trade between the Sacramento Valley Wintun and the Modoc and 
perhaps Paiute farther inland. Shell beads traveled up Pit River, 
furs down the stream. As in the civilized world, the lowlanders 
received raw materials and gave manufactures to the back peoples. 


FOOD, 


Oaks become scarce in Achomawi territory in proportion to the 
distance from the Sacramento Valley, and the eastern divisions of 
the nation, while they might now and then secure a temporary sup- 
ply of acorns by trade, subsisted rather on the plant food used in 
the Nevada and Oregon portions of the Great Basin than on those 
characteristic of most of California. Salmon hardly ascended be- 
yond Fall River, so the easterly groups had to go without a regular 
supply of this food also. The lower Pit River tribes got the fish in 
abundance, however. It was sun dried, slightly roasted or smoked, 
and then put away in large bark-covered baskets, either in slabs or 
as a crumbled powder. 

Deer can not have been especially abundant in the dry habitat of 
the Achomawi, so that their development of a particular method of 
taking the animal, in addition to those common to all the Californian 
tribes, is interesting. This device, as simple in plan as it must have 
been laborious in execution to a people operating only with sticks 
and baskets, was to dig concealed pits, 2 or 3 yards deep, in 
the runways. These holes, which were a great nuisance to the set- 
tlers until abolished by their edict, were numerous enough to give 
its name to Pit River; of which “ Pitt” is a misspelling. Deer hunt- 
ing was preceded by rituals; and while the specific taboos prevalent 
in other parts of northern California and designed to prevent any 
association of the hunt, the animal, or its flesh with sexual inter- 
course or menstruation, have not been mentioned for the Achomawi, 
it is not unlikely that they were also observed. Adolescent girls dur- 
ing their maturity ceremony stuffed their nostrils with fragrant 
herbs to avoid smelling cooking meat. ‘This precaution may have 
been intended chiefly as regards venison. 

Ducks were snared in nooses stretched across streams. Rabbits 
were often driven into nets. The large lifting net of the northwest 
is not referred to by any writer among the Achomawi. The dip net 
was reserved for trout and suckers in the small streams. Salmon 
were taken with the harpoon, by seines, or in nets and cratings hung 
above the water at falls and dams, There may have been some ani- 


$10 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


mals whose meat was not eaten, but none have been mentioned ex- 
cept the domestic dog—the most powerful poison known to all the 
Indians of northern California. Salt was avoided as causing sore 
eyes, a statement scarcely to be credited except on the assumption 
that, the supply being scant, over-indulgence was viewed with dis- 
favor. 

INDUSTRIES. 


Achomawi basketry is of the twined type common to all northern- 
most California and southern Oregon. At its best it is not quite so 
well made as the finest Hupa and Yurok ware. The technique is 
identical and the materials appear to be so. Achomawi baskets are 
softer and average somewhat higher in proportion to diameter, and 
their pattern in consequence is less frequently disposed in a single 
horizontal band. The shapes rather approximate those of Modoe 
baskets, but the Modoc reliance on tule as a material is not an 
Achomawi trait. Nearly all baskets in collections are solidly cov- 
ered with the white overlay of Yerophyllum. This may, however, 
mean that they are trade articles and that the Achomawi of to-day 
no longer cook in baskets, since the overlay stains when wet for a 
time, and is used only as a sparing pattern by the Yurok on baskets 
meant to hold water or to boil in. Or it may be that the difference 
is old and connected with the scarcity of acorns and comparative 
nonuse of gruel among the Achomawi. 

Other affiliations in material arts to the focus of the northwest- 
ern civilization are seen in the sinew-backed bow, only slightly less 
flat than among the Yurok; in the long body armor of hard elk or 
bear hide; the waistcoat armor of slender sticks wrapped together; 
and in the occurrence of the Yurok and Shasta type of guessing- 
game implement by the side of the Maidu form. Dugout canoes of 
pine or cedar were made, but lacked the characteristic details as well 
as the finish of the Yurok redwood boats. They were longer, nar- 
rower, scarcely modeled, and little more than punts for poling. They 
approximated the Modoc canoe, but without the thinness of wall 
that made the latter a notable achievement in spite of its lack of 
shape. Sacramento Valley influences showed themselves in the oc- 
casional use of the rush raft. 

Maidu and other central Californian resemblances are manifest in 
the undecorated mush paddle, the crude bone spoon, the yellow- 
hammer forehead bands for dancing and shaman’s operations, and 
in the fact of the double ball game being a woman’s activity. 


DRESS. 


Achomawi dress was not only of buckskin but included a sort of 
coat or shirt, which, however rude, is a quite un-Californian idea. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 811 


A deerskin with a hole cut in the middle was slipped over the head 
after the sides had been sewn together below the armholes, and then 
belted. Buckskin leggings, with fringes, were not common, but 
were known. The commonest moccasin was of openwork twined 
tule stuffed with grass, but in dry weather deerskin moccasins were 
also favored. We have here the essential articles of the dress fashion- 
uble east of the Rocky Mountains. The only Pacific coast resem- 
blance is an apron-like kilt, which substituted for the eastern breech- 
clout. California scarcely knows the latter. 

Women’s dress was more of a compromise. They wore a short 
gown or bodice, it is reported, much like that of the men. This would 
seem to be an abbreviation of the usual woman’s dress of the Plains. 
From the hips down, a wrapping of deerskin formed a sort of sepa- 
rate skirt. Or this might be replaced by a fringed apron of northern 
Californian type. Leggingless buckskin moccasins and a basketry 
cap added further Pacific coast features to this hybrid attire. 

Both men’s and women’s garments are spoken of as having been sometimes 
decorated with porcupine-quill embroidery. It is necessary to understand by 
this something simpler than the tasteful and showy ornamentation which the 
Plains women lavished upon nearly all their skin articles; but a specific east- 
ern influence must be admitted nevertheless. The Achomawi received this 
influence, probably, from the Klamath and Modoc, who in turn were in more or 
less contact, at least after horses were introduced into the Columbia Valley, 
with the Sahaptin tribes, whose culture was superficially encrusted with ele- 
ments from the Plains. The Modoc seem to have used some porcupine embroi- 
dery, and not infrequently introduced quills into their basket caps. It is inter- 
esting, however, that though this eastern influence penetrated into the north- 
eastern gateway to California which the Achomawi occupied, it did not travel 
farther, even in fragments. 


Tattooing was slight. The women had three lines under the mouth, 
which are but a slender remnant of the almost solidly blue chin of 
the northwestern women; and added a few lines on the cheek in 
Yuki and Wailaki style. Men had the septum of the nose pierced 
for insertion of a dentalium shell or other ornament. This is also 
a Yana, Karok, and Tolowa practice. 


MONEY. 


In trading, the Achomawi are said to have used beads, from which 
it may be inferred that while they had dentalia as well as the central 
Californian shell disks, the latter were their principal currency. 


DWELLINGS. 


The summers were spent in the open, under a shade or behind a 
windbreak of brush or mats. ‘The ordinary permanent or winter 
house was of bark, without earth covering, and little else than a slop- 


312 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


ing roof over a shallow excavation. It has no northwestern affini- 
ties except the quadrilateral shape: the bark house of the central 
tribes was conical. The size, too, was not northwestern: only 8 by 
12 feet or less. The most distinctive feature was a deliberate depar- 
ture from rectangular form, the southern end being wider than the 
northern by the breadth of the included door. The two door posts 
matched a single post in the middle of the opposite end. The ridge 
pole consequently was double also. The narrow triangular space 
between the ridge poles, or part of it, was left open for a smoke hole. 

The so-called “sweat house,” which was primarily a dance house, 
chief’s home, or dwelling for several families, was like the ordinary 
house except so far as its greater size, up to 20 by 30 feet or so, 
enforced modifications. The most important of these was a center 
post, without which no Indian of the 
northern half of California would have 
thought a ceremonially used house com- 
plete. This was set not in the exact middle, 
but about two-thirds of the way from the 
broader front end. The roof was supported 
by two rafters laid transversely from the 
center post to the sides, and by two others 
reaching from these two to the door posts 
(Fig. 25). A second feature which proves 
this structure to have been essentially a 
form of the central Californian ceremonial 
chamber, was the earth roof; the bark of 
Pig Fa ve aE soba sti ahe living house was replaced by a layer of 

wae poles and brush. Finally, the smoke hole 
probably replaced the door as the normal entrance, the door being 
kept as a draft hole. There is some doubt on this point, but as the 
closely allied Atsugewi favored the entrance and exit by the roof, 
and since this is a frequent north central Californian practice, it is 
hardly hkely that the Achomawi diverged materially on a point to 
which so much significance was attached in custom. ‘The ladder is 
stated to have been made of two poles with crossbars tied on by 
withes, a surprising fact—although mentioned also for the Maidu— 
since the ladder of both northwestern and central California is a 
notched log. The “sweat house” was dug out about a yard. Some 
villages contained more than one of these large structures. 

In the recent period the Achomawi used the small steam-heated 
sweat house of the Piains. It came to them from the Klamath and 
Modoc, who in turn perhaps derived it from the Warm Springs and 
Umatilla groups farther north. 








KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 313 
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. 


Little is known of the formalities of marriage or the rigidity of 
the purchase side of the arrangements. The bridegroom lived in 
the bride’s home for a short time, hunting and otherwise working 
for her relatives, then usually took her to his people. ‘This is perhaps 
the reality of what has been described as a sort of customary honey- 
moon. ‘The custom indicates that so far as priority of descent was 
distinguished at all, it was reckoned in the male line. A statement 
that a chief was usually succeeded by his own eldest son points in 
the same direction. Betrothal of children was frequent. [ood re- 
strictions and seclusion were prescribed for both husband and wife 
until the end of their babe’s umbilical cord fell off. One of each 
par of twins was destroyed at birth. 

The widow, as all through northernmost California, cropped her 
hair. She smeared the stubble with pitch, and added more on her 
face. She also wore a thong with lumps of pitch around her neck, 
and a carefully made belt of the hair she had cut. All this disfigure- 
ment might be left on for two or three years. After her hair had re- 
grown to the upper arm, the widow married her dead husband’s 
brother. 

There is some conflict of information as to disposal of the dead, 
but it seems that they were normally buried, in flexed position, on the 
side, facing east, and if possible in a large basket. Cremation was 
used for those who died at a distance, and the ashes buried at home. 
In either event, the dead peérson’s belongings, increased by offerings 
of his relatives, went with him, and his house was burned. There 
was no funeral dance or anniversary mourning ceremony. 


RITUAL. 


Ceremonies were slight and few: the girl’s adolescence ritual that 
prevails over most of California; a puberty rite for boys connected 
with the seeking of shamanistic power; and the victory dance, made 
around the head of a foe with women participating. [Even the 
doctors’ initiation dance, so prevalent in northern California, was 
lacking; and of anything like an esoteric society or impersonations 
of the gods, there was not a trace. There is mention of a first sal- 
mon ceremony, suggestive of the northwestern new year’s rituals. 
Old men fasted in order to increase the run of the fish, while women 
and children ate out of sight of the river. But no further details 
are known. 

The ceremonial number appears to be five, but the tendency to its 
use was not strong. 


314 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULL. 78 


A girl in the physical condition that marks the threshold to womanhood had 
her ears pierced by her father or other relative. She was then lifted, dropped, 
and struck with an old basket and ran off, her father praying to the mountains 
in her behalf. In the evening she returned with a load of wood—symbolic, like 
the basket, of her career—built a fire before the house, and danced back and 
forth by it all night, accompanied by some of her relatives. Others might be 
dancing in the house. The singing was to a rattle of deer hoofs. Deer meat, in 
fact all meat and fish, were, however, strictly taboo to her, and to prevent her- 
self even from smelling them cooking she stuffed scented herbs into her nostrils. 





In the morning, having been lifted up and dropped again, she ran off as before,- 


but with the deer-hoof rattle. This was done for five days and nights. After the 
last night she returned quickly from her run, was sprinkled with fir leaves, and 
bathed. This ended the ceremony for the time, though it was repeated on the 
two following occasions. 

The boy’s puberty rite runs along parallel lines, but adds an element that is 
akin to the seeking of shamanistic power by eastern tribes. As soon as the 
ears are pierced, the boy is struck with a bowstring and runs off, to fast and 
bathe all night in a lake or spring while his father calls to the mountains and 
to the Deer Woman to watch him. In*the morning he returns, lighting fires on 
the way, eats a little without entering the house, and goes off again. In this 
way several nights are spent in the solitude of the hills. Besides making fires, 
he piles up stones and drinks through a reed to keep his teeth from contact 
with water. In the pond on the first night he may see an animal, which becomes 
his personal protector, or he may dream of it. But not all boys have this vision 
which makes them doctors, 


SHAMANISM. 


A shaman’s power rests ultimately upon the protecting animal or 
spirit sought and acquired at puberty; but a shaman’s business, both 
malevolent and beneficent, at least so far as disease is concerned, 1s 
with the “ pains”; minute, animate, and motile objects of nonhuman 
shape. Sickness is caused by pains which have been snapped or shot 
at people by hostile shamans. The curing doctor frequently swallows 
the pain after extracting or catching it. All these beliefs as to pains 
are typical of the northwestern tribes. There were women doctors, 
as in the northwest, but men on the whole had greater powers. 

Pains grow ferocious after causing a death, and the shaman who has sent one 
out is under particular care to catch and subdue it, lest he fall its next victim. 
Sometimes a pain will be sent against a village instead of a person. It then 
buries itself in the ground near the settlement, spreading disease about, until 
found, extracted, and made harmless, or, like an unexploded grenade, dispatched 
on a return missive of death. Disease, it appears, is as wholly due to shaman- 
istic power as is cure. The doctor is not a protector against the miscellaneous 
forces of evil, but himself the dispenser of death as well as life. That killing 
was frequently resorted to when reprisal by magic failed or was beyond reach 
follows naturally; and even a doctor who had lost enough of his own friends 


under his treatment was under so dark a cloud as to run much risk of being 
murdered. With his death, all his controlled pains died, too. 


It is clear that, as among the tribes to the west, the idea of the 
“pain” was so vividly held and fully worked out by the Achomawi 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 315 


that it had taken upon itself many of the functions elsewhere at- 
tributed to the guardian spirit. Thus an extracted pain can be 
made to tell a shaman who it was that sent it. The Achomawi, 
it is true, have better preserved the idea of the familiar spirit than 
the Shasta or the Yurok; but it appears to be preserved in theory 
rather than in shamanistic practice, which is pervaded throughout 
by concepts of the animate pain object. 

A special feature of Achomawi shamanism is a sort of fetish called kaku, 
a bunch of feathers growing in remote places, rooted in the world, and when 
secured, dripping constant blood. The doctor uses his kakw in treating the 
sick, consults it aS an oracle in locating the bodily hiding place of foreign 
pains, and obtains from it his own pains that are to travel on errands of 
destruction. It is possible that the kakwu is a modification of the cocoon rattle, 
which through most of California was specifically a shaman’s implement of 
special supernal virtue, and which not infrequently had feathers lightly or 
abundantly interspersed among its rattles. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


Achomawi mythology is of central Californian type in its for- 
mal organization and recognition of dual and contrasting creators, 
but lacks something of the spirituality of the Maidu and Wintun 
systems in having an animal, the Silver Fox, as the planner and 
maker of the world, in place of a more anthropic and remote deity. 
The northwestern tone is entirely lacking from Achomawi myths, 
without a compensating distinctive character of their own. 


PLACE OF THE CULTURE. 


Achomawi culture may be described as possessing nearly as much 
of the elementary groundwork of northwestern as of central Cali- 
fornian civilization, but without any of the refinements and ad- 
vanced specializations of the former and without the flavor of the 
peculiar social attitudes of the great north Pacific coast culture, 
and as being infiltrated with eastern, perhaps in part specifically 
Plains, influences, which seem to have come in more by way of the 
Columbia River than through the Shoshoneans of the Great Basin. 


Tor ATSUGEWI. 


The Atsugewli, the sixth and last of the Shastan groups, lived on 
three medium-sized streams draining northward into Pit River: 
Burney Creek, Hat Creek, and Dixie Valley or Horse Creek. The 
mouths of these streams, like all the banks of the Pit River itself, 
were in Achomawi territory. The rather unfavorable stretches be- 
tween the three creeks; the territory to some distance to the south- 
east, probably including the region of Eagle Lake; and the higher 


316 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


country south to Lassen Peak and to the watershed between the Pit 
and Feather Rivers were used by the Atsugewi for hunting and the 
collecting of vegetable foods. They lay claim to having owned Susan 
River about as far down as Susanville, and Horse Lake east of Kagle 
Lake—territories which on Plate 1 have been credited to the Maidu 
and Northern Paiute, respectively. The neighbors of the Achomawi 
on the south were the Maidu, on their north the Achomawi, to the 
east the Northern Paiute, and on the west the Yana. There were 
Achomawi farther down on Pit River than the entrances of the 
Atsugewi streams, but the distance in this direction from the 
Atsugewi to the uppermost Wintun was not great. 


Atsugewi or Atsugei is either their own name for themselves or that which 
the Achomawi apply to them. In the former case it probably referred only to 
the inhabitants of Hat Creek Valley; in the latter and more probable event— 
the ending -wi occurs on most Achomawi group designations where Atsugewi 
has -’i— the name may have been that of the whole people. But Adwanuhdji 
has also been cited as the Achomawi designation of the entire Atsugewi mass. 
The resident whites, at any rate, class them all together as Hat Creeks. ‘The 
Yana eall them Chunoya or Chunoyana. 

Among themselves, the Burney Valley people were the Wamari’i, those of 
Dixie Valley the Apwarukei, while the specific name of those on the larger and 
middle stream, Hat Creek, is not known. Among the Achomawi, Apamadji 
denoted the Burney, Amidji or Amitsi the Dixie, and Hadiuwi the Hat Creek 
division. Pakamali or Bakamali has also been cited as the Achomawi name 
of this last division. 


The population by the census of 1910 was not quite 250, nine-tenths 
of them still full blood. This purity has been maintained through 
the fortune of a sparse American settlement. 

They were friendly with the Northeastern Maidu of Big Meadows 
and with most of the Yana, but possessed the repute of bravery. 

All that is known of Atsugewi customs and beliefs points to their 
practical identity with those of the Achomawi. The following are 
the chief known items of discrepancy or corroboration. 


The Atsugewi made the usual central Californian headband of yellow-ham- 
mer quills. It was worn by shamans in doctoring. The Achomawi used this 
ornament less or only sporadically. The former observed some sort of rudi- 
mentary mourning dance, in which the dead man’s weapons were carried 
and dust was thrown up by handfuls. This seems, however, to have been a 
ceremony at the time of funeral, not a commemoration. The shaman’s kaku 
was used as by the Achomawi. 

To the Achomawi practice of a widow wearing her severed hair as a belt, 
the Atsugewi added the reciprocal custom of a man cutting his, though the 
belt made from it was put on by a female relative and not by himself. 

The first deer killed during the camping season was eaten clean up without 
remnants or waste in order to please the mountain, which would then provide 
more deer. 


KROEBLR] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 317 


Private or family ownership in land or its products is denied by the Atsugewi 
except for a few claims to particular patches of edible roots or seeds, and to 
eagles’ nests, the right to take from which went from father to son.’ 

The ghost dance of 1870-1872 came to the Atsugewi from the west, from the 
northern Yana, who derived it from the northern Wintun. The Atsugewi trans- 
mitted it eastward to the Fall River Achomawi. 

The dead were buried, so far as direct memory of the living extends. There 
is a tradition that corpses were originally cremated, subsequently put into rock 
crevices and covered with stones, and only in latter times interred. It is not 
clear whether this is authentic tradition or mythical speculation, nor whether 
it refers to the Atsugewi or other groups. 

The summer or camping house was of cedar-bar’k slabs, leaned on a conical 
support of four poles tied near the top. One recent example, 16 feet in di- 
ameter, was occupied by three married couples and three children. 

The permanent or winter house was oval, with an 
entrance passage at one end and a main post nearer 
the opposite end. From this post three diagonal 
Supports ran down to the rear and sides, while a 
pair of longer beams, laid parallel or nearly so, 
sloped gently to the door lintel. Between them, in 
front of the main post and above the fire, was the 
trapezoidal smoke hole, which also served as roof 
door. The skeleton of the house was laid over with 
bark and had earth put on. Money beads were 
planted and a prayer spoken before the main post 
was set. The house owner obtained the chief’s ap- 
proval before construction; several families lived 
under his roof. A house still standing measures 22 
feet in greatest diameter. Chiefs’ houses were 
larger. They were used in winter for joint sweat- 
ing by the men of the settlement, the women and children taking themselves 
out each time. 

Sweat houses as such are said to have been made only in.the summer settle- 
ments or camps. They were small, earth-covered, and heated with steam, not 
by a fire. The eastern sweat house of blankets over a willow frame was in- 
troduced among the Atsugewi within the recollection of middle-aged people. 

Deerskin clothing was similar to that described for the Shasta and Achomawi: 
hip-length leggings and a shirt with open sleeves for men, and for women 
either a skirt from waist to knee or a sleeveless gown from shoulder to knee. 
It is, however, specified that this was the costume of the well-to-do, worn in 
winter. The ordinary woman’s skirt was roiled or bundled bast, sewn or 
twined into-a mat; the poor man tied a tule mat about his trunk in cold 
weather and contented himself with a knee-length tule legging. Tule moc- 
casin8 were worn mostly by women, three-piece deerskin ones by men; for 
winter use, the latter had the hair left on the inner side. A sort of glove 
was made by winding a strip of rabbit fur about palm, wrist, and forearm, 
These devices reflect the fact that the Achomawi and Atsugewi habitat was one 
of the coldest inhabited winter tracts in California. (Fig. 26.) 


<= 
—, 
z) 
Se 


i ————9 
. 
3 a} 


igi 
“ mi 





Vig. 26.—Atsugewi cradle. 
(Compare Pl. 35.) 








1'This and the following notes are from data obtained by E. Golomshtok in 1922. 


CHAPTER 22. 
THE MODOC. 


Tribal and territorial status, 318; society and religion, 320; calendar, 322; mate- 
rial culture, 323; food, 323; bodily care, 326; houses and sweat houses, 327; 
boats, 3829; baskets, 331; various, 332; cultural position, 334. 


TRIBAL AND TERRITORIAL STATUS. 


This people is one of a group known as Lutuamian, the fourth and 
uppermost of the native stocks resident on the Klamath River, which 
perhaps derives its name from the Kalapuya designation for one of 
the Lutuamian divisions: Athlameth. Two similar dialects and two 
tribes are recognized as Lutuamian: The Klamath, wholly in Oregon, 
and. the Modoc, in both Oregon and California. It is not likely that 
the language will stand as independent and therefore of family 
rank. Possible connections with several tongues of both States were 
long ago suggested, and some of these seem almost certain to be 
verified as soon as a systematic analytic comparison is undertaken. 

The holdings of the Klamath comprised Upper Klamath Lake, 
Klamath Marsh—where they gathered their famous palatable food 
wokas—Williamson River, and Sprague River. The Modoc had 
Lower Klamath Lake, Tule or Rhett Lake, the smaller Clear Lake, 
and Lost River. ‘To the west, they owned to Butte Lake and Creek; 
to the south, to the ill-defined and uninhabited watershed between 
their territory and Pit River; eastward, probably to the divide be- 
tween Lost River and Goose Lake. The ownership of the shores 
of the latter is in dispute, and has sometimes been ascribed to the 
Modoc. But whatever may have been the case as between the North- 
ern Paiute and the Achomawi, it seems probable that the Modoc did 
not seriously claim any of Goose Lake. If so, the territory of the 
two closely linked Lutuamian divisions formed a natural topo- 
graphic area: The high basin of marsh and lake in which the Klamath 
originates, with the Shasta below on the river proper, Athabascans 
and 'Takelmans across the Cascades on Rogue River, and the North- 
ern Paiute in the interior drainage of the desert, across the lower 
eastern ranges. ; 

On the map, the Modoc lands have been brought down to Mount Shasta. 
Perhaps this great isolated peak only served them, as all tribes about, as a 

318 


‘om 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 319 


gigantic landmark. The matter is one that looms large on the map, but is of 
little actual significance, the mountain itself, and most of its near environs, 
having been uninhabited. The hunting rights on its north flank may have 
belonged to the Okwanuchu rather than to the Modoc. 

But few old villages of the Modoc are known. Agawesh was where Willow 
Creek comes into Lower Klamath Lake; Kumbat on the south shore of Rhett 
Lake; Pashha on its northwestern side; Wachamshwash a few miles up Lost 
River; and Nushalt-hagak-ni farther up that stream near Bonanza. These 
sites are about equally divided between California and Oregon. 

The Shasta called the Modoc P’hanai and the Klamath Makaitserk and 
perhaps Auk-‘ siwash.” The Achomawi knew them respectively as Lutmawi or 
Lutuami (“lake”), and Alamminaktish (Alaming, Upper Klamath Lake) ; the 
Northern Paiute as Saidoka and Sayi. 

The designation Skachpali-kni, said to have been applied to the Karak 
Yurok, and Hupa by the Klamath-Modoe, seems to be nothing but an Indian- 
ization of “Scotts Valley,” in which the westernmost Shasta lived. 

Klamath and Modoc alike called themselves in the usual way: maklaks, 
“neople.” They distinguished each other, when necessary, by geographic desig- 
nations. The Klamath, for instance, were the Eukshikni maklaks, from 
Eukshi, Klamath Marsh and the district toward Upper Klamath Lake; of which, 
in turn, the derivation is from eush, “lake.” The Modoc were the Moatokni 
maklaks, or people of Moatak, as Tule or Rhett Lake was called from lying 
toward the muat or “ south.” 

The two dialects were easily intelligible, but their speakers inhabited dis- 
tinct areas and felt themselves two peoples. Conflicts between them may have 
occurred, and in their foreign wars each was likely to go its own way. The 
Klamath remained neutral in the Modoc war. 


The Modoc, as such, probably possessed more tribal solidarity 
than the great majority of California Indians, and appear also to 
have had some measure of the warlike spirit and bravery which has 
been generally attributed to them. But caution is desirable. Their 
military reputation rests mainly on the famous Modoc war of 1872- 
73; and the decisive check which they administered in the course 
of this conflict to four companies of regular soldiers was not a 
victory won in the open field. The lava beds south of Rhett Lake 
in which the Indians were driven to bay form a series of natural 
trenches that without artillery are practically impregnable except to 
a vastly superior force and then only at heavy cost. The attack 
was made by much greater numbers—there were four companies 
against 70 Modoc men with women assisting to load—but without 
cannon and under the disadvantage of a fog. The Modoc utilized 
their opportunity to the full; but the fieht was a blunder of the 
American commander. 

Their raiding of the Achomawi of Pit River has also been ex- 
ploited. That they were the better warriors is indisputable. But if 
they had conducted annual raids, slaughtering the men and dragging 
the women and children off to sell at The Dalles, the Achomawi 
would long since have ceased to exist instead of being found by the 


3625°— 22, 





320 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


Americans a fairly numerous and resistant tribe in a rather adverse 
habitat, and being to-day one of the most populous groups in Cali- 
fornia. It is probable that the Klamath and Modoc were stimulated 
to their raiding warfare, unusual in the California region, by 
their northern affiliations, which early provided them with an abun- 
dance of horses and offered a lucrative market for captives who 
otherwise would have been killed. In fact, investigation may 
reveal that the slave raiding consisted of only two or three incidents, 
and these perhaps indirectly brought on by the changes of condi- 
tions caused by the advent of the whites, whose imagination magni- 
fied some temporary events into a custom. The basis of all the 
clashes may have been a mere vengeance feud such as sooner or later 
embroiled almost all Californian groups. Thus it 1s known that 
while the Modoc fought certain Achomawi groups or villages, they 
remained friendly with others. 

Statistics as to the number of the Modoc in the past 50 years are 
somewhat vitiated by the inaccuracy that pervades most official fig- 
ures for reservations on which several tribes are joined. This is 
perhaps not a grave fault of the Indian Office, whose avowed purpose 
has been the breaking down of national particularity as part of what 
it denominates tribal life in distinction from American citizenship; 
but it is unfortunate for the historian. The available data indicate 
that the Klamath have long been at least twice as numerous as the 
Modoc; that there were in 1910 not quite 700 of the one and short of 
300 of the other; and that the combined population of the tribes at 
discovery may have aggregated 2,000. The former number of the 
Modoc may thus be set at about 600 or 700, of whom perhaps half or 
less lived in what is now California. 

Some dentalia and perhaps all the obsidian from which the im- 
mense blades were made seem to have reached the tribes of the lower 
Klamath from the Modoc, but the transfer was apparently through 
intervening groups rather than directly. The Karok can have had 
only the dimmest knowledge of the Modoc, and the Yurok do not 
appear to have been aware of their existence. The latter people, in 
fact, place a second ocean at the head of the Klamath. This concept 
is likely to have rested on a vague report of the Klamath Lakes, but 
was no doubt mainly fashioned by cosmological speculation. Had 
the Klamath and Modoc been known, these bodies of water could not 
have been expanded into an ocean. 


SOCIETY AND RELIGION, 


Social and religious institutions are practically unknown. Chief- 
tainship is said to have been hereditary and endowed with reasonable 
authority. For how much wealth counted in men’s status is uncer- 
tain. There was a five nights’ dance for adolescent girls: the Shuyu- 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 891 


halsh. Five is clearly the ritualistic number. A mourning rite in the 
sweat lodge is mentioned as if it were a purification for the survivors 
rather than a commemoration for the dead. 

The earher ghost dance religion is said to have prevailed in the 
Klamath Lakes region shortly before the Modoc war, and may pos- 
sibly have contributed to its outbreak. The date is correct: about 
1870 to 1873. The Modoe and Klamath probably received this pre- 
Wovoka cult directly from their Northern Paiute neighbors, and in 
turn seem. to have passed it on to the Shasta from whom the North- 
western tribes took it. 

There are many data in print concerning Klamath and Modoe 
shamanism, but they enable no picture and remain a disjected mass 
of allusions to songs, dreams, sucking, charms, and the lke universal 
stock in trade of the institution. The significant facts which would 
yield a characteristic picture of the type of shamanism, and make 
precise its relation to the remainder of the culture, remain unde- 
termined. When these clues shall have been recovered, the existing 
records will contribute to a very vivid understanding of the subject. 

Meanwhile, a few specimens of shaman’s songs may be of interest. 
The native word which has been rendered “ disease” in several of 
these is nepaks, “ that which comes,’ and is evidently the disease 
object or cause, the thing which so many northern California Indians 
call the “ pain ” when they speak English. 


What do I remove from my mouth? 
The disease I remove from my mouth. 


What do I take out? 
The disease I take out. 


What do I suck out? 
The disease I suck out. 


What do I blow about? 
The disease I blow about. 


As a head only, I roll around. 
I stand on the rim of my nest. 
I am enveloped in flames. 
What am I? what am I? 

I, the song, I walk here. 


I the dog stray, 
In the north wind I stray. 


An arrowpoint I am about to shoot. 
A bad song I am. 
The earth I sing of. 


The mythology of the Modoc has been as comprehensively recorded 
as their religious and social practices remain little known. It is a 


399 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


colorless body of traditions. The leading figure is Kmukamch, 
* Ancient old man,” a trickster culture hero, who, however, is said 
to have created men. A number of the episodes recounted of him, 
particularly in connection with his son Aishish, are incidents told 
also by the Yurok. Another important pair of characters are the 
Marten, sometimes identified outright with Kmukamch, and his 
younger brother Weasel. Silver Fox is a personage of distinction, 
but fails to rise to the creative rank which he enjoys among the 
Achomawi. In general, much of the mythologic material of the 
Modoe is common goods over northeastern and even all northern 
California, but its trend as a whole is neither central nor northwest 
Californian, and is rather difficult to define because of a general lack 
of characteristic features. The account of the origin of the scheme 
of things is brief, pale, and somewhat heterogeneous. There is noth- 
ing in it of the fullness, orderly systematization, or concrete pic- 
turesqueness of Maidu and Wintun cosmogony. The typical north- 
western qualities are also lacking: the lyrical charging of situations, 
the defined and poignant concept of the prehuman but humanlike 
race, the intense significance of the localizations. That Modoc tra- 
ditions refer to specified spots and presuppose a time of animal 
activities before men existed are not sharp analogues to the north- 
west, but generic traits common to ail American mythologies in only 
a varying degree. Clearly, these uplanders had not worked out a 
mythology of maturely developed traits or positive tendency. 


CALENDAR. 


The Klamath calendar, or month cycle within the year, is basically 
of the type that counts instead of describing or naming the moons; 
that is, related to the system of the Yurok and of many tribes to 
the north. Strictly, however, it does not enumerate but names the 
fingers used in counting. It is rather remarkable that the order is 
from thumb to little finger, the reverse of that used by almost all 
Indians. The first month approximates our August. The method 
of occasional correction necessary to fit a 12-moon series into a year 
of 12 and a fraction luminations is not known. As it is said that 
the year began with the first new moon after the return from the 
wokas harvest, it is possible that the correction was made according 
to season: whenever the count got too far ahead of the actual seed 
gathering, the last “month” of the year, that of the return from 
camp, may have been allowed to stretch over one and a half or 
nearly two lunations. In this event a seasonal sense, based on 
experience, must have replaced the system of reckoning, which indi- 
cates how little of a “calendar” the native scheme can have been 
and how little useful it can have been, even in the rudest way, for 


—_—- ~~ 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 523 


most of the practical purposes of our calendar. The beginning of 
the year is not solstitial among this people, and there is no evidence 
that the solstices were determined or other than casually considered. 

Strictly, we do not know that the Modoc used this Klamath moon 
count; but if their scheme differed it was probably only in detail. 
These are the Klamath moons: 








STs Tae ne Ses Slane ee Tedd ON Satara a otal ca. August.___ berries dried. 
Ce UL oe LE alate index finger______ September___. dancing. 
Cht-lielamisee) als: middle finger____- October_____- leaves fall. 
sive tet lt 10 o§ ne ea ae ring fingers} cs November__-- snow. 

Bees eel. ws Little finveroeody December___. heavy snow. 
A) 0) ae eee Seema ee UOTE CS ene coe aa JaANnUarys..2.2 lakes frozen. 
ct) io) nee ie SWANS. BREE lg February_-___. rain, dancing, 
Daten te 2 Sore ome. Maren. sucker fishing. 
kapchelam____ iu re a og ae: Apri ss Saose! 3 ipos gathered. 
TS GaE, heed Mr od ae RT ee ah A ce 2 Mavewa2.;)455 suckers dried, 
tL, te ae et Rae Sewers we ums). 2. sf Waar Gil ee ce: wokas harvest. 
Ties a Teh sr FD TVG ae Pet Lely owe ee return from harvest. 


MATERIAL CULTURE. 


The material culture of the Modoc is distinguished by the almost 
infinite use made of tule and bulrush. Mats, house coverings, rafts, 
nearly all basketry, moccasins and leggings, eye shields, baby cradles, 
quivers, and receptacles of all sorts are made of this adaptable mate- 
rial. The utility of the two or three commonest species of rush is 
recognized throughout California. There is not a people able to ob- 
tain tule but employs it to some degree. But much the greatest 
development of industries based on tule is found among the Modoe 
and Klamath, among the Pomo of Clear Lake, and among the Yokuts 
of Tulare Lake and the adjacent tule-fringed sloughs. Superficially 
the life of these three groups must have been marked by a great 
similarity. Actually the resemblance was not very deep. ‘The iden- 
tical material was used for much the same purpose but applied in 
quite diverse manners. For example, the Modoc only twined their 
tule into baskets, the Yokuts chiefly coiled it, and the Pomo, even of 
Clear Lake, preferred to use other materials. It is obvious that the 
type of culture prevailing in a region has determined the use made 
of the material, and that any attempt to infer from mere employment 
of material to cultural type is impossible. — 


FOOD. 


The Modoc inhabited nearly acornless country, and mortar and 
pestle are rare among them. They are commonly of small size and 
used by old people who can not chew. Meat and fish, fresh or dried, 
were more often beaten up in these mortars than seeds. The meat 


324 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


mortar was known through most of California, although generally as 
a subsidiary to the larger implement for the standard vegetable foods. 
The metate is more important. The principal and larger form is 
for cracking the shells of wokas seeds. It is an even-surfaced slab, 
generally of lava, irregular in shape, or circular, but not typically 
rectangular, and, as always in California, without legs or tilt. The 
muller has a round base and rises sharply into two horns or into a 
single peak bifurcated at the point (Fig. 27). These horns slope and 
are held pointing away from the grinder, whose thumbs press against 
the incline while the fingers grasp the two sides of the implement. 
The very light stroke is back and forth, the pressure applied on the 
centrifugal movement. The operator does not kneel but sits behind 
the metate, with her legs under her, or, rather, to one side. So far as 
known, this is the invariable posture of the California woman at her 
metate. 
A smaller form is used by the Modoc for other seeds. The muller 
also has a circular base, but lacks horns and its tip is hemispheri- 
cal. It is perhaps made for one hand. The 
motion in this case is rotary. Metates with 
circular wear are found in other parts of 
California, but the operation by rotating does 
not seem to have been described elsewhere. 
The relation of the two types, of both to the 
hoppered slab mortar, and the possible history 





Hig, 27. — Klamath- a, : 
Modoc two-hornea Of all three forms, are discussed in the chap- 


muller for round ters on the Maidu, Chumash, Luisefo, and 


metate, 


Cahuilla. 

The Klamath and Modoc state that their two-horned muller was 
sometimes replaced by one with a loop handle. This is a northern 
form, and may represent a sporadic introduction from that direction. 

The preparation of wokas, the most characteristic food of the 
region, was more largely a Rilariath than a Modoc habit, the greatest 
source Ot supply of the large yellow water lily being Radsnath Marsh; 
but it is likely that the Modoc participated in the industry on a 
limited scale. 


The bulk of the crop is unripe seed pods picked from canoes. These are sun 
dried, the seeds pounded out with a stone, and winnowed. ‘This is lowak. 
Pods in the center of the drying heap that remain moist are beaten to a pulp, 
spread out, dried, and winnowed. Their seeds, somewhat further ripened 
than lowak, are a superior food, and called stontablaks. Both varieties can 
be stored indefinitely. They are converted into shiwulints by parching, cracking 
off the shells, winnowing, and boiling into a gruel; or the winnowing is dis- 
pensed with, and the shells skimmed from the surface of the cooking mass, 
called stilinsh in this case. 

When it is impossible to wait for the pods to dry, they are roasted or steamed 
to awal, or more properly two grades of it, nokapk and chiniakum, the latter 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 325 


being the less ripe. The awal pods are pounded into a gluey mass into which 
ashes, charcoal, punk wood, or other absorbent is rubbed, to allow of its screening 
or winnowing. The extracted seeds, which are still comparatively fresh, are 
now parched, ground lightly to crack their shells, and the latter winnowed 
from them. The product is lolensh, which is either sun dried and stored or 
roasted into shnaps, in which form each Kernel expands to triple bulk. The 
shnaps is eaten either dry or in cold water, or ground fine into shlotish and 
water poured on it. These various forms of nokapk and chiniakum are less 
esteemed than the preparations from stontablaks and lowak. 

The finest wokas is the fully ripe seeds, spokiwas, which are skimmed with 
a tule spoon as they float on the water in a mucilaginous enveloping lather. 
Spokwas forms barely 10 per cent of the entire wokas harvest. The paste is’ 
poured into a hole or shaded basket to rot or ferment, the shell-enclosed seeds, 
however, not being affected. After several weeks a canoe is filled with the 
paste and water; on stirring, the seeds sink to the bottom, the water, pod 
fragments, and refuse are drawn off, and the seeds drained in the sun. Parch- 
ing, grinding, and winnowing convert them into lolensh, from which in turn the 
other products are derived, as in the case of lolensh made from aial. 


While the supply of wokas was enormous—Klamath Marsh alone 
contained 15 square miles of solid growth of water hly—the food 
was a high grade and industrially costly one. A. woman averaged 
perhaps 4 to 6 bushels of pods in a day of gathering. These would 
yield 20 to 30 pounds of seeds in the Jolensh. stage. The separation 
of the seeds, parching, shell cracking, and winnowing of such a quan- 
tity may be assumed to have required at least two additional days. 
The dolensh is often roasted and ground before consumption or even 
cooking. The lowak and stontablaks can not have been gotten 
ready to eat very much quicker. It is a fair estimate, therefore, 
that a day’s labor did not yield above 6 or 7 pounds of edible wokas. 

It is likely that the two-horned mulling stone, which seems to be 
restricted to the Modoc and Klamath, is to be traced directly to the 
wokas industry. Its primary use is to crack the seed shells with- 
out pulverizing the kernels, necessitating a delicate, even stroke. The 
horns or nibs, against which the thumbs rest, make the requisite con- 
trol possible. An ordinary muller, which the whole hand clasps 
from above, is designed to be borne down on heavily, and lends itself 
awkwardly to a motion that must be at once light and firm. 

The salmon are said not to run into the Klamath Lakes or above, 
and streams are much smaller and standing bodies of water infinitely 
more important than in the northwest. [Fishing methods conse- 
quently have little in common with the practice of the Yurok, Karok, 
and Shasta. The principal net is a large, sagging, triangular piece on 
two poles held apart by a crossbar, somewhat like the surf fishing 
net of the Yurok, but operated from the prow of a fast-moving 
canoe in lake waters. In streams a small dip net on a circular or 
semicircular hoop and handle is employed. Long, narrow gill-net 
seines of very fine string with tule floats were set in the rivers and 





326 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


sometimes in the lakes. The stone sinkers were grooved, not per- 
forated, in which they follow the custom of most of California. The 
harpoon was of the usual Californian double-pointed form, but with- 
out barbs, the socket-ended toggles being set directly on the shafts. 
With small fish the toggle could be thrust clear through and a barb 
was unnecessary. For lake bottom fish a pole with a dozen hardwood 
points somewhat spread by a ring was thrust through the muddy 
water wherever bubbles rose. The prongs held the fish against the 
bottom, and it was then retrieved with a barbed lance. Fish hooks 
were of more use than in most parts of California. The simplest 
form was a double-pointed bone suspended in the middle and entirely 
covered with bait, swallowed lengthwise by the fish and turning 
crosswise in its gullet when pulled. A double-pointed hook on a 
single shank was also employed: two sharp bones were wrapped and 
pitched to the end of a stick at an acute angle 
(Fig. 28). 

Ducks were taken in long nets stretched over the 
water and let down over the birds by watchers 
holding ropes from the ends. The entangled birds 
were secured by hunters in canoes. 


At night a fire was lit in a canoe and birds en- 
meshed in a net held out from the prow by two poles. 


BODILY CARE. 





FG. = Falicaiaraik santas Modoc heads are considerably shortened by 
; deformation. Bandages around the infant’s 
skull compress the forehead and occiput and increase the altitude 
of the head. This custom undoubtedly came to the Modoc from the 
north and east. The Columbia River region is a focus of head- 
flattening customs, and they extend up the Pacific coast for some 
distance beyond. No interior Californian tribe deforms the skull. 
Individuals with shortened occiput can be found as the result of 
cradle-board nurture; but there is no conscious custom of deliberate 
treatment. ° 
Modoc dress seems also to have been of northern and eastern 
type: deerskin shirt and leggings. Most of the pieces preserved ap- 
pear to be new and intended for ceremonial wear, but to represent 
the prevalent type of aboriginal dress. This conclusion is borne out 
by the fact that tribes to the south and west of the Modoc, compara- 
tively good Californians like the Shasta and Achomawi, knew the 
fitted costume of buckskin; as well as by the fact that the fringed 
petticoat apron of California is not mentioned for the Modoc, whose 
women seem to have put on full gowns. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 327 


The accessories of dress were of tule and of local type. Such are 
the twined shoe of tule strands lined with grass, a form known also 
to the Achomawi. With this went a small mat of tule tied on as a 
knee-high legging. A cape or blanket of shredded tule or sagebrush 
bark was worn by women, presumably only when needed outdoors. 
A crownless cap of tule for men recalls the eye shades of rawhide 
sometimes donned by the Plains Indians. 

The tule moccasin is for winter wear, in the house or snow or 
marsh. The summer moccasin, evidently designed for protection in 
travel and not for warmth, is of deerskin. It is interesting as of 
eastern rather than Californian type: a U-shaped tongue, although a 
short one, is inserted at the instep, where the Californian moccasin 
has merely a seam. running all the way up the front; and the ankle 
portion is a separate flap normally worn turned down. 

The snowshoe is a simple hoop with a few lines of fur or hide 
lashed across—the universal rude Californian type (Fig. 68). A 
smaller shoe of the same form is worn in marsh wading. 

The hairbrush is a porcupine tail, as among the Achomawi and 
mountain Maidu. 

The Modoc-Klamath cradle is of the sitting type that obtains 
from the Pomo north. The special base added by the northwest- 
ern tribes is wanting. A central Californian touch is given by the 
hood, which is a mat or fan-like piece loosely attached to a large 
hoop. Modern specimens are roughly made; old pieces have not 
been preserved. The first cradle, used only for the first few weeks, 
is of soft tules. Its precise form is not known, but presumably it 
was little more than a sort of wrapping. 

The board cradle is also employed. This is a type widely spread 
to the north, in the Plateau, and in the Plains. It may be ancient 
among the Modoc, or a modern introduction from the Northern Pai- 
ute settled on the reservation by the Government. 


HOUSES AND SWEAT HOUSES. 


The dead were cremated. AII adjacent Californians buried. 

The Modoc winter house was the earth-covered lodge, dug out 3 
or 4 feet and entered through the roof by a ladder. This ladder is 
described as consisting of a pole with toe holds cut through it. 
Posts supported the roof beams. Over these were laid poles, then 
brush of some sort and mats, and a heavy coating of earth. The 
houses are said to have reached a diameter of 50 feet, with a height 
of nearly 20 from the roof entrance to the floor. 

This is the semisubterranean house which extends with little modi- 
fication from the center of California to British Columbia and _ be- 
yond. As used among the Modoc, it has northern rather than 


328 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [ BULL. 78 


Californian affiliation. First, it is distinctly and only a winter resi- 
dence. The Californians, such as the Maidu, did not draw so sharp 
a seasonal distinction. | 

Secondly, the earth lodge has distinct ceremonial associations in 
California, particularly as its southern limit of distribution is ap- 
proached. It was the place in which indoor dances were held, and 
it, or a small structure of the same type, was used for sweating. 
Its current English name is “sweat house.” Among the southerly 
Maidu and Wintun and among the Miwok it could appropriately be 
called “dance house.” While used as a dwelling, its larger exam- 
ples were intimately associated with the Kuksu religion, and the 
type of structure ceases as soon as the line is reached at which this 
religion stops. 

South central California appears to have no earth-covered houses, 
but they occur again in southern California. Here, however, they 
would seem to be of another type. They are low; the entrance is on 
the ground instead of from the roof; and they are not used cere- 
monially, rituals being held outdoors or in specially constructed 
inclosures without roofs. This southern earth-covered house varies 
between two forms. The simpler is a conical lean-to of logs or poles 
with earth heaped over them. This is essentially identical with the 
Navaho hogan. The more elaborate form, and apparently the stand- 
ard one of southern California, had posts and beams. This ap- 
proached rather closely to the central California type in its con- 
struction. 

During the greater part of the year the Modoc lived in brush houses. 
These sometimes reached a length of 25 feet, but frequently were only 
half that size. The width was about half the length. The corners 
were rounded. There was a level ridge and the walls sloped rather 
steeply. The frame was of willow poles supporting the ridgepole 
and tied to it. The roof or sides were of three layers of matting of 
tule. The outer layer of mats was not twined but sewn through, so 
as to shed the water better. Little time was spent even in this house 
when the weather was warm, a shade or sun shelter being the custom- 
ary lounging and working place. 

The modern sweat house of the Modoc and Klamath is distinctly 
un-Californian, and of northern and eastern type. It 1s a very small 
structure, is usually more or less temporary, and above all the heat 
in it is produced by steam instead of a direct fire. Light poles are 
stuck into the ground and bent over to form a dome-shaped frame 
just large and high enough to accommodate a few persons seated on 
the ground. Over this frame are thrown mats. Stones heated in a 
fire outside are put into a small pit near the back of the sweat house, 
the entrance is closed, and water is poured on the rocks, This de- 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 829 


scription, with buffalo skins substituted for tule mats, would apply 
exactly to the Plains sweat house. Nothing of the kind is known 
from any part of California except among the Shasta and Achomawi, 
who seem to have taken the type over from the Modoc and Klamath. 
The Californian builds a structure that will receive a considerable 
company, covers it with earth, and then starts a wood fire within. 
He would probably be as much disturbed by the unaccustomed steam 
that the northerners and easterners breathe as the latter would be 
distressed at having to inhale the dense smoke which the Californian 
has learned to tolerate while enjoying its welcome warmth. 

There were earth-covered sweat houses among the Klamath and 
Modoc, but knowledge of them is unsatisfactory. According to one 
account these were limited in number, maintained only at certain 
localities, and entered only for purification after a death. The im- 
plication is that the structures may have been of some size, but another 
statement makes them no larger than the mat-covered kind. In any 
event, both types were steam heated and called by the name spwhlish. 

There is also some mention of a third kind of spuk/ish, a communal 
dance house or kshiulgish, literally, “for dancing ”—‘a spacious 
structure erected on the style of earth lodges.” This may or may not 
have been something more than a house of dwelling type used for 
ritual assemblage. 

These three types can hardly have coexisted. It is possible that the 
old Lutuamian sweat house was Californian and earth covered, 
heated by fire; and that the smaller temporary structure in which 
steam was produced came in from the Columbia River with the 
horse, or even later. 

Finally, there was a menstrual lodge, on which, however, infor- 
mation is also lacking. 


BOATS. 


The Modoc and Klamath used the canoe and the rush balsa. The 
canoe was dug out of a fir log, and whether 12, 20, or 30 feet long, 
remained of nearly uniform beam of about 2 feet. The north- 
western canoe was of standardized length, but varied greatly in 
breadth. The Modoc boat was hollowed out to a remarkably thin 
and light shell. It was high enough for a little of the inclosing 
curvature of the upper half of the log to form the gunwales, which 
were finished to a simple edge. There was no stem—no canoe with 
sharp prow is known from California, except perhaps the Chu- 
mash area. Both prow and stern sloped gently upward, the prow 
being cut away more. The boat was loaded chiefly aft, so that the 
prow rose clear, which of course made for easier driving in still 
water. A single paddler sat at the stern; a second would occupy 


330 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


the middle. The cedar paddles are broad and thin bladed, and 4 
to 5 feet in length. In wokas gathering, or hunting in shallow 
water, the paddle was discarded for a pole, whose split end was 
wedged apart with a block or bone. The fork found resistance in 
the soft mud or caught a lily root. 

The Modoc type of canoe seems to have been used, although spar- 
ingly, by the Achomawi, Atsugewi, and northeastern Maidu. It 
differs from the northwestern redwood canoe in several respects, al- 
though basically of one form with it. It is longer, narrower, 
thinner walled, without strengthening gunwale, neither prow nor 
stern is appreciably elevated, ornaments are never added, no foot 
rests or seat’ are carved, there is less flare from the middle of the 
bottom upward to the ends, the propelling implement is either a 
true paddle or a true pole, not a hybrid intermediate. The finish is 
smooth, but often follows the irregularities of the grain of the 
wood, and the thin shell soon warps, whereas the thick but hght 
walls and even texture of the redwood of the northwestern boat 
permit of a tooled evenness, and no lack of finish is tolerated. Both 
vessels are obvious inland water types, but the Yurok canoe would be 
needlessly heavy and deep drafted in the quiet lakes and marshes 
of the Modoc plateau, whereas the long narrow boat of the Modoc 
would be quite unmanageable in the rapids of the lower Klamath 
area, would split from end to end on striking the first rock, and 
would soon have its bottom worn through on the gravelly bottoms 
where the streams riffle wide. The modifications are of interest 
because they are in use on the drainage of the same not very long 
river. But apart from adaptation to physical requirements, there 
is no doubt that the Yurok canoe represents the more elaborate 
and better wrought type—as is always the case when any north- 
western implement is set against one from elsewhere in California. 

The employment of the tule raft by the side of the canoe is obscure. 
It is said to have been used by war parties; perhaps because its de- 
pendability made up for inferior motility. It certainly could not 
well be overturned, broken, or sunk. It may also be conjectured that 
it was serviceable in duck hunting among the tules, where an incon- 
spicuous and stealthy approach was important, and speed of travel 
of no consequence. The length was 10 to 15 feet; the component 
bundles of tule, of which several were lashed together, might each 
be of a diameter up to 2 feet. Such a mass must have been very un- 
wieldy; but the innumerable air cells of the rush stems, which float 
lighter than cork, were able to sustain a tremendous burden, until 
waterlogged by continued use. The propulsion is said to have been 
by paddling with the hand, the occupants lying along the edge. 
This statement may refer to the practice of companies intent on an 





K ROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 331 


attack, when temporary rafts were hastily constructed and paddles 
had not been brought along. 

The use of the rush raft in war indicates internecine feuds between 
Modoc villages, or at least between the Modoe and the Klamath; 
alien groups being accessible only at the end of land journeys of 
some distance. This point is of interest as indicating that the tribal 
solidarity of the Modoc was not so much greater than that of other 
Californian Indians as the usual references in literature indicate. 


BASKETS. 


Modoc basketry on first being seen suggests very strongly that of 
the northwestern tribes except for being softer. Actually the two 
arts, while connected, constitute two distinct variants of the basic 
type of basket industry that prevails over northernmost California 
and western Oregon. 

The materials of the northwest, to which most of the northeastern 
tribes also adhere, are replaced among the Modoc almost entirely by 
a single one, tule rush. The warp in finer baskets is the surface fiber 
of the circular tule, Scirpus lacustris, twisted either on itself or more 
usually into a 2-ply string. The weft of the undecorated portions of 
baskets appears to be the same material. Ornamented baskets have 
a white surface—that is, weft. This is the skin of the leaves of the 
cat-tail rush, Zypha. This is sometimes treated to assume a yellow 
color, or dyed black in mud. Patterns are usually in this black, or 
in a color that varies from red to brown and is obtained by using 
tule roots. Coarse baskets are made outright of tule. Vessels in- 
tended to be specially decorated have the center of the pattern over- 
laid in lustrous porcupine quills dyed bright yellow with Hwernia 
vulpina moss. NXerophyllum is used chiefly on caps and seems some- 
times to be overlay. The weft proper, however, is tule, and is re- 
duced to fine strands. Phragmites reed is also used for white. 
Maidenhair fern, black, is rare. 

On the whole, accordingly, Modoc basketry is set apart in its use 
of tule material and its prevailing adherence to plain twining. 

Textile ware in woody materials is confined to openwork trays, carrying 
baskets, fish traps, and the like. The most common material is willow stems; 
split juniper roots are also employed. The carrying basket is bluntly conical, 
with braided edge and of Yurok type. The trays are roughly triangular or 
secoop-shaped, often with a handle at one end, and coarsely made. The form 
is not northwestern, but approaches a type found throughout the Sierra Nevada. 

There is no trace of coiled basketry. 

Colors being in the wefts themselves, the patterns show on the inside of 
Modoe baskets much as on the outside except for some raggedness of the weft 
ends. In northwestern baskets the overlay is carried throughout on one side, 
so that the interior of a basket is free from decoration, except as slender 
glimpses of design may show through interstices of the twining, Northeastern 


332 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


baskets—that is, those of the Achomawi, Yana, and Northern Wintun—resemble 
Modoe ware in duplicating the pattern on the inner face of the vessels; but the 
process is the same as that followed in the northwest, except that each faced 
weft strand is given a half twist with each twining. 

Modoe caps average larger than those of the northwestern tribes and some- 
times are of a size making it difficult to see how they could fit a head unless a 
mass of hair were tucked in. The northwestern caps are as trim as possible. 

The seed beater has been reported but not described. 


VARIOUS, 


The bow was of the usual northern California type, broad, flat, 
rather short, sinew backed, and with recurved ends. The material is 
not known. Modern hunting bows are clumsier and unbacked. The 
arrow was often of reed, but light wood was also used, and was fore- 
shafted and obsidian tipped. Water birds were shot with an un- 
barbed arrow bearing a small ring near the wooden point, this addi- 
tion causing the missile to skip along the surface instead of burying 
itself in the water. The arrow straightener was a perforated board, 
the polisher a longitudinally grooved stone, as in all northern Cali- 
fornia. The transversely grooved arrow straightener of steatite, 
which elsewhere in California accompanies the cane arrow, has not 
been reported from the Modoc or any northern tribe. The quiver 
was of tule mat. 

The Modoe, like many Californians, occasionally used a war spear, 
but it does not appear to have been a common weapon. It was a 
rather short stick with an obsidian head, and, although designated a 
javelin, seems to have been used in close encounters rather than for 
throwing. | 

Armor was a body covering of doubled elk skins. 

The lumber-working wedge and maul were those of the Yurok, 
with two reductions. Mountain mahogany was often substituted for 
elk horn in the wedge; and the maul, while of stone, lacked the con- 
cavity of handle and expanding top of the northwestern implement. 
The Modoc must have had some form of adze for canoe making, but 
it is wholly unknown. 

The fire drill was of willow in cedar, the canoe paddle handle usu- 
ally serving as hearth. The drill point was of willow root, bound to 
the drill handle. The method of joining the two pieces is not clear. 
A socket or mortise 1s not mentioned, and a mere lashing of the wil- 
low along the end of the handle would cause the latter to rotate about 
a center outside of its own diameter and tend to interfere seriously 
with steady manipulation. Torches of tightly bound bark of sage- 
brush are mentioned. Similar devices may have been in use on occa- 
sion in most of California but appear not to have been reported. 


KROPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 338 


Neither the iris of the northwestern tribes nor the A pocynum of 
the other tribes of California seems to have served the Modoe for 
string. Milkweed was occasionally employed, but the standard ma- 
terial was nettle bark. This reappears again among the Luisefio in 
the extreme south of the State. It is likely to have been known to 
intervening groups but appears to have been little used by them. 

Of games, the ring and pin toy is of tule; and for guessing, the 
four-stick variety largely or wholly replaces the many-stick form 
of northern California and the hand bones or grass game of central 
California. There are two thick and two thin sticks, placeable in 
six orders under a basket tray. The arrangement rather than a 
given stick is guessed at. The trays, although twined of soft tule, 
resemble in size and showiness the coiled trays which Yokuts and 
southern Californian women use to cast dice on. This similarity may 
be a case of what is known as cultural convergence; but it is also 
likely to be the result of secondary variations in an ancient associa- 
tion of the basket plaque and gaming. 





lig. 29.—Klamath-Modoc pipe bowls. 


The four-stick game is confined in California to the northeastern 
corner of the State. 

The Modoc and Klamath pipe makes an un-Californian impres- 
sion. It is a stone bowl smoked with a wooden stem; and it is 
L-form, not tubular. Some specimens are nearly straight, but even 
these show a slight upward bend toward the opening. Most com- 
mon is an obtuse-angled bowl, but right-angled ones occur (Fig. 29). 
A special variety is a stone disk, with two holes bored to meet at 
right angles, one for the stem, the other for the tobacco. ‘This form 
appears to have gained in vogue of late years, but inasmuch as it is 
quite unlike anything European, and is not known from neighboring 
tribes, it must be reckoned a native product. California pipes are 
normally of one material, whether that be stone, wood, cane, or 
clay; and if composite, they are structurally of one piece. Thus the 
wood and stone pipe of the Northwest is a wooden implement with 
a steatite lining to its bowl, the Chumash shell and bone pipe is of 
stone with a small piece of bird bone inserted for convenience of 
sucking. ‘True two-piece or stemmed pipes are eastern. 


334 BUREAU OF AMERIGAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 
GULTURAL POSITION, 


It is evident that the inclusion of the Modoc in this volume is of 
somewhat dubious ethnological justification. If their civilization is 
essentially Californian, the same is true of the Klamath, and aborigi- 
nal California would have to be extended to take in an area of which 
at least three-fourths lies in what is now Oregon. The situation is 
complicated by the elements of northern and eastern origin in Lutu- 
ami culture and the fact that no one seems to be in a position to 
judge whether these are mostly ancient or came to the Klamath and 
the Modoc only after the horse became common in the middle Colum- 
bia Valley. That this factor was of some consequence during the 
nineteenth century is shown by the occasional finding of parfleche 
envelope bags of typical Plains Indian form in use among the Kla- 
math. The mat sweat house and perhaps its heating by steam, and 
possibly any number of other features, may have been introduced 
along with the horse. It is therefore well conceivable that in 1770 
the Lutuamians did not present the eastern affinities which mark 
them now, but were scarcely distinguishable from the true Califor- 
nians except in so far as they had worked out proper specializations 
of culture in their rather unusual and comparatively shut-in habitat. 
The route of these northeastern influences would have been down 
the Columbia, up the Deschutes, and over the divide into the drainage 
of Klamath Marsh; and it is altogether likely that what the Shasta 
and Achomawi have of these foreign institutions and devices came 
to them via the Modoc. 

Yet this view can not be pressed until further researches have 
been made. The world possesses depictions of the physical manu- 
factures and of the mythology of the Lutuami, but beyond tantaliz- 
ing hints scarcely anything else. We have no conception of the basie 
constitution of their society, and are profoundly ignorant of the 
true organization of their religious ideas. No one has yet taken the 
pains to inquire of the people themselves what part of their usages 
they attribute to recent importation from the Columbia. They may 
always have had considerable affiliations in that direction. 

Apart from this northeastern strain their civilization is likely to 
have been chiefly Californian, and probably north central rather 
than northwest Californian. With the Great Basin Paiute on their 
east they certainly had little in common. Somewhat west of their 
north, across the Cascade mountains, were the Kalapuya of the 
Willamette, whose little-known culture was apparently too indistinc- 
tive for them to have exerted serious influence on the Lutuami. In 
fact, Kalapuya culture is likely to have been a blind alley local sim- 
plification of the civilization of the Chinookan lower Columbia, 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 335 


which it adjoined. Due west of the Lutuami were the Athabascans 
and ‘Takelmans and Shasta of southwestern Oregon, whose culture. 
by all indications, was a reflex of that of the Yurok. Unless, there- 
fore, the Lutuami are to be accredited with a largely peculiar civili- 
zation, which neither their numbers nor anything fundamental that 
is known about them warrant, they must be regarded as essentially 
Californian with an overlay developed in their isolation, and an- 
other, or an admixture, from the middle Columbia. Whether the 
Californian basis of their culture is mainly of the northwestern type 
that flourished best on the lower courses of the stream of which the 
Lutuami inhabited the headwaters, or of the central variety which 
centers on the Sacramento, is difficult to decide positively. The lat- 
ter view is probably the sounder. Certainly the flavor of their civi- 
lization is markedly different from that of the Yurok, although the 
two nations possess in common a number of individual traits. The 
decision is difficult because northeastern California, which most di- 
rectly adjoins the Klamath and Modoc land, is in the main central 
Californian but suffused with northwestern elements. 

Cultural features of the Lutuami, typical of the middle and upper 
Columbia River region, and ultimately of the Plains east of the 
Rocky Mountains, include the sweat house (size, construction, steam- 
ing) ; the employment of the semisubterranean dwelling; dress; per- 
haps the type of skin moccasin; head deformation; the board cradle; 
the nontubular pipe; the eye shield; and possibly a superior sense 
of tribal solidarity. 

Northern Californian traits are the bow, arrow straightener, and 
arrow polisher; the seed beater; the rude snowshoe; the tule balsa; 
the short spear; the grooved sinker; the mat-covered summer cwell- 
ing; the type (not the utilization) of the semisubterranean house. 
The last five of these are north central Californian only, and not 
northwestern. Specific northwestern resemblances are found in the 
wooden canoe, the wedge maul, the sitting type of basket cradle, and 
the trickster culture hero in myth; but in each of these instances 
there is a perceptible loss of much of the characteristic quality or 
refinement that the trait possesses in the northwest. 

Local traits of culture connected directly with the physical en- 
vironment and its products are the tule basis of basketry; the tule 
moccasin, legging, cape, quiver, and the lke; the spreading fish 
spear; the unbarbed toggle of the harpoon; the extensive employ- 
ment of fishhooks; the split pole for canoe propulsion; the ring- 
pointed arrow; and nettle string. Peculiarities not directly refer- 
able to environment include the two-horned muller and the discoidal 
pipe bowl, both quite distinctive forms; the four-stick guessing game ; 
and perhaps the perforated ladder. 


3625°—25——23 


CHAPTER 28. 
TEE Y ANA ANDO YATE: 


Tur YANA: Origin, 336; men’s and women’s speech, 337; territory, 337; divi- 
sions, 338; designations and numbers, 339; character of customs, 340. THE 
Yaur: History, 341; rediscovery, 343; the last survivor, 343; a native map, 
344; Yahi geographical knowledge, 345. 


THe YANA. 
ORIGIN. 


The Yana are a people of fairly extensive territory but rather 
restricted numbers, concerning whom little general information has 
been extant, but to whom mystery of some kind has usually been 
made to attach. They were reputed of a marked physical type; their 
speech was not only distinctive but abnormally peculiar; in military 
prowess and cunning they far outshone all their neighbors; they 
had perhaps come from the far east. As usual, there is a thin sedi- 
ment of fact to these fancies. 

As regards physical type, no measurements are available. Re- 
port makes the Yana shorter than their neighbors, and an allusion 
in one of their myths appears to attribute the same conviction to 
themselves. But they certainly are not racially anomalous to any 
notable degree. The few scattered survivors would pass as normal 
among any group of north central California. 

Their warlike reputation may be due partly to the resistance 
offered to the whites by one or two of their bands. But whether 
the cause of this was actually a superior energy and courage or an 
unusual exasperation aided by a rough, still thinly populated, and 
easily defensible habitat is more doubtful. That they were feared 
by certain of their neighbors, such as the Maidu, argues them a 
hungering body of mountaineers rather than a superior stock. ‘The 
hill dweller has less to lose by fighting than the wealthy lowlander. 
He is also less exposed, and in time of need has better and more 
numerous refuges available. All through California the plains 
peoples were the more peaceably inclined, although the stronger in 
numbers: the difference is one of situation reflected in culture, not 
of inborn quality, 

336 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 337 


The speech of the Yana disposes definitely of all theories of their 
remote origin. They are members of the great Hokan family. <As 
such, their ultimate source may have been southerly; but no more 
and no less than that of the Achomawi, the Shasta, the Karok, the 
Pomo, and others. Their language, so far as its sounds and words 
are concerned, is perhaps somewhat nearer to the Pomo on the 
other side of the Sacramento Valley than to the adjacent Achomawi 
and Atsugewi. It has, however, certainly been long differentiated, 
since it has entirely lost the prefixes that are found in all other 
Hokan idioms, and has become a suffixing tongue. It may be added 
that on the chart (see Pl. 1, inset; and Fig. 17) Yana territory 
looks like the end of a reflex curling movement of the interior 
Hokans—Shasta, Achomawi, and Yana—from the northern end of 
a coastwise distribution that begins in Mexico and ends with the 
Pomo, Chimariko, and Karok. It is, however, possible that the 
Yana were once neighbors of the Pomo and became pushed apart 
from them as the great block of Penutians drifted up or down the 
Sacramento Valley. Yana tradition is silent on these questions. Like 
all Californians north of Tehachapi, they believe themselves to have 
been created in their historic seats. 





MEN’S AND WOMEN’S SPEECH. 


Yana speech shows one extreme peculiarity, which, as an essen- 
tially civilizational phenomenon expressed through linguistic me- 
dium, must be mentioned: The talk of men and women differed. Men 
spoke the women’s forms when conversing with them; women always 
spoke female. The differences are not very great, but sufficient to 
disconcert one not thoroughly familar with the tongue. Usually a 
suffix is clipped by women from the full male form. Thus yana, 
“person,” becomes ya in the mouth or in the hearing of a woman; 
auna, “ fire,’ and hana, “ water,’ become awh and Aah. Similarly 
a mortar, personified and addressed, would be called heman-na if 
considered male, keman-yi if thought of as a woman. Somewhat 
analogous, though essentially a distinct phenomenon, is the employ- 
ment of diverse roots to denote an action respectively as it is per- 
formed by men or women: nz, “a male goes,” ha, “a female goes.” 
The spring of these remarkable phenomena is unknown. 


TERRITORY. 


The Yana were surrounded by the Achomawi and Atsugewi, the 
Maidu, and the Wintun. Their holdings stretched from Pit River. 
on which they are said to have fronted for a distance, to Rock Creek 
on the south; that is, more probably, to the ridge on one or the other 
side of Rock Creek. In general, they ranged from the edge of the 


O38 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [ BULL. 78 


upper Sacramento Valley along the eastern tributaries of the Sacra- 
mento itself to their headwaters in the watershed beyond which the 
drainage flows north and south instead of westward. The summit 
of this divide, and the greatest landmark of the Yana country, was 
the ancient volcanic peak of Mount Lassen, recently active once 
more: Yana Wahganupa, literally “ little Mount Shasta” (Wahgalu). 
Here the territory of two of the four Yana divisions met that of the 
Atsugewi and of the mountain Maidu. The whole of the Sacra- 
mento Valley in Yana latitude, east as well as west of the river, was 


Jisea en vcCHM 7 
cece” f 


Tg / 4 
“f pee ff é, 
oe @ ontgomery / Cc HUN OYA 


S Djewintauryklia “Se, ——~_—s- Podjaru) (ATSUG EWI) 















IWILDJAB 
Shibu 










all City “9 


— - 
ES = 


SL 





Mill sills : me Siichymarira 


ie 








lig. 380.—Yana territory, northern part. Settlements are shown by squares; alien groups 
in dotted lines. Unbracketed names are Yana designations. 


Wintun. Yana land began with the foothills. In their lowest 
courses through these hills the streams often flow in narrow canyons; 
toward their source the beds are deep and rugged. Most of the 
Yana settlements were therefore in a middle belt. Those that are 
most accurately known and located are shown in Figure 30. In gen- 
eral, Yana country was a broken and endlesslv ridged and furrowed 
land, timbered in part, mostly covered with brush, rocky, and hard 
of soil. 
DIVISIONS. 


The Yana comprised four dialectic divisions, but the speech of the 
most divergent was largely intelligible. The northern dialect was 


Co) 


ee ee. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 339 


called Gari’i, the central one Gata’i. The southern dialect is extinct: 
it may have been included in Gata’i. Beyond it was another, to 
which the name “ Yahi” may be given, that being the term replacing 
Yana in the mouths of its speakers. This division is also extinct. Its 
recent history being a different one from that of the three other divi- 
sions, it will be treated separately. It should be admitted that the 
designations here applied to the four Yana groups are awkward, the 
“southern ” one not being the most southerly. The cause is the late 
recognition of the Yahi division after the names of the three others 
had become established in print. A renaming to northeastern, north- 
ern, central, and southern would be appropriate, but would inev- 
itably cause future confusions. 

The northern group held by far the smallest territory ; the drainage of Mont- 
gomery Creek into Pit River, and that of Cedar Creek, an affluent of Little Cow 
Creek. The northern Yana were wedged in between Wintun, Achomawi, and 
Atsugewi. 

The Central Yana held the entire Cow Creek drainage: Cow Creek itself, 
Little Cow, Oak Run, Clover Creek, and North and South Forks of the Cow. 
To these must be added Bear Creek. The extreme northwestern corner of the 
territory shown in Figure 30 between Bellavista, Woodman, and the mouth of 
Squaw Creek, may have been Wintun instead of Gata’i Yana. 

The southern Yana lived on Battle Creek. They also held Payne and Antelope 
Creeks and one or two smaller streams. 

The Yahi held the course of Mill and Deer Creeks. 


DESIGNATIONS AND NUMBERS. 


The Yana to-day are generally known to the adjacent Indians and 
resident whites as Noze or Nozhi, a term of unknown origin although 
a Wintun source is likely. The Maidu said Kombo, although whether 
by this word the Yahi'and southern Yana alone were meant, or 
all divisions of the stock, is not certain. 

Sukoni-ya was a nonethnic term applied by the Yana to distant 
easterners: the more remote Achomawi and northeastern Maidu; per- 
haps also the Northern Paiute. 

An average of 300 to 500 souls for each division, or 1,500 for the 
stock, seems a liberal computation of the pre-American numbers. 
To-day the two northern groups alone survive and between them 
can muster less than 40 full and mixed bloods, and these much scat- 
tered. The Yana as a whole suffered heavily at the hands of the 
whites in the first 20 years of contact, both by fighting and in mas- 
sacres, and have never been even partially sheltered by reservations. 
None of the adjacent stocks and few of the neighboring ones, except 
possibly the Shasta and the Okwanuchu, have shrunk in the same 
ratio. 

Near the central Yana village of Wichuman’na, some miles east of Millville, 
was a Saline swamp. The dark-colored mud was taken up and dried for use 


340 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


as salt. Achomawi, Atsugewi, and Wintun all resorted to this place—a fact 
that indicates more or less chronic friendliness. This locality originated the. 
Achomawi name for the Yana, Ti’saichi, ‘‘ Salt people.” 


CHARACTER OF CUSTOMS. 


However commendably hardy the Yana may have been, it is clear 
that they did not rank high among the natives of the State. They 
were perhaps on a level with the near-by Atsugewi and Achomawi. 
The little coruscations that enliven the culture of the Wintun and 
Maidu, for instance, are entirely lacking. Mythology, symbolism, 
ritual, social customs, the uses of wealth, are all of the plainest, most 
straightforward, and simplest character. Although bordering on 
both the great valley stocks, none of the Yana had any participation 
in the Kuksu religion that found its focus there. It is not even pos- 
sible to ascribe to them any partial reflection of the valley civiliza- 
tion: their culture consisted of the primitive basic elements which 
other groups shared with them but overlaid with more special de- 
velopments. 

The winter house was the earth-covered one of the Modoc, Pomo, 
Wintun, and Maidu. They called it gunna and ma?adjuwa or wat- 
guruwa. Although generally referred to as a “sweat house,’ Yana 
myths make clear that it was a dwelling. 

Their thatched summer homes the Yana called wawt or wow2, 
which seems to be the generic word for house. 

The Yana were situated in the region where two basketry arts 
meet; the northern of overlaid twining with Xerophyllum tenax, 
which they called maha, and the central one of coiling and twining, 
but without the overlay technique. The two northern divisions fol- 
lowed the former method chiefly if not exclusively. Their ware is 
scarcely distinguishable from that of the northern Wintun and the 
Achomawi. The Yahi coiled much like the Maidu; of what precise 
type their twining was, is not clear. For the southern Yana all data 
are lacking, but their situation suggests that the line between the two 
arts ran up the slope of the Sierra Nevada along their northern or 
southern boundary. It is possible that one or more of the Yana 
divisions showed an unblended mixture of the two styles, such as is 
found among the northeastern Maidu, although west of the Sacra- 
mento the cleavage of the arts is sharp. 

Dentalia, bahninu, as well as clam-shell disks, sats’ewi, were prized 
as money. Again we are at the distributional border, and which 
form prevailed is not clear. 

Brother and sister addressed each other in the plural, the singular 
being considered improper among them, as is the case between 
parents-in-law and children-in-law among several other stocks. This 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 341 


practice must be interpreted as an approach to a taboo on com- 
munication. Some parent-in-law taboos seem to have been ob- 
served by the Yana. In a tale, Coyote addresses his mother-in-law 
freely; but his erotic character in Indian tradition, and his actions 
in this*story, do not allow any certain inference as to the actual 
custom. 

A term for bastard, wahtaurisi, “sits at the foot of the ladder,” 
indicates that some observance was given to social station. This 
position, the nearest the entrance in the earth-covered lodge, be- 
longed to people of no moment. 

The two northern divisions buried the dead. During heavy 
snows people were sometimes interred inside the earth lodge, to be 
exhumed and reburied later. The Yahi cremated. 

The native dog of the Yahi was sharp-nosed, erect-eared, short- 
haired, of the shape and size of a coyote, but gentle and definitely 
domesticated since it bred in a variety of colors. It was used in 
hunting bear and deer, and was more or less fed on meat; but, like 
most American dogs, died from eating salmon. Its flesh was thought 
deadly poison to human beings, and was much favored by wizards for 
evil purposes. 

Yana myths are often picturesquely told, but explain little and 
lack real interest in cosmogony or the origin of human institu- 
tions. Attention is concentrated on the incidents of the plot as such. 
Rabbit, Gray squirrel, and Lizard have been suggested as being to 
the Yana a creative trinity, somewhat parallel to Earth-Initiate, 
Father of the Secret Society, and Turtle of the Maidu, with Coyote 
as antithesis in each instance; but the difference in the spirit of the 
myths is enormous. The trivial doings of the Yana animals are 
devoid of all the planning and semigrandiose outlook of the acts 
of the Maidu gods. 

The ghost dance of the early seventies is said to have reached the 
northern Yana from the Chico Maidu, that is, from the south. 


THe YAHI, 
HISTORY. 


The Yahi, the southernmost division of the Yana, once resident 
on Mill and Deer Creeks, two eastern affluents of the Sacramento, 
are of a peculiar interest because of their rediscovery in recent 
years after they had been believed extinct for 40 years. 

For some reason that is still obscure, this little group, that can 
hardly have numbered much more than 200 or 300, became particu- 
larly embroiled with the whites and embittered against them in 
the period of greatest Indian unrest in northern California—the 


342 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


time, approximately, of the Civil War, a full dozen years after the 
first contact of the races. The Yahi country lay near American 
farms and towns, but in the early sixties did not contain permanent 
settlers; indeed has very few to-day. It is a region of endless 
long ridges and cliff-walled canyons, of no great elevation but very 
rough, and covered with scrub rather than timber. ‘The canyons 
contain patches in which the brush is almost impenetrable, and the 
faces of the hills are full of caves. There are a hundred hiding 
places; but there are no minerals, no marketable lumber, no rich 
bottom lands to draw the American. Cattle, indeed, have long 
ranged the region, but they drift up and down the more open ridges. 
Everything, therefore, united to provide the Yahi with a retreat 
from which they could conveniently raid. Only definite and con- 
certed action could rout 
them out. 

Of course, this action in- 
evitably came. After nu- 
merous skirmishes with 
small parties of Americans, 
and at least one disastrous 
fight or slaughter, prac- 
tically the whole remnant 
of the group was _ sur- 
rounded and exterminated 
in an early morning sur- 
prise attack by a self-or- 
ganized body of settlers. 

as This seems to have hap- 

Wig.’ 31.—Yahi ities stuffed. (Compare pened about 1865. If 
a4 there were known to be 

survivors, they were so few and so terrified that they were obviously 
harmless; and no further attention was paid to them. General opin- 
ion reckoned the tribe as extinct. After a time, at intervals of years, 
a cattleman or hunter would report meeting a wild and naked Indian 
who fled hike a deer. Now and then deserted cabins in the hills were 
rifled. A few of the local mountaineers were convinced that a hand- 
ful of Indians still remained at large, but the farmers in the valley 
and the townspeople were inclined to scoff at their stories. In all but 
the immediate region the Mill Creek Indians had long been forgotten. 
The last printed reference to them is that of Stephen Powers, who 
knew them by their Maidu name of Kombo, and related how the last 
seen of them, in 1872 or earlier, was when two men, two women, and a 
child were encountered by a couple of hunters, but soon escaped into 
the brush. There can be little doubt that these were the only survivors. 





~ a - 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 848 
REDISCOVERY. 


At length, in 1908, a party of surveyors half way up the side of 
Deer Creek Canyon, a mile or two from the nearest cabin and not 
more than 15 miles from, a trunk railroad, ran their line almost into a 
hidden camp in which skulked four middle-aged and elderly Indians, 
who fled. There was no doubt that they were untamed and living the 
aboriginal existence. Arrows, implements (fig. 31), baskets, the 
stored food, the huts, were purely native; such American objects and 
materials as there were, were all stolen. It was clear that for 48 
years this household, remnant of what was once a nation, had main- 
tained itself in this or similarly sheltered spots, smothering their 
camp smoke, crawling under the brush to leave no trail, obliterating 
their very footsteps, and running like animals at the approach of 
a human being. It was an extraordinary story: the ingenuity of 
the Indians was almost as marvelous as the secret of their long 


concealment. 
THE LAST SURVIVOR. 


The discovery broke up the existence into which the little band 
had settled. They had lost most of their tools; they feared to remain 
in the vicinity; their food supply became irregular. A year or two 
later the huts were found still standing, but abandoned. One after 
another the handful died. In 1911 a single survivor, a man with 
hair singed short in mourning for his relatives, remained. Solitary, 
weaponless, pressed by hunger, desperate and yet fearful of every 
white face, he wandered away from his accustomed haunts, until, 
in August, he was found half hiding, half approaching a house, 
near Oroville, 40 miles south. He was clapped into jail, but treated 
kindly; and, as the last wild Indian in the United States, his case 
aroused wide interest. There was no question of the genuineness 
of his aboriginal condition. He was practically naked; in obvious 
terror; and knew no English and but a few words of Spanish learned 
from his own people and considered by him part of his native tongue. 
He practiced all the ancient crafts, and proved an expert flint flaker 
and bow maker. 

After a few days he was brought to San Francisco, where he re- 
mained, under the protection of the University of California, until 
his death in 1916. He was then about 50 or 55 years of age, and 
passed under the name of Ishi, an anglicization of his word for man. 
He refused to return to his old home or to settle on any Indian reser- 
vation, and in clothing and personal and daily habits speedily assimi- 
lated civilized ways. He learned English very slowly and brokenly, 
but was volubly communicative in his own tongue on all topics except 
the fate of his kinsmen, where deeply ingrained sentiment imposed 


844 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 


silence. He was industrious, kindly, obliging, invariably even tem- 
pered, ready of smile, and thoroughly endeared himself to all with 
whom he came in contact. With his death the Yahi passed away. 


A NATIVE MAP. 


A map drawn by Ishi and reproduced as Figure 32 is of interest 
because it proves the California Indians to have been not totally 
devoid of faculty in this direction. ‘They usually refuse point- 


#PALUW! or PULSUMUWU 
| (PULSUAINA) 


GARI’?SI avi 
(GATA?1) hess 


A HAPTI j Bhool 
UWE A HUHNEN-HA‘ x 
Seek) BUIRKULWALI 


~ YANA) 
(SOUTHERN *TOWAN? 


Y BAK PA HANHANAPA 3. 
we DASKEM x Set Sp S i BOPMAYUWI 
ToLocHdaweviis—~ ociréoKo BusyKUINA 


TULIYANT*# x KASHMAUNA x 
yy Gr) DEWIHAUMAUNA DJULCHAMAUNA 


Mt BOPMAYUWI 


A K'ANDJAUHA Silatichamauna 
4 4unat eGAHMA Lake 
YISC KACH HAWI 


SS OEHULI-HA *PUHIYA 
YULWA 


a 
A) 
AN 
ae) 

R 
S 
: 
S 
8 

Ne) 


TASMA 
(\ U) 
“ Me EALDJAMAISI 
PUIMOK 


MEM PONNA 


CWINTUN 


“EHUPLUIDI 


Daha 


ee NEMSHUA-MAT. 
(Buble (Feather River Maidu) 


e Vill ages 
x Places 
__Irails 
y Head of Salmon run 


«Rich villages 





Wie. 32.—Map sketched and explained by Ishi, the last Yahi. 


blank to make even an attempt of this kind, alleging utter inability, 
and it is only in the extreme south of the State that some rudiments 
of a sense of tracing topography appear. The Mohave readily draw 
streams and mountains in the sand, and the only native map ever 
published from California is a sketch of this type. The Dieguefio 
ground paintings also evince some elements of cartographic en- 
deavor, although in ritualized form. Considering the negative atti- 
tude of the northern California mind in this direction, Ishi’s map 
is more accurate than might be expected. 


K RUEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 345 
YAHI GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE. 


The sketch is of further interest because Ishi appears never to have 
visited a considerable part of the area depicted by him, the features 
shown being known to him only by tradition dating back to the 
period before 1860. 

It must be noted that Ishi applied the term ‘ Gari’si’”’ not to the northern 
Yana proper, whom he did not recognize as a separate group, but to the central 
Yana (the Gata’i), and to the southern Yana of Battle Creek. Actually, so 
far as can be judged, the southern Yana dialect is more similar to Yahi than 
to central Yana. Tuliyani on Mill Creek, and Yisch’inna on Deer Creek, may be 
names of chiefs that once lived at these villages, rather than true place names. 
Ishi employed the term Ga’me’si in connection with the region of these settle- 
ments. It is perhaps a designation of his dialect contrasting with Gari’si for 
the three Yana dialects to the north. Tasma or Baldjamaisi, also Yulwa, 
are possibly in upper Feather River drainge, in the vicinity of Big Meadows, 
rather than on Butte Creek. The stream shown is, however, not intended 
for Feather River, of which Ishi knew by report that it had four large branches 
and which he had seen before his capture at Oroville, but of the ancient inhabit- 
ants of which he knew only that they were distant and unfriendly. Battle 
Creek he called Chuhnen-ha more frequently than by its usual northern name 
of K’uwi-ha. 

The Memponna on the map may be named after a chief, although he men- 
tioned Pashahi as such. At Baleha, Saik’olohna and a woman Malki were for- 
mer chiefs; he also knew the group as Malkinena. At Saya, Kinnuichi was chief. 
North of it, where Singer Creek and Bush Creek emerge from the hills, were 
Munmun’i and Djaki-ha; north of these, K’aiuwi at Stevens Hollow and 
Bolohuwi on Mountain Branch. These seem to have been Wintun rather than 
Yana, but their attribution varied. The Wintun and Yahi appear to have 
been on friendly terms, the former coming up Deer Creek at least as far as 
Ya’muluk’u, near the mouth of Sulphur Creek, well in the Yahi country, to 
camp and hunt. Other places in or near the valley, and presumably Wintun, 
were Ha’wan’na, south of Deer Creek; and to the north, Eltami, on Dry Creek ; 
yahseha; Mukaudanchiwa; Shunhun’imaldji; Chiwa’imaldji where the Indians 
of Paswi lived; Dahauyap’ahdi, on Dye Creek, north of Mill Creek; and 
the Dachapaumi-yahi. Mimlosi is a term used in reference to the vicinity of 
Red Bluff, and evidently contains the Wintun stem for water, mem. Chupiskoto, 
Holok’opasna, and Dashtilaumauna are unlocated Wintun places. 

Most of the Maidu groups were less known to Ishi, hostility prevailing be- 
tween them and the Yahi. The Puimok, whose speech Ishi called Homoadidi— 
the name Puimok is Wintun—once killed two men and a child at Milshna at 
Six-Bit Ford on Dry Creek, between Deer and Mill Creeks. Evidently warfare 
between the two groups was on more even terms than the exaggerated American 
accounts indicate. The Daidepa-yahi seem to have been a Maidu division in the 
Big Meadows region, with a woman chief Yella. 

The Atsugewi of Hat Creek were called Chunoya and were friendly. Three 
chiefs were remembered: Pumegi, Badetopi, and Kanigi, besides a woman 
Wamaiki. They are said to have called the Yahi and perhaps all the Yana 
Dip-mawi. i 

Ishi knew a fair number of Atsugewi, Maidu, and Wintun words, about in the 
proportion of this order. Since he had never met a soul of any of the three 


346 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


stocks, this is a fact of interest, evidencing that the California Indians in their 
native condition took some interest in each other and spent more or less time 
in the home circle telling one another about strangers and their ways. 

The term “ Noza” (Nozi) Ishi seems to have applied to the southern Yana, 
and Wailaka (Wintun: “north language’) to the central Yana. Antelope 
Creek he called Halhala, and Tuscan Buttes Uht’anuwi. 

Other group names recorded from Ishi, but only after contact with a central 
Yana, and therefore not certain as a native possession, are Sasti (Shasta) ; 
Marak (Modoc); Paiuti; Sun’sona (Shoshone) ; Basiwi, perhaps Washo; and 
Shukoni, in the distant east. 





CHAPTER 24. 
THE PENUTIAN FAMILY. 
Inclusion, 3847; organization, 347; topographical relations, 349. 


INCLUSION. 


The Penutian family has recently been established by a union of five 
stocks—W intun, Maidu, Miwok, Costanoan,and Yokuts. Twoofthese, 
Miwok and Costanoan, indeed had long been suspected to have affinity, 
and certain resemblances had also become apparent between Wintun 
and Maidu and Maidu and Yokuts. A systematic comparison revealed 
a unitary basis underlying all the languages. Miwok and Costanoan 
form a subgroup in which some form of the vocable uti is employed in 
the sense of “ two.’”’ In the three other languages this numeral is pene, 
ponot, panotl. They may therefore be designated as the “* pen ” sub- 
group. From the combination of these two words comes the appella- 
tion of the whole family: Pen-uti-an. It is always unfortunate when 
names must be arbitrarily coined, but native terminology offers no 
assistance, there is no suitable geographical term available, and an 
artificial designation of some sort was inevitable. 


ORGANIZATION, 


The territorial disposition of the two subgroups is quite differ- 
ent. (Fig. 33.) The “ Pen” languages are stretched in a long north 
and south belt; the “ Uti” dialects follow a broken horseshoe curve. 
The former occupy practically all of the great valley proper, with 
tracts of adjoining upland. The latter are dialects of the mountains, 
hills, and coast. 

The Miwok and Costanoan dialects are most similar where they are 
in contact on San Francisco Bay. From this region the one set 
becomes more and more specialized as the horseshoe is followed in- 
land, the other as its alternative arm pursues its southward coast- 
wise way. The Miwok idioms of the Sierra, therefore, and the most 
southerly of the Costanoan tongues, are the most different, though 
they are not far apart in geographical distance. They were and 
remain the best-known languages of the subgroup; and it seems 
chiefly to have been ignorance of the transitions that prevented 
an earlier recognition of their common source. Much the same can 
be said of the “ Pen” tongues. They, too, were recorded and studied 
mainly at their peripheries: Northern Wintun, northeastern Maidu, 
southern Yokuts. As the records of the more centrally located dia- 
lects of the same three languages are examined, it is found that many 
of the peculiarities of the outlying idioms disappear. There is thus 
ground for the anticipation that if exact knowledge of the most 
southerly Wintun and Maidu and northernmost Yokuts dialects is 
ever recovered, they will prove to furnish strong links that now can 


only be suspected between the three allied members. 
347 


fBuLL. 78 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 


348 





i? 
5505 
L \s Cw 
Ag 00, K 


¢ oir 
‘ ers @ 


QX 


eo: owe 9 0 C= © © eee oe EEE cs aD © @ Ee © ee © @ 





i 





OOVApw 
Ga 
ESS 


ro'=%% 





ORGANIZATION OF THE PENUTIAN FAMILY 


LL 


oe REA 


Languages of the Pen type. 





w 


Languages of the Uri ty, 


a 








Arrows indicate degree and 


33.—Penutian languages of ‘“‘ Pen” and ‘‘ Uti” types. 


FIG. 


direction, of dialectic variation. 


The hearth of the “ Pen,” as well as of the “ Uti” group, and con- 
sequently of the entire Penutian family, is therefore the spot at 


which all five of the principal languages abut, namely, the region 


aquin debouch into the 


Jo 


amento and San 


where the conjoined Sacr 


K ROBBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 349 


head of San Francisco Bay. Here or near this point is the phil- 
ologist’s center of gravity, and in this vicinity, too, the ethnologist 
must look for the greatest interchange of customs. ‘The historian, 
however, need be on his guard against assuming this overflowed 
region of sloughs and tule swamps as the original home of the 
Penutian family. Natural conditions would render such a con- 
jecture extremely unlikely to be true. This central point is one where 
rising differentiations were most efficaciously prevented by interna- 
tional contact or covered over by new assimilations. The speech and 
perhaps the customs of this half-drowned region, where the two great 
rivers of the State meet tidewater, are likely to be more similar to 
Penutian speech and customs of a thousand years ago than the tongues 
and habits of any other Penutian area, and that is all. The first seat 
of the family while it was yet undivided is entirely unknown. 


TOPOGRAPHICAL RELATIONS. 


The Penutian family occupied nearly half of California. It also 
held the core of the State—not only in a spatial sense but physio- 
graphically. This heart and kernel is what the geographer knows 
as the Great Valley of California and the resident as the Sacramento 
and San Joaquin Valleys, together with the flanking and inclosing 
mountains—an unbroken plain 400 miles long and a stretch from 
crest to crest of nearly 500. On one side is the Sierra Nevada, the 
highest range of mountains and in many aspects the most im- 
pressive in our country. On the other side the lower but sharp 
Coast Range stretches parallel. In the south both chains swing 
toward each other and meet in the semicircular Tehachapi Range, so 
that the wall remains continuous. In the north the Sierra breaks 
down, the Coast Range becomes higher and more irregular; the great 
volcanic peak of Mount Shasta is roughly where the two systems 
may be said to meet. Every drop of water that falls within this 
inclosure flows into the ocean through the channel of the Golden Gate, 
above which San Francisco sits clustered to-day. There are few 
regions of the same size that nature has endowed with greater diversity 
of surface, altitude, humidity, soil, and vegetation than this one. But 
there are also few that have been so distinctly stamped by her as a 
compact and indissoluble unit. This unit was the Penutian empire. 

Figure 34 reveals with what fidelity they adhered to its limits. In 
the southeast, Shoshoneans and Chumash occupied a border of high- 
lands inside the oval; in the northeast, Hokan tribes—Achomawi, 
Atsugewi, and Yana—held the elevated lava plateau through which 
Pit River has cut its way. But to compensate the Wintun have 
drifted over their barrier to the northwest and hold most of the 
drainage of the Trinity; and in the center Miwok and Costanoan 
long ago spread out from the Golden Gate, where they first came 
face to face with the roll of the Pacific, over 150 miles of coast. One 


[BULL. 78 


ETHNOLOGY 


AMERICAN 


Ol 


BUREAU 





A 


Fig. 34.—Penutian valley and upland dialects in relation to the drainage system of the 


vA 


Ae RS 


au © @ Gees © © ces © © easike © w eee © © Eo © e EEE © © 
6 
e 


BSS 
Ws 


p > ) fon 
| mS ee 
Qa. ' ' x 

¢ PRLS 
| e353 
~ Te RSS 

‘ > 2 1a 
t Saosin 
| Ossi s 
a & ,; 8 

i OS See 
FL i 

oe 
| qsse 
é 4 A?) S 

aur me 
| are 
° 5m Be aS =a 
wo NELe © 
Ebr aN. 2 
~ oO 7{~Y 
Al, UDL{NUAS 
aV, fo 


interior valley of California, 


@ the Hokan tribes away from this 


can see them on the map crowdin 


outlet, leaving the Pomo a remnant on one side and their kinsmen, 


sselen, a fragment on the other. 


~ 


the 


CHAPTER 25. 
THE WINTUN: GEOGRAPHY AND CULTURE. 


Territory, 851; divisions and dialects, 353; designations, 355; settlements, 355; 
wars, 356; numbers, 356; culture, 357; arts and customs, 357; the dead, 
359; shamanism, 361; traditions, 362; dances, 363. 


e 


The Wintun, the first of the five groups of Penutian affinity to be 
encountered in this survey, were, both as regards numbers, and ter- 
ritory, the largest nationality in the northern half of California, and, 
next to the Shoshoneans and Yokuts, in all the State. They were 
also one of the most important in the development and diffusion of 
customs. It is thus regrettable that they are less known than nearly 
all their neighbors. The account that it is possible to present here 
is little more than a series of miscellaneous items, introduced to shed 
some light on the status of the Wintun in comparison with the neigh- 
boring peoples. A more systematic description has been attempted 
only of the ritualistic aspects of their religion, which has been se- 
lected, as being central and probably primary in its region, to serve 
as a point of departure for a comparative examination of the whole 
central California cultus. 


TERRITORY. 


The territory of the Wintun is long from north to south and nar- 
row from west to east. It consists, substantially, of the west side 
of the Sacramento Valley, from the river up to the crest of the Coast 
Range. In some parts, however, the Wintun had not fully reached 
or retained this natural boundary; in others, they had transcended it. 


From the mouth of Feather River, or more likely from a short distance 
above it, up to the mouth of the Pit, the Wintun lapped over on the east side 
of the Sacramento in a fringe that averaged perhaps 5 miles wide. The exact 
limits of this belt are difficult to draw on any map that does not show contours 
in detail. In the south, where the valley is broad, the Wintun appear to have 
held the tule marsh that fringes the Sacramento. With dry land began Maidu 
territory. The marsh was permanently habitable at a few knolls or mounds, 
especially at the river bank; and it furnished a splendid seasonal hunting 
ground for ducks and geese. In the north, where the valley narrows, the 
Wintun seem to have owned its entire level floor, the authority of the Yana 
commencing with the rather abrupt foothills. In the intermediate region, 
about Chico, the exact eastern limit of Wintun occupation can only be sur- 
mised. - 


3625°—25 24 351 





DO? BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


It has been customary to assign the whole east side of the valley to the 
Yana and Maidu. A civilized person inevitably thinks in this way: A narrow 
overlap across the river which makes the central topographical feature of 
the map seems arbitrary. We put our counties on one or the other side of the 
stream: Butte balances against Glenn, Sutter with Colusa, Sacramento with 
Yolo. But the Indian knew the land with the soles of his feet; he thought of it 
in terms of its actual surface, of its varying plant and animal population, not 
as a surveyed chart on which certain great structural traits stand out. The 
valley offered him one mode of progress, food, occupation, and materials to 
work with, the hills another; and the same difference existed between the long, 
reedy marsh and the solid plains. Thus it was almost inevitable that different 
nations should come to occupy each tract. It will be seen below that where 
diverse peoples did not suffice, a single nationality generally split into groups 
marked off from each other by distinctions of customs as well as dialect. On 
the other hand, the great river as a convenient political boundary meant little 
to the native because he had developed scarcely the rudiments of our political 
sense. ; 

From the mouth of the Pit north, the Wintun, here turned hillsmen be- 
cause there is no valley left, had penetrated farther east from the Sacramento. 
They held the whole right side of the lower Pit, including the lower courses 
of its affluents, the McCloud and Squaw Creek, up to the commencement of 
the big bend of the Pit, about where Montgomery Creek comes in; thus 
uniting with the Yana on the south side to shut off from the mouth of this 
lengthy stream the Achomawi who are so identified with its drainage as to 
be usually known as the Pit River Indians. 

The uppermost 20 or 25 miles of the Sacramento, where it flows a tumbling 
course through a picturesque wooded canyon, were not occupied by the Wintun 
but by the Shastan Okwanuchu. The boundary between the two stocks was 
in the vicinity of one of the several Salt Creeks of the vicinity; probably the 
northern one. 

West and southwest of this alien tract on the headwaters, the Wintun oc- 
cupied a large, rugged tract outside the Sacramento drainage: the whole 
upper waters of the system of the Trinity, the greatest affluent of the Klamath. 
These holdings comprised all the territory watered by the main ‘Trinity above 
Big Bar, with its numerous tributaries and forks; nearly the whole of the 
South Fork; and all the Hay Fork. In fact, the Trinity may almost be 
denominated a Wintun stream, the only other natives within its sphere being 
the Chimariko, Hupa, and New River Shasta, owning restricted areas on its 
iower reaches. 

There are some statements to the effect that the Wintun had drifted across 
still another chain of the Coast Range, and lived om the very head of Mad 
River, scarcely 30 miles from salt water as the crow flies. This is entirely 
possible; but other reports assign the region to the Lassik or some related 
Athabascan group; and Mad River being in the main an Athabascan stream, 
the latter statements have been given preference in the delineation of the map. 

Toward the south, in the region of the headwaters of the Eel, the main 
Coast Range served as boundary between the Yuki and the Wintun; but 
from here south, the heads of all the western tributaries of the Sacramento 
were in the possession of a variety of non-Wintun groups. 

First, upper Stony Creek, above Little Stony Creek but not including this, 
was northeastern Pomo, these people being wholly surrounded by the Wintun 
except where the Yuki backed them behind the mountains, 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 358 


Next, the beautiful Clear Lake basin, the source of Cache Creek, was also 
in possession of the Pomo, who lived here in two groups, perhaps representing 
distinct drifts of occupation. 

Farther south, in part in the same basin, but mainly on upper Putah Creek, 
were the Coast Miwok, a little isolated group with all its nearest relatives 
to the south and southeast. 

Then, and last, came the Wappo branch of the Yuki: in the hills on the 
headwaters of Putah Creek and the Sacramento affluents to the south, and on 
Napa River. 

We are now close to San Francisco Bay, whose upper divisions, Suisun and 
San Pablo Bays, are only the drowned lower reaches of the united Sacramento 
and San Joaquin Rivers, The flow, so to speak, here is west, instead of south; 
so that the western:-or Wintun side becomes the northern shore. This the 
Wintun held all along Suisun Bay and along part of San Pablo Bay; the 
Suisun “ Valley,’ and the Napa Valley to the end of tidewater, being theirs. 
On the map this is the farthest territory downstream accredited to them, and 
the divide between Napa and Sonoma ‘Valleys has been set as their limit. There 
is, however, much doubt about Sonoma Valley, whose native inhabitants are 
extinct. The Wappo held its very head; but its bulk, according to some ac- 
counts, was Wintun; according to others, Coast Miwok. If the former are 
correct, the Wintun extended almost to Petaluma Creek, or to within a scant 
score of miles of the ultimate goal of the Sacramento, the sheer defile of the 
Golden Gate into the broad Pacific. 


DIVISIONS AND DIALECTS, 


Wintun speech is very imperfectly known, and its ramifications 
have been determined only in the rough. Three great areas of dis- 
tinct dialect are clear, which may be described approximately as 
consisting of a central block in Glenn and Tehama Counties, and 
a northern and a southern in the modern counties respectively on 
those sides. Beyond this basic classification, information quickly 
fails us; but it is clear, both from fragmentary evidence as well 
as from the size of the tracts involved, that these, like the correspond- 
ing Maidu divisions, are areas of groups of dialects, not of single, 
uniform idioms. In other words, the basis of customary classifica- 
tion is different for the Wintun and Maidu on the one hand, and 
stocks such as the Athabasecan, Yuki, Pomo, and Miwok on the other; 
and there is no reason to doubt that when the two former tongues 
are recorded with the same nice discrimination of petty differences 
that has been directed to the other languages, the same conditions 
of local diversification will become evident, and the abnormal ex- 
tension of the Wintun and Maidu “ dialects ” will be seen to be more 
apparent than actual. It is probable that the true status of speech 
among both Wintun and Maidu will ultimately be found to ap- 
proach somewhat that existing among the remotely allied Yokuts, 
where the number of slightly different dialects is great, but these 
fall readily into half a dozen obviously distinct groups. 


The northern form of Wintun speech prevailed down the Sacramento to 
Cottonwood Creek and over the whole Pit and Trinity areas. From all the 


354 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


evidence available, the language was remarkably uniform for a tract of this 
vastness, as it may justly be described under California conditions. But the 
very size of the territory precludes absolute identity of tongue. The Wintun 
of the McCloud and of the South Fork of the Trinity certainly never came in 
contact, possibly did not know of each other’s existence. They must have been 
separated at least for centuries; and it is therefore impossible that every word 
and grammatical form in their languages should have been the same, 

Cottonwood Creek is the boundary usually mentioned toward the central 
Wintun, and in default of any more precise knowledge has been so entered 
on the map. But the true line very likely followed the minor watershed 
on one or the other flank of the stream. 

For the central Wintun one subdivision is known: that of the valley 
dwellers and the hillmen. But their dialects were not very different, and 
there may have existed equal or greater divergences between northern and 
southern settlements within the group. On the great map of the State, which 
alone shows the whole Wintun territory (Pl. 1), no attempt has therefore been 
made to indicate any internal demarcation. 

Among the southern Wintun the cleavage between plains and hills continues, 
in fact is accentuated; and this block has therefore been represented not as a 
unit, like the others, but as consisting of a southeastern and a southwestern 
half. This gives, then, four instead of three primary Wintun languages and 
groups of people. 

Both the southern dialect groups were subdivided; but the areas of these 
minor dialects are known in only two or three instances, which are recorded 
on Plate 37. The impression must be guarded against that these dialect areas 
were the only ones; from Knights Landing downstream usable data are almost 
nil, the Indians having disappeared. 

The habitable sites in the Sacramento marshes were favorable 
places in winter, on account of the immense number of water birds 
which they drew, besides being in proximity to the salmon fishing 
in the main river. In summer the swampy plains were hot, malarial, 
and infested with swarming insects, while the hills were correspond- 
ingly attractive and productive. There was consequently much sea- 
sonal shifting of habitation. This can hardly have extended all the 
way from river to mountains: friendly people of diverse dialect 
may have visited each other freely, but if each had lived on the 
other’s territory for half the year, they would have been a single 
nationality. The dialectic diversity between hills and valley, there- 
fore, is evidence of the restriction of the regular movements of the 
separate communities to limited areas. The valley people evidently 
had their permanent villages on the river itself—that is, in the 
marsh belt—but appear to have left this during the dry half of the 
year to live on the adjacent plains, mostly by the side of tributaries. 
The upland people built their winter homes where the streams issue 
into the open valley, or in favorable spots higher on these creeks, 
and in summer moved away from the main water courses into the 
hills or mountains. 

A distinction has often been made between a Wintun group 
proper in the north and a Patwin group in the south. This distine- 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 34 


Southern Part 
of the Territory of the 


Tolokai ; WINTUN 


lk Creek Ra” 
Boundaries of the Winlur Sfock,. gia, 
Boundaries Of Lhe WPS UN LraAlOc!D mmm 
Possibly Wintun Perrivory..... @-=@ 
Known Wintun Villages 


American towns 


Bodope 
Cna 
Waitere 


wv 
Kachil 





: ft 
Michawish /@ 


Tarno 


: i 
Kashi \ Yarysville Buttes 


klokmatinbe® 
Palo @ g 
Nawidihu 
. Namachapen 
Mig owe. \Koshempu 
Holokome Beak eT? dihi 
Liladtht shoe 
Waikau & 








Djadjis 


Yodoi & 
Knights ¢ 
Landing 

Teurup #9 
Pulupulu 
Kachituli 


; S 
” A ae : Woodland 


Pope Valle yj 


~ 


Middletown) 





Monticeijilo 
\ \Topaidini 


. Wi Tcimenukm 
apa 
STulukai 
Hesaiasosgsun 
Suskol Yulyul 





YOKUT 


re), 
“het Diabio 






















J felt \ is _ Ts Aaah) (eet 
iy Dey Pee MT ote aris pa 


: : ; a Al ay, 9 i ¢ 
~~ : mn. ie el ; rit SP SiMe bar) Bil 
Ne RAW D ay Bing Sai 
4 Pays ‘Mena sy, i , Z r ‘7 40 ya vi, nf 4 ae 
~ i a Fi f ‘ Ve . 4 a 7 
i -) P a 
. j i 
\ ‘ z 
J V ~ ad fi 5 i 
se . ‘ 4 
j SS Lee ‘a 
? 7 \ “ 
5 4 
: 4 
~*~ ’ c. | Chere 
" ae 
im 4 vi; | ie 
we alt x 
> Vy hs 
‘ - 
a ay a 
: a } ' 
its ? « 
a Ta ty. 


ie ; 
uv : 
‘ 
’ : 7 hn Golan 
. - 4 4 L¥ J i a nd 
; , > ‘ 1 + 
‘ 4 4 ’ be 





j ‘ =» ey eipate 
rey. Vig RAY Pd, 
Wied Bi er eh Aaa a 2 
J ty s 4 a %. al? 
; 4 : ( 
4? oF 
oF " faee Te y 
: MATS, ” 
PIN A TApo ral 
i i we WY elt hie 
iL awe eee 
4 Vere yy 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BEE Sh Nie Game Animes. 








i 












CRADEES?, GsStliiNGy. Gyre 


Left to right, Yurok, Wintun (Pomo type), Northern Wintun 
, , i 


ee 
ies 


= 





KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 355 


tion is based on the employment of these terms, in the dialects of 
the two regions, to denote “ person” or “ people.” There is no doubt 
that in the north win-tun, or perhaps more correctly win-tu, is in 
use where the southerners say pat-win. The “ Wintun” of this 
nomenclature seem to correspond rather closely with what are here 
called the northern and central divisions, the “ Patwin” with the 
southeastern and southwestern. The terminology, being native, is 
likely to express a line of cultural cleavage of some consequence. It 
would therefore be desirable to follow, were it not for the confusion 
that might ensue from the use of “ Wintun” to designate sometimes 
the entire stock and sometimes the northern half alone. 


DESIGNATIONS. 


The Wintun stock has sometimes been called Copehan in technical literature. 
This name is supposed to be derived from that of a village. Kope is grape- 
vine in southern Wintun; but no settlement of this designation can be recalled 
by surviving Indians. 

The Shasta knew the Trinity Wintun—the only ones they were in direct con- 
tact with—as Hatukwiwa or Hatukeyu; the Chimariko callcd them Pachhuai 
or Pachawe. The Yuki named the Nomlaki Titkaieno’m, but seem to have 
lacked any generic designation for the stock. How the Maidu, Yana, Achomawiz, 
Athabascans, Pomo, and Costanoans called their Wintun neighbors is not 
known, 


SETTLEMENTS. 


The names and locations of some 60 sites inhabited by the Wintun 
are known, mostly in the northern part of the southwestern and 
southeastern areas. These are shown in Plate 34. Their grouping 
into political communities such as have been established for most of 
the Pomo territory can unfortunately not even be attempted. 

Tawaisak, on Little Stony Creek, is a Pomo, not a native name. 

Kotina, north of Cache Creek, is also not aboriginal. It appears to be the 
modern Indian adaptation of Cortina, the name of a chief, later used for his 
group, and then applied to a valley and a stream, or rather three streams. 
Whether this chief was simply labeled ‘“ Curtain ” by the Spaniards, or whether 
his native name suggested this familiar word to them, is not known. 

Many of the village names appear with the ending -hiabe; but this appears to 
be a suffix or added word, not a part of the name of the place. 

The inequality in distribution of sites on Plate 34 reflects the incomplete 
ness of knowledge, not any notable unevenness of occupancy. 


A number of Wintun group names have been reported, but these 
nearly all refer to directions and boil down to merely relative cesig- 
nations like those used by the Miwok, the same people being north- 
erners and southerners to their several neighbors. Where the direc- 
tional terms fail to appear, elements like ol, “up” or “above,” enter 
into these shifting designations. 


356 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


Among the names are: Waikenmok, Waikosel, Wailaki (applied to themselves 
as well as to the Athabascan division on whom the name has crystallized in 
American usage). From wai, “ north.” 

Nomlaki, Nomkehl, Nummok. From nom, ‘‘ west.” 

Normok, Norelmok, Norbos, Noyuki, Nuimok. From nor, no, “ south.” 

Puimok. From pu, ‘ east.” 

Of similar type: Olposel, Chenposel, Wilaksel, Daupum-wintun. 

Other cited names are those of places outright: Napa, Liwai-to, Yodetabi 
(for Yodoi-hlabe). Probably of this class are Suisu-n, Karki-n, Tole-n, and 
Ulula-to or Ula-to, which appear to have been important villages in extreme 
southern Wintun territory, in the vicinity of the modern similarly named 
places; and a few others in the same region: Malaka, Sone-to, Ansak-to, Aklu-to, 
Churup-to, and Puta-to. Puta or Putah Creek has generally been derived from 
Spanish puta; but the ending -to (compare Napa-to) is native. Hither the 
Wintun of a place on Putah Creek accepted the Spanish epithet or the Spaniards 
put their own interpretation on a native place name. 

Places in the north were Waidal-pony, at Ydalpom; Tsarau, at Stillwater; 
Paspuisono, at Redding; Hin-pom, probably at the mouth of Slate Creek; 
Tayamnorel, at Trinity Center; Tientien, at or below Douglas City ; Haien-pom, 
at Hyampom. Wini-mem, “ middle river,” and Pui-mem, “ east river,” do not de- 
note tribes as sometimes stated, but the McCloud and Pit Rivers. 

In Central Wintun territory Paskenta is probably named from a native settle- 
ment. The word means “ under the bank.” 

A few terms seem to be group names formed on localities; as Topaidi-sel, 
from Topai-dihi; and Lol-sel, the ‘‘ tobacco people” of Long Valley east of Clear 
Lake. Designations of this sort are parallel to the Pomo group names ending in 
pomo or napo. 

WARS. 


The Cortina Valley people fought the northeastern Pomo, with 
whom the neighboring Wintun of Little Stony Creek were prob- 
ably alhed. They were also in feud with certain of the Sacramento 
River people. The hill Nomlaki of Thomas and Elder Creeks also 
warred with the plains people below them. The latter in turn were 
unfriendly with the valley people of Stony Creek and southward, 
if their name for this group, No-yuki or “southern enemies,” may 
be depended on. Another feud prevailed between the Lol-sel of 
Long Valley and the Chenpo-sel of middle Cache Creek. 

Scalps (in the south more probably whole heads) were taken in 
war, hung on poles, and celebrated over with a dance, but no details 
of the procedure are known. The Trinity Wintun, like all the north- 
western tribes, took no scalps, and may therefore have made the war 
dance of preparation in place of that of victory. They are said to 
have fought with slings. This seems to be a mountaineer’s accom- 
plishment whenever it occurs in California. 


NUMBERS. 


If the Pomo aggregated 8,000 and the Maidu 9,000, the former 
Wintun population may be set around 12,000. To-day, however, the 
Wintun have shrunk to a less figure than either of these neighbor- 





oe = 
a pee | 





KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 857 


ing stocks. The census, which reports only 710, more than half of 
mixed blood, does not do them full justice, because many of the 
Wintun of Shasta County have no doubt been returned as “ Shasta,” 
ethnic designations being replaced in local American usage by names 
based on localities. Thus the Shasta become the “ Yreka tribe,” 
or “Scotts Valley Indians,’ while the northern Wintun are turned 
into “ Shastas,” “ Trinity Indians,” and “ Hayforks.” At best, how- 
ever, the survivors of this once great nationality may come to a thou- 
sand or so. 

The Franciscans drew converts from identifiable places in Wintun 
territory at least as far north as Puta Creek, and direct Spanish con- 
tact and influence extended to about the latitude of Clear Lake, say 
Cortina Creek or beyond. 


CULTURE. 


The unusual length of Wintun territory brings it about that this 
group is exposed to most diverse contacts of social environment. 
Divisions that live only a short day’s walk away from the Hupa 
obviously will not observe the same customs as those which adjoin 
on the Pomo; and the Wintun bordering on the Achomawi and those 
in touch with the Yokuts can have had few specific habits in common. 
It is probable that the northern, the central, and the southern Wintun 
differed more from one another than the Pomo did from the Yuki. 
There is therefore little theoretical justification for a discussion of the 
culture of the stock as a whole; and such a summary method is fol- 
lowed here only because the available information is so scant that its 
segregation into three or more bodies would render each of these 
without shape or coherence. 

In certain respects, however, the continuity of basic speech may 
have operated in favor of a more considerable uniformity of civiliza- 
tion than would be expected. Thus, northern Wintun mythology 
certainly inclines to the “ creator” type that elsewhere is associated 
with the occurrence of the Kuksu religion which they did not follow. 

The uppermost Wintun on Cache Creek and those im near-by 
Long Valley were cut off by the long canyon below them and the 
secondary range on their east from the bulk of their kinsmen, and 
stood in correspondingly closer intercourse with the Miwok and Pomo 
of Clear Lake, whom they influenced in several traceable particulars, 
and by whom they in turn were no doubt affected. 


ARTS AND CUSTOMS. 


Face tattooing for women, which seems to reach its acme in the 
Yuki vicinity, was practically lacking among the southern Wintun 
of the Sacramento. Ornamentation of the breast or stomach was 


358 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Ruut 78 


more common. In the north the northwestern style of three lines 
or bands down the chin was in vogue. 

The southern house was of the dance-house type, earth covered and 
dome shaped, at least in the valley. In the hills the conical bark 
house, and perhaps thatched structures, were in use. The Trinity 
Wintun used the bark dwelling. The custom of those in the upper 
Sacramento region is unknown.* 

Among foods may be mentioned pounded and sifted manzanita 
berries, cooked; a cider made from the same; and young clover 
herbage, eaten raw. The inner bark of trees was sometimes resorted 
to in the hungry time of early spring. All these foods had a much 
wider distribution than Wintun territory. 

Wintun basketry possesses little that is distinctive. In the north 
it is of the overlaid twined type characteristic of the border region 
of Oregon and California. On the McCloud the shapes and pattern 
arrangement are more nearly of Achomawi than of Yurok-Hupa 
type, as might be expected; along the South and Hay Forks of the 
Trinity, no doubt the reverse. 

The southern limit of all-twined basketry among the Wintun is 
not known, but can not have been far from the boundary between 
the northern and central divisions. 

In the central group, and among the northerly members of the 
southern one, baskets were, in a generic way, of Pomo type, but. with- 
out most of the distinctive traits of the ware of that people. Among 
the Wintun bordering on the Pomo, as well as those of the extreme 
south, western influences were stronger. Feathered baskets have 
been reported from Yodoi on the Sacramento. 

The Pomo type of baby carrier prevailed through southern Wintun 
territory: it is found without material modification on the Sacra- 
mento River. The central type is not known, but is likely to have 
been similar. In the northern group, a crude, shallow form of the 
sitting cradle was used, flatter even than the Shasta one; but carriers 
rather similar to the Pomo ones also occur. (PI. 35.) 





1Southeastern and central Wintun buildings in the Sacramento Valley were earth 
covered, elliptical rather than round, and uniform in construction, but of four sizes 
and functions: the dance house, hlut, about 50 feet in length; the sudatory, chapa- 
kewe, larger than the dwelling, and slept in by unmarried men and sometimes by their 
elders; the living house, kewe, 20 to 80 feet long; and the menstrual house, kula, up 
to 20 feet in diameter. There was but one dance, sweat, and menstrual house in a 
settlement, the first two in proximity at either the upstream or downstream end of the 
village, the latter at the opposite end. All buildings normally faced east—-riverward— 
but the dance house also had a rear exit. Roof entrance and ladder are not mentioned. 
The dwelling was shared by several households, each with recognized floor space. 
There were no partitions, but there were raised bed scaffolds, and a common mortar 
nollowed in a log lying transversely at the rear, corresponding in position to the drum 
in the dance house. Summer camping was under rectangular brush roofs, without 
walls, See McKern, Patwin Houses, in bibliography. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 359 


The tule raft was used on San Francisco Bay and no doubt in the 
marshes all along the Sacramento. 

Fishing in the northern streams is often from a scaffold out over 
the water; but this is simpler than among the Yurok and Shasta, and 
for spearing rather than netting. 

The salmon harpoon runs to three times a man’s length; and forks 
at the end, with detachable points, as in all the northern half of Cali- 
fornia. 

The villagers on the Sacramento used decoys to attract ducks, then 
scared them into nets. The decoys are said to have been carved and 
colored, but this was scarcely the way the California Indians exer- 
cised their fingers, even in pursuit of a practical object. Models made 
of bound rush stems, possibly with ducks’ heads set on them, are 
more likely. , 

Money came from the west, that is, the Pomo. Of late years the 
shells have been traded, and even the river Patwin know how to 
round and bore them. In the old days, it is said, only finished beads 
came in. Beads were counted, not measured. The reckoning was 
by units of 80 in the south. The thinnest disks were rated 80 to an 
American dollar, good beads 80 to 4 dollars, exceptionally thick ones 
5toadollar. This is a quadruplicating count : 320, 80, 20 to 4 dollars. 
As the latter amount is the fee for each ceremonial initiation or de- 
gree, it perhaps represents a native unit of valuation, or at any rate 
evinces a southern Wintun inclination to reckon by fours. 

The northern Wintun must have had and prized dentalia. 

All the Wintun used their terms of solar direction freely on the 
most trivial occasion. “ North of you” or “ west of the door,” would 
be spoken where we should say “ behind ” or “ to the left.” The tribes 
of northwestern California follow the same usage, except that they 
think in terms of water: “ Downstream,” “toward the stream,” and 
the like, with the absolute direction changing to accord with the 
drainage of each locality. 


THE DEAD. 


In general, the Wintun buried the dead. This is established for 
the northern division; for the Nomlaki of the central group; and at 
least for the northern members of the southern Wintun, of valley and 
hills alike, The groups near upper San Francisco Bay, and some of 
those in immediate contact with the Pomo, may have cremated. 

The precise customs in the extreme rite are not known; but the 
Nomlaki and the people about Colusa hunched the body, wrapped it 
with strings of money, bundled it in a skin—a bear skin if possible 
and then wound it around and around with ropes. The grave, which 
was dug with sticks, was undercut toward the west. The body was 
dropped in, not lowered, then pushed with rods into the little cave. 





360 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The earth was slowly stamped down to the accompaniment of wailing 
songs. Property was buried with the dead in large quantities, and, 
in some regions, burned near the grave. Altogether the public ritual 
of burial and mourning was showy and slowly elaborate, and thus 
in some ways approximated a substitute for the anniversary burning 
of the Maidu and southern tribes, which the Wintun knew but did 
not practice. This statement holds without qualification for the 
southwestern and southeastern divisions. The central group, and 
those in the north about Redding, are said to have postponed the 
burning of property for a month or two after the funeral, a practice 
probably to be interpreted as an approach to the Maidu custom of 
annually holding a communal burning of valuables in commemora- 
tion of the dead of the year. 

The native motive for the destruction of property was pure senti- 
ment rather than a desire to equip the dead. People who did not 
sacrifice all the belongings of a relative were looked upon as having 
more regard for falling heir to his valuables than for him and his 
memory. This seems to be a powerfully rooted idea among all the 
California Indians. So far as magico-religious concepts enter into 
the burial or burning of property, they appear to run along the line 
of not retaining any object that might bring about the return of 
the dead person, rather than a desire to provide for his spiritual 
existence, although the Maidu are reported as specifying the latter 
purpose. 

Somewhat similar are the motives that crop out in the universal 
taboo of the name of the dead. Fear of calling the ghost no doubt 
existed, at least here and there; but primarily the name was not 
spoken because its utterance would shock the family. For this rea- 
son a nameless reference, if direct enough to be unmisunderstandable, 
was almost as much to be avoided. No one who has even seen the 
effect. produced on a group of Indians by the well-meant ignorance of 
a white man who inquires after a relative who in the meantime has 
died, or by any allusion to the parents of old people, can doubt that 
their sensibilities are roughly and deeply wounded. It is as when 
among ourselves the dead are spoken of slightingly or with condem- 
nation; the only difference being that the Indian, feeling far more 
keenly or morbidly than we, regards any reference at all as an out- 
right slight. Hence the unforgivable nature of the offense if there is 
the least suspicion of its having been intentional; and among natives, 
who know native custom and its strength, the breach can not well be 
other than deliberate. On the other hand, the names of the dead 
are freely spoken by those not related to them, at least to white men, 
if only the Indian has confidence that»the information will not be 
allowed to go farther, and is sure that no other native can overhear 


KRONBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 361 


him; which confidence would not be in him if he seriously feared 
that utterance of the name would call the ghost. Knowing that un- 
civilized nations believe in souls and follow magical practices, we 
are often inclined to rush to the conclusion that all their actions are 
influenced by these preconceptions, and to divest these people of 
some of the profoundest and most common human emotions. 

Burial was in little graveyards not more than 100 yards from 
the houses of the living, and often in the village, perhaps in front 
of the dance house. The reason assigned for this proximity is pre- 
vention of grave robbery. Ordinary people would not touch any- 
thing that had been in contact with a corpse; but certain shamans 
were reputed so powerful that they had nothing to fear, and were 
likely to be tempted by the valuables underground. 

Widows applied pitch to their close-cropped hair and their faces 
during the entire period of mourning. 


SHAMANISM. 


The southeastern Wintun, like the Pomo, recognize the transfer 
of shamanistic ability. Among the hill people, they say, each doctor 
“acquires his own power; but among themselves, a man sometimes 
receives, not only knowledge or amulets, but the actual shaman’s 
faculty, from a brother or relative. 

In the north, shamans are “finished” in a dance held in the sweat 
house at night. Older doctors suck the novices’ bodies clean; then 
call the yapaitu or spirits, who enter the neophytes and render them 
temporarily unconscious or maniac. 

The disease-causing “pains,” as the Yurok or Shasta or Maidu 
call them in speaking English, are named dolos by these Wintun, 
which word means flint or obsidian arrow point. The Yuki hold very 
similar beliefs. The dokos are evidently spirit missiles, and can be 
extracted, through sucking, only by a shaman who has a spirit 
stronger than the one which dispatched the death-dealing object. It 
is specifically stated that the dokos are sent into human bodies by 
benevolent but offended spirits; or by inherently malignant ones; or 
by such as are controlled by an evil-minded shaman. The sun, stars, 
clouds, salmon, coyote, dog, wolf, and sucker are all shaman’s spirits; 
the first three benignant, the last three particularly powerful to bring 
death. 

The were-bear shamans exercised their powers chiefly to destroy 
those whom they disliked. When in the form of the animal, they 
had the faculty of drawing their victims to them. Grizzly bears 
were not eaten, 

Charm stones were hunting amulets, as among all other California 
Indians who recognize them. An American, finding one in a slough— 
they are almost always found in or near water—gave it to a Colusa 


862 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 


Wintun. An older Indian carried it away on the ground that it 
was too dangerous an object to have about, and then, in order to retain 
undisturbed possession for himself, pretended to have lost it. The 
old fellow was a constant fisherman and goose hunter, and the stone 
was known to be of value in attracting game. This incident, in addi- 
tion to the instances already on record, should dispose of the tenacious 
but utterly unfounded interpretation of these artifacts as sinkers. 
They were undoubtedly often suspended; but a charm can be hung 
as well as a net weight. There is no evidence that any recent Cali- 
fornia Indian ever made one of these objects; but since they looked 
upon them as magical, it is quite possible that their prehistoric 
shapers manufactured them for magical use also. 


TRADITIONS. 


Wintun mythology is represented in the available records by a 
series of tales of very unusual form, apparently obtained in the 
region of Redding or above. The chief deity and creator is Olelbis, 
“he who is above,” or in literal idiom “up-in-sit.” He makes 
streams, game, clouds, mountains, acorns, and shells, or sanctions 
their production, and reobtains water after its abduction. Day- 
hight, fire, and flint are all secured from their chary possessors by 
theft, which is obviously a favorite mythic motive. A world fire 
is recounted. The existing human race supplants the first people, 
who are endowed with animal or natural attributes. Coyote causes 
death and is its first victim; but the antithesis between him and the 
creator is vague. Much in the world is brought about through the 
power of beings who are direct personifications: Water women, 
Flint, Fire-drill child, Old man white oak acorn, Wind, the Cloud 
dogs. There are many episodes in all this to suggest the mythology 
of the Sacramento Valley Maidu; but again, much of the essential 
spirit of the systematized traditions of that people is lacking. 

The Southern Wintun equivalent of O/elbis is not known, except 
that the hawk Avatit is said to have been opposed by Coyote, and 
when he had yielded to him in the matter of death for mankind to 
have laid the A’quisetum rush sofi in the path of Coyote’s son at the 
burning of property for the dead. The rush turned into a rattle- 
snake, which bit the young man as he ran; and when Coyote wished 
to reverse his law, Aatit refused. A world fire is told of; but this 
idea is Pomo and Yuki as well as northern Wintun. The attribu- 
tion of the origin of the earth to the turtle, which dived through 
the primeval sea, is a bond of affinity with the Maidu, with whom 
many more may be expected. 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 363 
DANCES, 


An adolescence ceremony for girls has been definitely reported 
only from the northern Wintun, and even there details are lacking. 
In general, this rite seems to wane in proportion to the development 
of the IKuksu cultus which is discussed in the following chapter. 

The war dance and shaman’s dance have already been commented 
on.? 


2W. C. McKern, Functional Families of the Patwin (see bibliography), distinguishes 
(1) the household; (2) the sere or paternal family, a lineage of kin reckoned in the 
male line only; (8) the family social group, consisting of a headman and those who 
acknowledged his authority, viz, his wife, descendants, brothers and their wives and 
descendants, and young men recently married into the group and not yet returned to 
their natal one; but excluding older female members living in their husbands’ homes 
and young male members still living in their wives’ homes. Names, ceremonial objects, 
and household utensils were hereditary in the sere; strictly personal property was 
buried or burned at the owner’s. death. 

The chief usually succeeded his father, sometimes a brother or uncle, but always a 
relative within the sere; an unqualified son might be passed over in favor of a more 
distant relative on his father’s death, by agreement of the older men of the community; 
once in office, he could not be deposed. He consulted formally with the headmen of 
the family social groups (who evidently corresponded to the lesser chiefs or ‘‘ captains ” 
of the Pomo and the ‘‘ town chiefs” of the Yuki) but made his own decisions and was 
not disobeyed; the dissatisfied left the community. His house stood in the middle and 
he wore only holiday attire. He is said to have assigned ‘“ picking grounds” annually 
to each family according to its needs, divided: all larger game among the family head- 
men, directed communal hunts, and fixed the first day of fishing. He authorized the 
holding of the Hesi ceremony and gave a ritual name to each initiate. Councils were 
held, with sweating, in his house; gambling on ceremonial occasions took place in it; 
he was buried in it and it was then burned. 

Each sere possessed an esoteric ritual, plus individually inherited charms, which 
qualified one or more of its members for certain religious, official, or trade functions. 
Thus the hlapeta family fished with the hlapi seine; the chapentu built salmon dams; 
the chakotu netted ducks; the kapitu flaked arrow points; others netted geese, made salt, 
made feathered or oval baskets or woodpecker crest headbands and belts. Nonmembers 
of these families were not prohibited from following the same occupations, but 
specialization and success went with the family medicine. Official and religious fam- 
ilies, on the other hand, were monopolistic and provided the chapatu or Hesi fire tender ; 
koltu or song leaders; holwatu or Sika drummers; yaitu or ritual shaman and in- 
structor; K’aima, Sika, Loli, Toto, and Kuchu dancers; and the maliomta or shamans, 
who were taught by older relatives to influence the spirits. The chief, the war leader, 
the chimatu or Hesi manager, the moki or Hesi head, attained their positions through 
merit and not because of family charm or ritual. The strict rigor of patrilinear in- 
heritance in these fuyctional families was frequently modified by adoption of unrelated 
individuals of special aptitude or qualification. 

Something of this type of organization would seem to have existed also among the 
Pomo, sinee it explains many of their statements; and in some degree among the Maidu 
and perhaps other groups; and it is evident that further studies along the line of this 
one will have to be made before the precise relation of the Kuksu organization and 
rituals, as described in the next chapter, to native society becomes clear. 


CHAPTER 26. 
BELEAWUN LUN gicl KS Gu ia 


THE CENTRAL CALIFORNIA KUKSU CULT, 364; distinctive traits, 364: relation to 
other cults, 867; distribution, 3868; the esoteric society, 371; the influence of 


A 


the modern ghost dance, 875; ceremony, dance, and impersonation, 3876; 
the dance series, 379; the kernel of the cult, 381; mythological relational 
882; minor equivalations, 382; motives of the cult, 388. Tur PATWIN FORM 
OF THE KUKSU CULT, 384; the Patwin Hesi, 388. 


Tur CenrraL Cauirornta Kuxsu Curr. 


Among the Wintun, or more specifically in the Patwin half of 
the Wintun stock, appears to be found the hotbed of the central 
Californian cult system based on a secret society and characterized 
by the IXuksu or “ big-head” dances. It happens that the Wintun 
practices in connection with this organization are rather less known 
than those of their neighbors the Pomo and the Maidu; but as all 
indications point to their having exercised the most prominent in- 
fluence in the shaping of this system, it is advisable to consider its 
general features here. 

It must be clearly understood that “ Wintun” in connection with 
Kuksu cult means Patwin only. Few if any non-Patwin Wintun 
followed this religion until after the white man came. 


DISTINCTIVE TRAITS. 


The presence of a male secret society must be taken as the first test 
character of the central Californian religious cult. vy his means that 
there is a set of esoteric rites participated in onl¥ by those who, 
usually as boys, have been initiated and instructed. 

Hand in hand with secret societies in many parts of the world 
goes the use of masks and disguises, both traits springing from the 
same impulse toward concealment. ‘True masks have not been re- 
ported anywhere in California; but it is clear that wherever the 
secret society prevails at least some of its members have their iden- 
tity concealed during dances. This is accomplished either by crude 
and heavy coats of paint, or by face curtains of feathers, down, 
grass, or shredded rushes. As almost everywhere else, these dis- 
guised dancers of central California represent spirits or deities, in 


064 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 365 


fact are believed to be such by the uninitiated children and younger 
women. The lack of an actual mask, in the form of a false face, is 
probably the result of the much weaker technical inclinations of the 
Californians than of other nations given to secret associations. 

A certain type of place of assembly is a nearly constant fea- 
ture of this cult: the large earth-covered house, approximately 
circular, with its domed roof resting on posts and beam logs. 
Structures of this general type are widespread: the Plains earth 
lodge—of which the Sun-dance lodge is only the unroofed and 
unwalled skeleton—the winter house of the interior Salish, of the 
Modoc on the California border, are all similar in fundamental 
plan. But these are dwellings. In central California the structure 
is a ceremonial chamber. 

It is true that the living houses of some of the tribes that possessed 
the Kuksu society were often made like their dance houses, except 
that they were smaller. It is also true that several of the groups 
adjoining them on the north,such as the Wailaki, Yana, northeastern 
Maidu, and Achomawi, built the same kind of structure without de- 
voting it to the uses of a society. But in general, the geographical 
correspondence of the two traits is close. The Wiyot, Chimariko, 
and Shasta, who are all but a short distance north beyond the con- 
fines of the secret society area, did without the earth lodge. ‘To the 
south, again, the earth lodge has not been reported from the Yokuts, 
who had no secret society. They did construct sweat houses covered 
with soil; in fact, such structures prevail south practically to the 
limits of the State; but these were comparatively small buildings, 
devoted to sweating and sleeping, and not employed for dances, 
initiations, or assemblies. Again, an earth-covered house appears 
in much of southern California; but this is the living house, and 
ceremonials are held outdoors. 

In the main, then, the spread of the earth house as a ritualistic 
chamber coincides with that of the Kuksu cult, except toward the 
north. So far as the correspondence fails in details, the variance 
can be corrected by consideration of an accessory, the foot drum. 
This is a large, hollowed slab, 6, 8, or 10 feet long, placed with its 
convex side up, above a shallow excavation in the rear of the dance 
house, and stamped on by the dancers. So far as available infor- 
mation goes, this drum is used only by secret society tribes. 

The earth-roofed ceremonial chamber is frequently called a sweat 
house. It is this, at times, though smaller structures, used only 
for sweating, stood by its side. In uncomfortable weather it prob- 
ably served as a lounging place for men. It seems sometimes to 
have been inhabited, sometimes, like the Yurok sweat house, to have 


366 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 7 


been used as sleeping quarters by men only. It differs radically from 
the sweat houses of northwestern, south central, and southern Cali- 
fornia, first, in being much larger, and second in being the principal 
site in which dances and public rituals were held. In the other re- 
gions dances were performed in the open, or under booths or shades; 
an occasional exhibition or practice in the sweat house by disease- 
curing shamans is no real exception. Neither “sweat house” nor 
“dance house” is therefore accurately descriptive for the structure 
of the Wintun area; but the latter term is far more distinctive. 

It can hardly be doubted that there is a connection between the 
dance house and the fact that so far as knowledge goes the secret 
society rites were prevailingly if not exclusively held in winter. 
Whether this custom drove the central Californians to build a struc- 
ture that would afford them shelter from the rains, or whether the 
splendid roof of the earth lodge and its subterranean warmth drew 
the ceremonies indoors and therefore into the wintry season, is of 
course not to be decided offhand. But the latter seems more prob- 
able; both because religion may in general be assumed to be more 
likely to accommodate its details to industrial and material con- 
siderations than the reverse; and especially because the dance house, 
built smaller, served also as the permanent dwelling of the tribes in 
question. It would seem, then, that because groups like the Wintun 
and their neighbors lived in suitable houses, they came to conduct 
their ceremonies indoors and in the period of rains. This fixa- 
tion in place and time, in turn, could hardly have any other effect 
than an elaboration of ritual. The same dance performed in the 
same spot for half a year would have palled even on the decoratively 
repetitive mood of-a California Indian. Much of the systematization 
of the Kuksu dances and their bewildering ramifications, so unique 
in California and so reminiscent of Hopi and Kwakiutl, can there- 
fore have its origin laid, with a fair degree of likelihood, to the 
fact that the people of the environs of the Sacramento Valley lived 
in good-sized, permanent, and waterproof houses. 

At any rate, a causal correlation between buildings and ritual 
season is clear, because elsewhere, to the north as well as the south, 
where dances were held outdoors, or under flimsy sun shelters, all 
evidence points to the dry summer months being the usual time for 
ceremonies. This applies both to the northwestern tribes and to 
the Yokuts. The Modoc had the earth house and danced in it in 
winter, or outdoors in summer. For the southern end of the State, 
the custom is not so clear; but in this warm arid region every season 
is reasonably pleasant in the open. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 367 


RELATION TO OTHER CULTS. 


The secret society, the pseudo-masks, and the semisubterranean 
dance house with its foot drum are, then, the regular recognition 
marks of the Kuksu cult that centers among the Patwin.! 

Not one of these features recurs in the developed ceremonial sys- 
tem of the northwestern tribes. In fact, almost every aspect of ritual 
is diverse there: dances are occasions for the manifestation of wealth, 
and the participant enters them to display on his person the valuable 
splendors owned by his friends or kin, with no more notion of rep- 
resenting a spirit than when we go to church. 

The southeastern or desert or Yuman religious system is also 
organized on a totally distinct plan. The dance is quite incidental, 
almost immaterial, often rudimentary. Hence the place where it is 
held, and the regalia worn, are of very little consequence. ‘The cen- 
ter of interest is in the song, which comes in great monotonous cycles, 
whose words relate mythic events “ dreamed” or spiritually expe- 
rienced by the singer. He tells of the god or repeats his chant and 
speech, instead of enacting him: the ritual is essentially narrative, 
as that of the Patwin is dramatic. Again the whole ceremonial 
technique is fundamentally another one. 

The fourth and last of the organized cults of California, that 
which appears to have originated in the coast or island region of 
southern California and to have spread north as far as the Yokuts 
of the San Joaquin Valley—the jimsonweed or toloache religion— 
has one point of similarity, as it has also geographical contact, with 
the secret society system: in both, an initiation is a fundamental 
feature. A group of initiates is in itself a kind of society; and in 
this sense, the southern religion can be said to be characterized by 
the presence of an esoteric society. However, the toloache cult 
stresses the initiation, while the northern appears to have more feel- 
ing for the organization as such, for its activities irrespective of the 
introduction of noyaces. Thus, the jimsonweed ceremonies are every- 
where clearly puberty rites in some measure; among some groups 
elements taken from them are extended to girls as well as boys; and 
their avowed intent, as well as obvious purpose, is to render each 
neophyte hardy, strong, lucky, wealthy, and successful. It is the 
novice’s career in life, rather than membership in an organization, 
that is thought of. The same qualities attach to the activities of the 
societies. These, in the south, are directed predominantly to either 
initiations or mournings, while in the Sacramento Valley prolonged 


1Recent data suggest that among the tribes in the San Joaquin as opposed to the Sac- 
ramento half of the Kuksu territory—in other words, the Miwok, Yokuts, Costanoans, and 
Salinans—the secret society was either unimportant or lacking. 


3625 °—25 25 








368 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLt.. 78 


and involved ceremonies like the Tesi are practiced which either 
are an end in themselves or have as their purpose the benefit of the 
world at large, and are in no direct relation to the making of new 
members or the commemoration of the old. A difference in emphasis 
or meaning is thus quite clear between the half-society of the toloache 
using Yokuts, Gabrielino, and Luisefo, and the typical Pomo, 
Patwin, or Maidu society. 

At other points the gap is complete. The narcotic and dangerous 
drug introduces an entirely new element into the southern cult. 
There is no approach to masks or disguise—in itself a suggestive in- 
dication that the true esoteric society feeling is weak or lacking. 
The southern dancer acts as the god acted or taught; he does not 
pretend to be a god. A slight and uniform costume suffices where the 
northern imagination revels in a dozen or more kinds of attire—one 
for each deity. . 

The associated mythology is quite different in sentiment as well as 
in substance. In its most developed form finally, the Chungichnish 
worship of southern California, the southern cult possesses features, 
such as the ground painting and a type of symbolism, that are 
wholly unrepresented in the Sacramento Valley. 


DISTRIBUTION. 


The one recognizable point of approach between the Kuksu and the 
jimsonweed cults may account for the fact that they seem to overlap 
territorially. As nearly as can be determined, the Salinan group 
and the northern Yokuts followed both systems. But inferences may 
be drawn from this circumstance only with extreme caution. Both 
groups are extinct for all practical purposes. The survivors are 
very few, and of their culture only memories of the grandfathers’ 
times remain. With the Salinans, evidence for Kuksu practices is 
shght and for toloache of the shghtest; especially as regards the 
latter there is no positive means of deciding whether the recorded 
mention refers to natives or to Yokuts foreignérs imported to the 
Salinan missions. About the northernmost Yokuts, even less is on 
record. We barely know that they danced Kuksu, and the attribu- 
tion to them of jimsonweed drinking rests wholly on statements of 
their Miwok neighbors. On the whole, therefore, there is likely to 
have been less commingling or co-existence of the two systems than 
the map appears to indicate. 

Between the Kuksu and the northwestern rituals, on the other hand, 
there is an absolute geographical gap. Over a belt of 50 miles or 
more of rugged country nothing pertaining to either cult was fol- 
lowed, the rude natives contenting themselves with shamanistic prac- 
tices, adolescence ceremonies for girls, and war dances. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 369 


The distribution of the secret society cult is shown in Plate 74, but 
requires some amplification. 


Actual records of the rituals among the Wintun are chiefly confined to the 
northerly members of the southeastern and southwestern divisions of the stock. 
The southerly villages, down to San Francisco Bay, unquestionably adhered to 
the cult. For the central Wintun, information is doubtful. The Colusa Patwin 
declare that the characteristic Kuksu forms, such as the Hesi ceremony and 
Moki impersonator, were not known beyond uppermost Stony Creek, in the 
region adjoining the northeastern Pomo. This is the end of southwestern 
Wintun territory. Beyond, on Grindstone and the middle course of Stony 
Creek, and about Paskenta, only “ common” dances were made, the southerners 
declare, until the ghost dance of about 1872 coming in—the boli dancing, as 
they call it in distinction from the ceremonies relating to the saltu spirits—it 
became connected with some of the old rituals, and carried them north into 
these regions of the central Wintun. 

These central Wintun are situated between the Yuki on one side and the 
northwestern Maidu on the other. Both these groups followed Kuksu cults in 
ancient times. The central Wintun are therefore rather likely to have prac- 
ticed some form of the same religion even before 1870, in spite of the state- 
ments of their southern kinsmen. It may be presumed that those of the hills, 
who have chiefly survived, adhered to a form of the rituals which did not 
include the most special manifestations of the religion, such as the Hesi and 
the Moki, and perhaps did not even make use of the name Kuksu; in short, 
that they were much in the status of the Yuki. The central Wintun of the 
valley, particularly those on the Sacramento, may have been one with the up- 
landers; but their contact with the Chico Maidu, as well as with the south- 
eastern Wintun downstream from them, make the conjecture more likely that 
they shared in some measure in the more numerous ceremonies of Hesi-Moki 
type. But there is no direct evidence to this effect. 

Beyond them, among the northern Wintun, the Kuksu cults almost certainly 
did not prevail. Neither-the mythology of these people, which is rather ade- 
quately known, nor any of the more scattering notices as to their customs, con- 
tain the least reference to any known phase of the religion. The ghost dance, 
however, carried the “ big-head ” impersonation and other Kuksu elements to 
them also, no doubt in a bastardized form. 

From the northern Wintun, one branch of the Shasta, the group resident in 
Shasta Valley, learned the “ big-head” dance since 1870. The Shasta are so 
overwhelmingly northwestern in their mode of life and point of view that these 
elements of the central religion would have been wholly in conflict with their 
civilization before American influences disintegrated it. 

All of the Yana are ignorant of the characteristic old costumes, and fail to 
recognize names like Kuksu. 

Of other northern tribes, the Wiyot, Chimariko, Shasta of Scott Valley, Acho- 
mawi, and presumably Atsugewi knew nothing of the system. 

Among the Maidu, the valley villages of the northwestern division made sub- 
stantially the same dances as did the Patwin. In fact the fullest informa- 
tion extant upon the complexities of the cult is derived from these people. The 
northwestern foothill Maidu possessed the same society but less elaborate ritual 
and a less systematic organization. For the southern Maidu or Nishinam direct 
data again fail us, but the position of these people, together with their close 
cultural relations to the northwestern Maidu on the one hand and the Miwok 
on the other, make their inclusion in the cult a certainty. They had probably 
developed it in intensity proportional to their proximity to the valley. For 


370 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


the northeastern Maidu, a race of highlanders, a doubtful negative must be 
recorded. They held indoor dances, among them a goose dance, in which an 
abundance of feathers was worn, and which are said to have been recently 
introduced from the northwestern Maidu. But there is no reference to dis- 
cuises or to impersonations of spirits; the dances are said to have been made 
randomly and not in sequence; the ‘big head” costume was unknown; char- 
acters like AKuksu, so important in the northwestern creation myth, are un- 
mentioned in northeastern tradition; and above all, the secret society organ- 
ization is not known to have existed. If, then, the northeastern Maidu came 
under the cult at all, it was but very slightly and may again have been only 
since the arrival of the white man. 

On the Washo there are no data. In spite of their living across the Sierra 
Nevada, it is not wholly precluded that they had borrowed something from the 
Kuksu cult; they knew of the earth lodge. 

For the Pomo, there are direct accounts for nearly all of the divisions; and 
circumstantial evidence, such as the presence of dance houses with drums, for 
the others. 

The Yuki ceremonies, which appear to have been only two, have been de- 
scribed in detail. It must be recalled that the two most northwesterly di- 
visions of the Yuki proper, the Ta’no’m and Lilshikno’m, did not perform the 
impersonations of the other Yuki, and replaced their society by an “ obsidian ” 
initiation, of shamanistic inclinations, derived from the Wailaki. The Yuki 
Hulv’ilal and Taticomol dances were learned from the Huchnom, and the 
former ceremony reappears among the Coast Yuki under another name. Thus 
both these tribal groups must be included also. For the Wappo, nothing is 
known, but their location renders their participation in the cult certain. 

One Athabascan division, the Kato, the southernmost members of the family, 
practiced the esoteric rites of the society, in fact, helped to convey them to the 
Yuki, it is said. 

The Wailaki followed the just-mentioned ‘“ obsidian” cult. This possesses 
an initiation, but is essentially shamanistic and without impersonations. A 
Kuksu cult is therefore lacking; but a Kuksu stimulus may be suspected. 

The Miwok on the coast and on Clear Lake were so identified with the 
Pomo in all their customs that they must be reckoned with them in this 
matter also. As regards the interior Miwok groups on the slope of the Sierra 
Nevada, definite data are available for the central division, and the character 
of these leaves little doubt that similar rites prevailed among the other 
three divisions. What is known of Miwok ceremonies gives them a somewhat 
different color from those of all the tribes so far enumerated. There is more 
-mention of dances and less of a society organization. But Plate 74 reveals 
that those of the Yuki, Pomo, Wintun, and Maidu divisions about whom there 
happens to be information form a compact and continuous group, from which 
the central Sierra Miwok are removed by some distance; so that a considerable 
diversity of the latter would have to be expected. 

On the large Costanoan and Salinan groups there is only the scantiest in- 
formation, which in effect reduces to the fact that at both missions San Jose 
and San Antonio the Kuksu dance and one or two other dances with charac- 
teristic Kuksu names were performed. This would be sufticient, were it not 
for the fact that San Joaquin Valley natives were brought to both missions, 
This circumstance would Seriously jeopardize all conclusions, except for 
one saving grace. The interior Indians settled at the Salinan missions were 

largely if not wholly central Yokuts tribes such as the Tachi and Telamni, 
whose survivors in their old homes are totally ignorant both of Kuksu and of 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA Sid 


any esoteric society, while they do follow the southern jimsonweed cult. The 
Kuksui, Hiwei, and Lolei dances at San Antonio are therefore more probably 
indigenous or long acculturated among the Salinans. With the system estab- 
lished there, the likelihood is increased that it prevailed also among the 
Costanoans, who lived between the Salinans and the Patwin. The particular 
Kuksui danced near mission San Jose until a generation ago may well have 
been an importation by Plains Miwok; some native form of the cult would 
nevertheless be likely to have existed among the Costanouns, 

As for the Esselen, it is the same story as in everything else: ignorance. 
But they can hardly but have belonged other than with the Costanoans and 
Salinans. 

The Yokuts, or the bulk of them, including practically all the survivors, are 
a toloache-drinking people. It is only the northern valley tribes, and perhaps 
only the northernmost block of these, that come in question for the Kuksu cult. 
There is so little known of these natives that there is really nothing to go on 
in the present inquiry, other than Miwok statements that many of their cere- 
monies of Kuksu type came to them from these Yokuts of the adjacent valley. 
Furthermore, the position of these people, between the Miwok on one side and 
the Costanoans on the other, and actually though barely in touch with the 
Patwin, makes it difficult to believe that they could have escaped taking up 
more or less of the ritual. 

The secret society or Kuksu cult thus was followed by all or most 
of the members of eight stocks: the Yuki, Pomo, Wintun, Maidu, 
Miwok, Costanoan, Esselen, and Salinan, and by fragments of two 
others: Athabascan and Yokuts. On a wider view, the cult thus 
appears to be essentially as well as originally a Penutian systemati- 
zation. 


THE ESOTERIC SOCIETY, 


Of the society itself our understanding is slight. There seem 
to have been two grades, although the second may have been entered 
after a less formal initiation. The first took place when boys were 
of a tender age, the second when or after they reached puberty, 
perhaps in early manhood. This has been previously noted for the 
Yuki; other groups have distinctive names for the two grades, as 
Pomo mui and matutst (or matutst as member versus yomta as head 
of the society), Patwin yompu and yaitu, Maidu yombasi and yeponi. 

These two age steps were perhaps characteristic of the organization 
everywhere. There are some indications of further subdividing. 
Among the Patwin, some men are said to pass through 12 successive 
“ degrees,” each preceded by instruction and payment, and leading 
to knowledge of a new saltw or impersonation. There was a seat for 
each of these yadtu stages along the southeastern wall of the dance 
house, while the yompu novices sat on the southwest. 

The northwestern Maidu of the foothills called the head of the 
society in each village hukw. 'The valley people in the same group 
use the term yeponi. This term seems to be sometimes used specifi- 
cally of the individual of highest authority; at other times, to be 
the designation of any fully initiated adult. The near-by Yahi, who 


8372 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


did not have the society, regarded yeponi as the Maidu equivalent 
of their word for “ chief” or important person in the ordinary sense, 
mudjaupa. So, too, the Colusa Patwin translate yepont as sektu, 
“chief,” and identify the Maidu yombas? or preliminary initiate with 
their useltu or night-prowling witch. 

An initiate who has never risen to the highest rank is called beipe 
by the Maidu. The word is also used to designate the individual 
who assists the head yeponi. The same conflicting vagueness appears 
here, to our minds. Whether this is due merely to native etymological 
undifferentiation, or whether in reality there was only one person, or 
perhaps a few individuals, who carried the full secrets of the order 
in each locality, is a tantalizing problem. 

The valley Maidu use three other terms that indicate some meas- 
ure of systematized organization. The ba api is an expelled or de- 
graded initiate. The kuksu is the instructor of the yombasi or boy 
novices. The hinaki teaches the impersonators of the Yompui spirit. 
The southeastern Wintun do not seem to know the terms ba’api and 
hinaki, declare that any full initiate taught the boys, and add that 
if a member proved refractory he was magically poisoned by his 
fellows. 

There is another side from which the organization can be ap- 
proached, though here, too, the available information does not carry 
us far. The Maidu and the Patwin universally accord the highest 
rank among their spirit impersonations to the JJ/oki. ‘They state 
that for a man to make the JJ/oki implies his having enacted all 
other characters and being acquainted with everything concerning 
them. Now this, if there are degrees and ranks within the society, 
looks like an instance of it. And yet the Moki performer attains 
his post not by any tested proficiency or service to the society, but 
by having acted as assistant to the individual who was the last in- 
cumbent, and having been designated by him as successor. 

That is, so far as can be seen, an avowed principle of private ar- 
rangements here cuts into the society plan. The same holds true of 
the Maidu pehetpe or clown, who retained his position for life or 
until age induced him to transfer the office to a successor of his own 
selection. Similarly among the Patwin, the singers, who appear to 
have been repositories of particular knowledge but who did not im- 
personate spirits in the dances, and thus almost formed a caste within 
the society, inherited their office in the male line. It is thus clear 
that a plan of recognized personal privilege, almost feudal in type, 
and rather at variance in spirit with the principle of a society of 
comrades, coexisted within the system. 

The Patwin add that there are certain impersonations, such as the 
Moki, Siti, Kot-ho, Temeyu, and Sika, which many men receive in- 
struction for but are afraid to enact. Possibly, they think, the 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 373 


teacher was offended at not receiving more pay and in resentment 
gave erroneous instructions, which, if carried out, would bring 
death to the performer. ‘They placed full confidence, in such dan- 
gerously sacred matters, only in a near kinsman; so that the enact- 
ment of these spirits usually descended from father to son. The 
Tuya, Dado, Dihlt, Witili, and Auksu impersonations carried much 
less risk, and were freely assumed by all initiates. 

Still another point of view antagonistic to the fundamental scheme 
of a universal religious society is obvious as having intruded among 
the northwestern foothill Maidu. The hukw or head of the society 
in each locality was a person charged with enormous responsibilities 
and privileges, but he was selected, not by any esoteric or ritualistic 
procedure on the part of the society, or any designated element 
within it, but by the leading shaman. That there is no misunder- 
standing of the reports on this point, and that it was the shaman as 
shaman and not as a member of the organization that made the 
selection, is clear from the fact that he based his choice upon con- 
sultation with the spirits—apparently his own private spirits and 
not the deities presiding over the organization. This status was 
reenforced by the circumstance that the new head of the society was 
expected to be a shaman himself, and that if he were not, he would 
be made such by having an animal or disease-bearing object intro- 
duced into his body by some acknowledged shaman. 

It may be added that in the Chungichnish religion of southern 
California it is also often difficult to distinguish between the initiated 
as such and the shamans; and that the name of the former, puplem, 
appears to be only a reduplicated or collective plural of the word 
for shaman, pu/. Evidently, the failure to differentiate completely 
is in this case in the native mind, and something of the sort appears 
to have been true also of the foothill Maidu and other northern tribes. 
For instance, the hukw had as badge of office a cape, to which were 
attached objects of a fetishistic character. This cape was made for 
him by the principal shaman, and buried or burned with him at 
death. It was fatal even for other members of the society to touch 
it. When enemies in another village were to be destroyed, magic 
ceremonies were performed with the cape by its possessor. It is 
true that the society was less organized among the foothill people 
than among the valley Patwin and Maidu. But the interweaving 
with shamanism in the hills is so close that it can scarcely be doubted 
that in some measure the same processes must have been at work 
everywhere. Thus, at least some of the Miwok dances pertaining to 
the cult were made to cure or prevent disease; as has already been 
noted of the Yuki and Pomo. 

Again to return to the hukw or society head of the foothill Maidu, 
we have attributed to him functions not only of the shaman but of 


374 _ BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


the governmental chief. He found the best sites for acorn gathering 
and announced them to the public; if the trees belonged to another 
village, he negotiated the payment for the crop. Besides inflicting 
sickness on foes, he warded it off from his own people. He made 
rain when it was needed, insured abundance of seeds, and a favor- 
able run of salmon. He lit the fires at the anniversary mourning 
burnings. He knew and taught myths and more recent lore. En- 
mities were at once reported to him, that he might protect the people. 
He must understand all smoke signals. He advised about fighting, 
prepared arrow poison, and accompanied or led all war parties. In 
fact, his reported duties and prerogatives were so numerous that 
he must have been priest, shaman, and political and military chief all 
in one, and it is difficult to see where any room could have been 
left for the true chief except in matters relating to money and 
wealth, which it is significant are not referred to in connection with 
the huku.? 

Now, when the dividing line between the priest and the shaman 
becomes obliterated in any primitive society, the matter may seem of 
no great moment to some students, in spite of the ideal difference 
between the two statuses, because after all both personages are reli- 
gious functionaries. But when the priest is also the political head, 
especially as regards all foreign relations of the community, a com- 
mingling of what is normally distinct can not but be acknowledged ; 
and this commingling means that social elements possessing no in- 
tegral relation to the scheme of an esoteric and impersonating reli- 
gious society have entered and profoundly affected that society. 

All these indications together reveal at once the complexity of the 
connections and functions of the secret society, and its ill-defined 
vagueness as an organization. Elaborateness 1s present, indeed evi- 
dently in greater degree than we yet have specific knowledge of; 
but it is not a formally exact elaboration. Here hes perhaps the 
deepest difference of spirit between the organization of religion 
in its highest form in California and those expressions which it as- 
sumes among the Pueblos, the North Pacific coast Indians, and even 
those of the Plains. 

For this reason the impression must be guarded against of looking 
upon the society of each village as a branch or chapter or lodge of the 
society as a whole. This is our modern way of organizing things. 
There is nothing whatever to show that the California Indian 
arranged affairs in such a way, and a great deal to indicate that he did 
not. The society existed only in separate communities. Each com- 
munal society no doubt recognized the others as parallel and equal. 





2 The difficulties about the hukuw are partly cleared up by the assumption that the 
foothill Maidu society organization was similar to that of the Pomo as disclosed by 
recent data: a limited membership drawn chiefly from one lineage in each community, 
and a marked centering of its authorities in the one person of its yomta or head. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 875 


In this sense there was a general society ; but its existence remained a 
purely conceptual one. The society custom was widespread and 
recognized as international. The only societies were those of the town 
units. They were not branches, because there was no parent stem. 
Our method, in any such situation, religious or otherwise, is to con- 
stitute a central and superior body. Since the day of the Roman 
empire and the Christian church we hardly think of a social 
activity except as it is coherently organized into a definite unit defi- 
nitely subdivided. 

But it must be recognized that such a tendency is not an inherent 
and inescapable one of all civilization. If we are able to think 
socially only in terms of an organized machine, the California native 
was just as unable to think in these terms. When we recall with 
how slender a machinery and how rudimentary an organization the 
whole business of Greek civilization was carried out, it becomes easily 
intelligible that the American Indian, and especially the aboriginal 

Jalifornian, could dispense with almost all endeavors in this direc- 
tion which to us seem vital. 

It is therefore not surprising that no name has been reported for 
the society. There probably is none. The dance house or ceremonial 
chamber is k’wm in Maidu, Aldwt in Patwin, shane in Pomo, zwil-han 
in Yuki, damma in Coast and hangi in Interior Miwok. No doubt 
these words are often used in the sense of the society rather than 
the physical structure itself. So, also, there is everywhere a name 
for the members as a class: yepont in Maidu, yaztu in Wintun, matuts? 
in Pomo, /ashmdél in Yuki; and these terms, in the plural, again imply 
the organization. 

In just the same way there is in southern California a name for 
the instituting and protective deity, Chungichnish, for the initiated, 
puplem, and for the place of ritual, yoba or wamkish; and there the 
vocabulary ends. It may even be recalled that among ourselves, who 
can not dispense with names of organizations as such, terms denotive 
of membership, like Masons, Foresters, Odd Fellows, and Elks, un- 
derlie our designations of the orders themselves. The Indian merely 
seems to have lacked any abstract word corresponding to our “so- 
ciety ” or “ order.” | 


THE INFLUENCE OF THE MODERN GHOST DANCE. 


The vagueness of purpose and technique which allowed the seeping 
in of such extraneous features as shamanism appears also in the 
introduction of “ ghost dance” elements in the modern society ritu- 
als among the Pomo, southern and central Wintun, and in some 
measure the valley Maidu. These infiltrations are a consequence of 
the ghost-dance movement initiated in Nevada in the beginning of 
the seventies by the father of Wovoka—the Northern Paiute messiah 
of two decades later. The earlier prophecies came at a time when 


376 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULT., 78 


the great mass of tribes in the central United States was not yet 
ready for them—the last of the buffalo were still roaming the plains, 
and the old free life had not yet disintegrated. The consequence was 
that this earlier dream religion, instead of sweeping like a blast over 
half the country, spent itself in Nevada and northern California, and 
drew almost no attention from Americans. I ran, for a brief time, 
and in typical ghost-dance form, with dreams of the dead and ex- 
pectation of their impending return and the end of the world, 
through northern tribes like the Achomawi, Shasta, Karok, and 
Yurok; and may possibly have had some effect in fomenting the 
Modoc war of 1873. Its course in the Sacramento Valley region 
is not well known; but it attached itself to the soil and became en- 
demic, modifying the old society ritual. The Patwin distinguish be- 
tween their old worship and the modern boli or bole or “ spirit.” 
religion—boli signifies ghosts or. spirits of the human dead, as con- 
trasted with saltu, the ancient spirits or divinities. This distinction 
does not imply a separate organization and ceremonial existence. In 
fact, the boli rites have perpetuated themselves, where they survived 
at all, only as part of the secret society rites. But the older men 
are aware of the difference between the form of religion practiced 
in their youth and that prevalent now. Similarly among the Pomo: 
recent ceremonies are in charge not so much of the head /uksu official, 
as of a maru, a messianic priest or dreamer or “ fortune teller,” who 
communicates with the spirits of the dead. Among the Pomo the 
old society rituals perhaps went to pieces rather more completely than 
in the Sacramento Valley; at least, the new cult obtained a firmer 
foothold, and seems to have supplanted the ancient rites more. 


CEREMONY, DANCE, AND IMPERSONATION, 


A distinction of considerable importance between what may be 
called the ceremony and the dance, or a ritual and a rite, appears in 
native terminology. The Wintun call a ceremony huya (“ gather- 
ing,” “assembly ”), a dance tono, a song muhi,; the Pomo, according 
to dialect, call a ceremony, which they describe as a four days’ affair, 
hai-kil (hai-kil-ga, hai-kil-ba) or hai-chil, “ stick-hanging,” and 
the individual dances performed in the ceremonies, he or ke, “ sing- 
ings.”® It may be added that the native words which we translate 
by “sing” and “dance” are used with far less distinction of mean- 
ing, or with a different distinction, in some Californian languages, 
than we make between them. 

In the idioms other than Wintun and Pomo, the same discrimina- 
tion between ceremony and dance may be expected, though it has 
not been reported. As compared to wok, “dance,” the Yuki say 








% Another account calls both a ceremony and an impersonation hai, but distinguishes 
a dance without impersonation as he. 


K ROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 377 


wok-nam, “ dance-lying,” for “initiation.” Zt they translate as 
“ doctoring” or performing on the sick by means of spirit imper- 
sonations. ‘This word may really denote “rite” or “ ceremony ”; 
especially since the /i¢ is said to continue four nights. 

Among the Maidu the distinction has not been recorded. This 
omission is perhaps the reason for the appearance, in the records 
concerning them, of an unusual elaboration of their dance cycle, and 
for the conflicting nature of their testimony as to its details. 

On the other hand, Maidu accounts make it clear that there is a 
difference, of which the native is conscious, however difficult he may 
find it to express in general terms, between the dance or ceremony 
on the one hand, and the acts of spirit impersonation that enter into 
the ceremony on the other. Thus the Maidu separate the loyeng- 
kaminé or “ pay dances,” in which payments are made because spirits 
appear in them, from the weng-kamini, which they translate as 
“common ” or “ profane” dances, in which there are no disguises. 

This provides three elements for consideration: the ceremony, the 
dance, and the impersonation. Thus, with the Pomo, the Auksu 
impersonator performs the A‘wisw dance as part of various cere- 
monies. It is plain that relations such as these afford broad oppor- 
tunities for confusion in presentation and apperception of facts 
known to us only by hearsay; and they have no doubt helped to 
obscure understanding of the ritual system. It is probably only 
accident, in other words imperfection of the record, that has led 
some students to distinguish the Aakim, or spirits impersonated by 
the Maidu, from their kaménd, but to use the latter term indiscrim- 
inately for individual dance performances and for ceremonies that 
are complexes of dances and other activities; while among the Pomo 
and Patwin, other students separate the dance and the ceremony, 
but leave vague the relation of the spirit impersonation to each. 
The discrimination of these three factors, and of any others that 
there may prove to be, will have to be pretty accurately accomplished 
before we can hope to conceive the organic plan of the secret society 
cult with justice. 

So far as the fragmentary knowledge allows, however, the princi- 
pal ceremonies, dances, and impersonations have been brought to- 
gether for comparison in the appended tabulations; the ceremonies 
(including perhaps some of the more important dances), as con- 
trasted with the nonspirit or subsidiary dances, in Table 1, the 
impersonations or dance characters in Table 2. These lists embody 
all ritual performances that can be accepted as common to two or 
more stocks, either through similarity of name, identification by the 
Indians, or the possession of the same features. In addition, there 
is a long array of dances that are peculiar to the Pomo, Patwin, 
Maidu, or Miwok, or whose interrelations remain obscure; such are 
mentioned in the sections devoted to each of these stocks, 


378 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


TABLE 1.—PRINCIPAL DANCES OR CEREMONIES ASSOCIATED WITH THE SECRET 
Soctrty SYSTEM OF THE CENTRAL TRIBES. 


CEREMONIES OR MAJOR DANCES. 




















Meaning. Yuki. Pomo. Patwin. Nera ane Costanoan. |} Salinan. 
(tess. oa laee Taikomol.| Guksu 2..... Kuksu 2... (3) Kuksuyu...| Kuksui‘..| Kuksui. 
i Boh ete pl a glen ll aS eee A oe Hiesi =: ee HOSt a eels Nate ao fee eo 
DUCK ER aad: enc nae oe so eee ee Wiatis, Carrie VW ail frsem enc | tees ae cere ctal| acon eee 
ek. TRE TL SEAN SSPE oP BEE EIA etl SER PE Bre 5 oe ae ee ees 
Grizzly Beared rai feteks miles oe ree ee Silalvenack Pandy tevs- Usumaties s). 242.8 ‘“‘Bear.”’ 
DeCre ee ree |ee ee e ere ie, Sameer kone te phen erm gers Se ee SUM I 322s ole Soeeee eee cs Gee eee 
COvOtente. cn eaee itd sce I’wi,Gunula.| Sedeu..... Olli ee. eal Poon s back cat oe eee 
Goose: cee kl Oe SEER s AEA ES Be Ee K’aima Keaima 222 598 a ae ee eee 
Ghost. ak. Hulktial 4.) Hah-luigals fi. accd4e. delet es o- 8  eeee Sulesko! yiz,|- 9h. et oes 
TUNG ero se eee ee Kialimatoto clon ooctre octeles ta acer ace ieee ee coe ott ae eee 
Feather Downleessceoes ss. DamMasec. caine ce DUR eo ee Gs ae eee nates ns 











MINOR DANCES. 





(2) RR etre care seca gt ne Hiwe fers ben Seneca ce ae Be ee Hiwei 19____. THiwei !°__.| Hiwei. 

(Lae ee oe eee oleeeeasene oleseaaee oli sess Lolefsraskik i, Bee ee Lolei. 
ate ORI ed SPS ci, aka |e ae ee ae ts Kenil..24 Tie Kents 2245 hs aes et ee | eee ae 

JEORRECELE Pele eeeh. Lpeeey Totosse sib O60 241 aE LOt0 Ree ee AIL OLO VU Ee st eee eee 

EN its Sat sapien SE a at Ree Os oot sate Pa Salalu....- Salas aol ain fete pe ae ter ee 

Grasshopper Wass 2. 6 SER on eee Sane eens ES Bete eeces Salute: cack haceeee eee 

Creeper !4..... Freenode ot AIRS rok BS Shee DSamMyempl| eA KAnGOUOs as eee eee ee 

Turtles eae e nets ceek Hela-hela?s2" Amosmae oY elimik -20%| Settee ses oe el ener eee 

Cond ore seo teks ot ee elacceee eee Moloko....| Moloko...... Moloktis.cc-ls. soe eee 

(1S) 20 Sey SAS Pk Gilak-34 Se Gilaks tka We. alesse Kilakih i165) see eee 

















1A deity or mythic character among Yuki, Pomo, Patwin, and Maidu; and perhaps among the other 
groups also. See the table of dance impersonations. 

2 Described by the Maidu as being a ‘‘ Yombasi making,” or initiation of boys among the Patwin, rather 
thanadance. The Patwin call Kuksw a saltu or spirit, but deny any Kuksu ceremony. The same seems 
to be true of the Pomo. 

3 The first man and instructor of the first people; head of the secret society and instructor of novices 
among the valley Maidu. Among the majority of tribes the Kuksu ceremony heads the list in sacredness. 
Among the Maidu and Patwin the Hestis accorded this place. The Maiduand Patwin lacked a separate 
Kuksu ceremony. Among the other tribes the “‘big-head’’ headdressis used by the Kuksu impersonators; 
with the Wintun and Maidu the wearers of this headdress have other names. 

4 Reported from mission San Jose, whether among native Costanoans or introduced Miwok is not clear. 

5 Said by the Maidu to mean “‘duck’’ (wai), though whether in their own or the Wintun language is not 
certain. The Hat-ma ceremony is the same as the Waima. Probably one is a Wintun and the other a 
Maidu name of the same dance. Possibly ‘‘crane’’—northern Wintun kat, northwestern Maidu waksi— 
should be substituted for ‘‘duck.’’ Compare the crane-head staffs used by the Pomo ‘‘ash-ghosts.’’ 

6 Also given as Wai-saltu. 

T Means the same as the Yuki and Pomo terms; a specific identification of the ceremonies is not estab« 
lished. See notes 11 and 12 in the following table. 

8 Thunder is important in Maidu mythology, but no thunder ceremony has been reported from any 
group but the Pomo. The Kato associate Thunder with Nagaicho—their equivalent of Yuki Taikomol— 
in the creation and the Coast Yuki replace Taikomol by Thunder. 

9 The Hiweiis specifically a man’s dance among all the tribes from whom it is reported and is more or 
less contrasted with the women’s Lole. 

10 The central Miwok state this to be a recent dance among themselves, introduced by a Costanoan 
or northern Yokuts individual. 

11 Among Pomo, Maidu, and Salinans the Lole is a woman’s dance; for the Patwin data are lacking; 
with the Miwok men are said to participate. See note 9. 

2 Performed by women and children only; the Patwin fashion is not known. 

13 Ene means grasshopper, salute grasshopper or katydid. Salute suggests salalu, which in turn is close 
to Patwin saltu, “‘spirit.’’ 

14 Probably the nuthatch, at any rate a bird. Some of the features of this dance reappear in the Pomo 
Dama ceremony. 

1s Kilaki denotes a small hawkin Miwok; itis not known what the meaning of Pomo and Patwin gilak is. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 379 


TABLE 2.—PRINCIPAL SPIRIT IMPERSONATIONS IN THE CEREMONIAL SYSTEM OF 
THE CENTRAL TRIBES. 





























Meaning. Yuki. Pomo. | Patwin. Maidu. Miwok. 
£ 4 rn eet Pe gy | J =" Libis | L 
eyes ee a eee ee) PR ee ome) AUR S bey: evn) MORES. 2-50. 0.) MOCHIIOS 
POMS sors Oee SOLS. WI. Se ten oe a ok EO as Ed See eee, REIT SAUL Aer syste 
3h See ee att te. Soave eek vithus 011 Ma et By ea 
ioshead?? MH: i. fo eee Daikemol §_ ah ikuksw et ese Wiyyt sew ss sYohya$. ) so Kuksuyu.? 
LA cer haat en, Se aoe ee Se Se | ae PBT toto eer, eee Di. 4h. set 2e3| Osazhe: 
CES ee? Hulkilal _«- Hahluigak...... er ae ae a At desert eat $C Sules-be, 12 
ASUS GSU to. = 5 oo Lee eee ee ee 1 No-OADIIISG KY . i Pereyis on os las. eu ok oe Temayasu. 
ON ST ee Pate bcs ee ae ae a ee Pern ee ae ip eae ee Patios... tad. Uzum-be, 15 
We emotes. gs Wale gil ty al apy erat ae Ie pret aA to SN ER Ne BE Rtg). ee 
CHa oe aoe erect ate oe gs ee tae | si tet irk eee fe oj 270 =) 5 I RPI cc tremtenhas a! 
y 





1 The eastern one of six deities of the cardinal directions. 

2 Wiit’a was obtained as equivalent and is perhaps the native Maidu synonym. It is said to mean 
“‘insane.”’ 

3 Mentioned as a personage appearing in the Auksuyu and Mochilasi dances. The impersonator is called 
Mochil-be. Itis probable, but not certain, that the Mochilo corresponds to the Moki. 

4 This is the current English designation used by Indians and whites. It appears that none of the 
native terms means “‘big head.’’ Thecharactersin question are those wearing the typical headdress ofa 
huge ball formed by innumerable feathered sticks. 

5 “He who goes alone,’’ the creator. The Yuki identify him with the ‘“‘big head” of the Pomo, but at 
east in some of his appearances he wears a long feathered net mantle like the Wintun Moki. 

6 The southern one of six deities of the cardinal directions. 

7 The Patwin know and some of them impersonate a Kuksu spirit, but if so only in minor ceremonies. 
The Hesi dancer, who wears the big-head costume, is called T’uya or Tonpa. 

8 A spirit whose sight causes death. 

9 A personage in what seems to be the most sacred Miwok dance, which is also named Kuksuyu. The 
impersonator is called Kukus-be. 

10'The current English designation. Osa is “‘woman’”’ in Miwok, Maidu Di and Patwin Dado are un- 
translated. They might possibly be from eastern Pomo da, northern and central dialects mata, “woman.” 
The Patwin state that the impersonated spirit is female. 

ll That is, the spirit of a dead human being. There is no connection with the modern ghost dance. 

12 Sule, a ghost; sulesko, a kind ofspirit. There is a Sulesko dance, said to have been introduced recently 
to cure sickness caused by ghosts, and a Sule yuse ‘“‘ghost hair,”’ or Sule sikanwi “ghost scalp,” a dance of 
revenge withascalp. Suwlesbe is the leader in the Sulesko dance. 

13 So literally. They play with coals of fire. The Miwok Temayasu does the same; otherwise nothing is 
known to connect him with the Pomo No-hahluigak. The Patwin Temeyu, who wears a long feather 
cloak and dances in the Toto and Hesi, is not known to be similar except in name. 

14 Impersonator and ceremony; at some places in Patwin territory, Sika. 

15 The impersonator in the Uzumati or ‘‘ grizzly bear’’ dance. 

16 Tmpersonator and ceremony. 


THE DANCE SERIES. 


As to the sequence of the cycle of ceremonies, there is information 
from the Patwin and the Maidu. 


The southwestern Patwin begin with the Hesi about October and end with a 
repetition of the same ceremony in May, with several other dances, such as the 
Toto, Keni, Lole, Coyote, Grizzly Bear, and Wai-saltwu celebrated on a lesser 
scale during the winter. The particular dances introduced into any one cere 
mony are not prescribed. The Coyote dance, for instance, must come in the 
Coyote ceremony, but the Grizzly Bear, the Lole, or dances such as the Gilak 
that have no ceremony named after them, may also be inserted in the Coyote 
ceremony. Since the modern decadence, the initial Hesi has been dropped in 
some localities and commencement is made with the T'oto. 


380 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


The southeastern Patwin of Colusa began with the Hesi, followed with the 
Sika or Bear ceremony—which has long since gone out of use and been replaced 
by the Yoto—and then made the K’aima and Yuke. The remainder of the 
series is not known, but it concluded with a second Hesi in spring. When a 
dance house is built, it is dedicated with the Hesi, and the entire cycle must 
then be gone through. At Grand Island, downstream from Colusa, the Waima 
takes the place of the Sika. Although it has no reference to the bear, the two 
ceremonies are considered similar and called hlanpipel, or brothers. 

According to the Maidu of Chico also, the Hesi is the most sacred ritual; and 
they, too, make it twice, in October and in May, as the beginning and end of 
their cycle. The first Hesi is closely followed by several profane dances, the 
Luyi and Loli and Toto, which may almost be reckoned as part of it, Then 
comes the Waima, and, corresponding to it, shortly before the spring Hesi, the 
Aki. These two ceremonies are next in importance to the Hesi, and are visited 
by most of the spirits that enter the Hesi. Between them come two other 
spirit dances, the Grizzly Bear and the Deer, and between these again two 
dances that are somewhat uncertainly reckoned as spirit dances, the Coyote 
and Goose ceremonies. It is evident that a system is observed here: dances are 
paired and other balanced pairs of successively less import are inserted be- 
tween them, the whole sequence-——-Hesi, Waima, Bear, Coyote, Goose, Deer, 
Ahi, Hesi—thus forming a first descending and then ascending scale of sacred- 
ness. 4 

The order ascribed to the remaining ceremonies, which are without spirit 
characters and therefore better described as dances, varies greatly according 
to informants among the Maidu, and was therefore evidently not rigorously 
fixed, although there was probably some plan. ‘Thus the Salalu appears to have 
belonged early in the cycle, the Creeper dance near the middle, the Condor 
and Yok’ola toward the close. There is also some associating of the dances, 
partly corresponding to the balanced pairing of the spirit ceremonies: Kwkit 
and Grasshopper, Coyote and Oya, Yok’ola and Aloli, seem to have been made 
in juxtaposition. In the main, however, all these dances might be performed. 
at any time, or with much latitude of selection of period, between the major 
ceremonies. 


It is possible that the Patwin and Maidu cycles would agree better 
if contemporary studies of them had been possible. The dances of 
the former people were continued until recently, but in altered form; 
the Maidu performances went out much earlier, and their recollection, 
though less clear, is accordingly purer. 

At any rate, incompletely though we can trace it, and fluctuating 
as it may have been in its less conspicuous features, a definite ar- 
rangement pervaded the order of ceremonies made by both tribes 
between autumn and spring. The same plan will perhaps appear 
among other stocks, though as yet there is no evidence in this direc- 
tion, other than that the Yuki initiations and accompanying cere- 
monies were protracted throughout the winter. But too close a 
correspondence must not be expected, since each district made and 
left unexecuted dances which its neighbors respectively omitted or 
practiced, as shown by the differences between the southeastern and 
southwestern Patwin. 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 381 
THE KERNEL OF THE CULT. 


One geographic diversity is clear within the system as outlined 
in Tables 1 and 2: the Pomo and Yuki form a subunit as against 
the Patwin and Maidu. Among the former the Auksu, or “ big 
head,” and the ghost ceremonies are easily the most conspicuous. 
From the marginal Yuki, in fact, no others are known; and among 
the Pomo these two easily transcended all the remainder in im- 
portance, as is evident from the fact that the others are scarcely 
known. In the Sacramento Valley, on the other hand, the ghost 
ceremony appears to be almost unrepresented. Avuksu, too, is not a 
ceremony here but an impersonator or an official. The leading 
ceremony is called Hesi, a name not known elsewhere. The typical 
costume of the Pomo /Tuksu, the “ big head” itself, reappears in the 
fesi, but under other names, and as the disguise of a personage of 
subsidiary rank. In its place the mantle-draped J/okz has the pri- 
macy, accompanied by other spirit characters, the Yati and Siii, 
that have not been reported from other tribes. 

The Miwok of whom we have information, and apparently the 
Costanoan and Salinan stocks, seem to have participated rather in 
the Pomo than in the Patwin form of the ritual. Their Huhksuyu 
is a dancer and a ceremony; they do not use the term Hes; there 
is some indication that they practiced a ghost ceremony; and the 
status of the Hiwei and Lole among the minor dances suggests the 
Pomo rather than the Patwin-Maidu type. On the other side, as 
Sacramento Valley resemblances, can be listed only the presence of 
the minor Condor, Creeper, and Grasshopper dances; of the “ Wo- 
man” spirit; and of the Mochilo as a possible though doubtful 
equivalent of the Moki. 

The inference is that the valley Patwin and Maidu, although 
centrally located with reference to the distribution of the whole 
dance system, possessed it in an aberrant form, and that the border 
tribes, which customarily evince cultural traits in their most pared- 
down condition, are in this case the more representative. This can 
mean only one thing. The Maidu and Patwin once shared the gener- 
alized or Pomo- Yuki-Miwok form of the cult, perhaps even originated 
it. Either because of this earlier start, however, or because of a more 
rapid progression, they developed the generalized form of the system 
to its limits and then passed beyond it to their own peculiar Hes7-Mohki 
-form, leaving the outer tribes, such as the Pomo and Miwok, adhering 
to the older rites, and the extreme marginal Yuki perhaps attaining 
only to the rudiments even of these. There is thus a ritual super- 
imposed upon a ritual in this cult, a esz system laid upon an older 
Kuksu system. This crown attained in the Hest belongs only to the 


382 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Patwin and Maidu, and it almost certainly is a Patwin product; 
that the generic A’ukswu basis also had its origin among the Patwin, 
at least largely, is therefore a reasonable possibility. 

There may have been some secondary specialization also among the 
Miwok. The great number of their dances points in this direction. 
But more must be known of the systematic relations of their cere- 
monies and of their spirit enactments before this clue can be followed 
with profit.* 

MYTHOLOGICAL RELATIONS. 


The relations of the secret society cult to mythology, among all 
the tribes, promise to be exceedingly interesting once they are known. 
A few hints in this direction are embodied in the notes to Table 2. 
The modern southwestern Patwin place their ceremonies under the 
guidance of a spiritual Watt, a species of hawk, and possibly the 
equivalent of the northern Wintun Olelbis; but Aatit may be the 
same word as A’7i¢7t, the name of a Maidu dance. The most sacred 
spirits in Patwin and Maidu ceremonies, the A/oki, Yati, and Szlz, 
have not been reported in any narrative myths. They appear to 
be spirits that. are believed still to roam the world and to be some- 
times encountered, though only with risk. The Pomo A'wksu and 
Shalnis are rather deities, and the Yuki 7’ aikomol is the creator him- 
self. The Maidu Auksu, on the other hand, is only the first man. 
It thus seems that the tribes that follow the cult in its simpler forms 
connect the ritual rather directly and crudely with the creation, while 
the more advanced ceremonialists weave it more lightly and subtly 
into their traditions. 

It is, however, evident that there is a connection between the spe- 
cific creator mythology of north central California and the Kuksu 
cult, the former being generally found in its purest and most. ex- 
treme form only among tribes that possess the secret society. In 
fact, the distribution of the society is perhaps the broader, taking 
in the Costanoans and Salinans who seem to have known no spiritual 
or anthropomorphic creator; and with them, perhaps, must be in- 
cluded the Miwok; although for the northern Wintun the reverse 
condition held. 


MINOR EQUIVALATIONS. 


The intertribal integrity of the cult may be further illustrated 
by a few references to one of its most obscure phases, the nomencla- 
ture and functions of the various officials of the society and cere- 
monies. 


“If they lacked the society, their historical status in the cult would be more de- 
pendent and marginal, and their type of ritual more primitive, than those of the Pomo, 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 383 


The eastern Pomo call the general manager of a dance, who directs the 
movements of the participants, Habedima, ‘ stone-hand-hold,” that is ‘ stone- 
carrier,” or Habe-gauk, “stone person.” Among the Yuki a similar personage, 
at least in minor dances, is known as Lil-ha’-o’l, “ stone-carrier.” Some in- 
formants assert that the Habedima belongs not to Kuksu, but to the modern 
Maru dances. 

The central Pomo name of the same personage or of the singers is Helima. 
The central Miwok have Helika and Helikna dances. Perhaps this is only a 
coincidence, ~ 

The Maidu name of the Habedima is Meta. He is said to “coach” the 
dancers. The Maidu J/esi or Patwin Chelihtu leads or conducts the dancers 
into the house and about it. The Pomo J/fetsi or Medze was the fire tender 
or housekeeper, responsible for the care of the dance house during a ceremony. 
With the Maidu, the clown seems to have been fire tender. 

The J/esi is frequently referred to by the Maidu, who also use Huveyi as 
equivalent, which may be connected with Patwin huya, “ ceremony.” Compare 
central Pomo kuya-shane, ‘‘ ceremonial earth-house,”’ or ke-shane, ‘ dance 

arth-house,” as opposed to ho-shane, ‘fire earth-house,” the name. of 
the sweat house. Again, the northern Pomo word corresponding to Hahluigak, 
the eastern Pomo designation of the ghost impersonators, is Auya. As north- 
ern and central Pomo replace eastern Pomo “il” by “k” and the latter lan- 
guage is in geographical contact with the Patwin, a connection seems more 
likely in this case than a coincidence. 

The Maidu called the leading singer, who also prayed and harangued, Yukbe, 

The clown or licensed parodist of the dancers and priests, the Yohos of the 
eastern Patwin, the Peheipe of the Maidu—the word is from _ pe, 
“eat,” and gluttony is one of his principal affectations—is a specific and im- 
portant personage in the Sacramento Valley, but without direct equivalent 
among the Yuki and Pomo. Certain of his functions are exercised by the 
ghost impersonators of the latter two tribes; but these represent spirits first, 
and ridiculous characters only ineidentally. On the other hand, the practice 
£ welcoming a distinct comic personage into ceremonies has penetrated farther 
south than the ritual system as such. The central and southern Yokuts—who 
know nothing of Kuksu, Hesi, Moki, ghost impersonations, “ big head,” or foot 
drum—call their clown hiauta or hiletits. 





MOTIVES OF THE CULT, 


The purpose of the Kuksu ceremonial organization is probably 
not altogether clear to the natives themselves. They appear so 
thoroughly to accept it as established and unalterable that in the 
old days any cessation from it would have seemed equivalent to a 
general catastrophe, perhaps directly productive of a disintegra- 
tion of the physical world. The purpose of the initiation is generally 
stated to be to make the boys healthy, long-lived, hardy, swift, strong, 
and enduring. Again, the general effect, and that primarily a ma- 
terial one, is uppermost in the Indians’ consciousness. 

In much the same way the specific cycle of dances was thought to 
bring rains, nourish the earth, and produce a bountiful natural 
crop; perhaps also to ward off epidemics, floods, earthquakes, and 


3625°—25——26 


384 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


other disasters. The Patwin state that the making of their spring 
ceremonies results in an abundance of bulbs and greens, and that . 
when the /7esz has been properly held in October the fall harvest of 
acorns will be favorable. 

Game was no doubt believed to be affected much as plants. The 
number of animal dances in the complete cycle suggests that these 
dances may have been made with such a purpose. That such a con- 
cept was lacking from the native mind it would be extreme to deny. 
But on the other hand there is little to show that the Indians in- 
serted the deer ceremony into their series specifically in order to 
increase the number of deer. It is clear that such ideas are but little 
developed in the central Californian mind. The paucity of definitely 
appropriate symbolism points strongly to this conclusion. One has 
only to recall the degree to which corn is directly referred to in the 
ritual of the southwestern agricultural tribes, to realize that the 
California Indians’ thoughts do not run readily in such directions. 
Questions put to the native are likely to bring deceptive replies: of 
course the deer dance produces deer; any dance helps to produce 
everything desirable. Before any conclusion can be drawn as to the 
notable presence of the factor of exactly applied imitative magic in 
the animal dances of the Patwin, Maidu, or Miwok, objective evi- 
dence to this effect must be available. As yet, such evidence is most 
sparsely represented. 

Moreover, any interpretation of the ceremonies on the basis of a 
considerable magical symbolism must explain the presence of dances 
referring to animals that have no appreciable food value, such as the 
coyote, grizzly bear, condor, nuthatch, and turtle, as well as the 
absence of ceremonies relating to animals like the rabbit and salmon, 
which are economically important. Above all this, however, is the 
fact that the most widespread, spectacular, and sacred of all the 
rituals, the Auksu-Hesi and the ghost ceremony, have no reference in 
name, and little if any in symbolic content, to any particular animals 
and plants. In fine, the dances are spirit dances. Their reference 
is to spirits or deities, whose control of the food supply is but an 
incident of their wider powers. 


Tue Parwrn Form or tue Kuxsvu Cutt. 


The sequence of ceremonies and the full series of impersonations 
are much less known for the Patwin than the Maidu, so that the fol- 
lowing notes find a fuller significance in reference to the subsequent 
chapter upon the latter people. 

The complete cycle of ceremonies varied not only between stocks 
but from dialect group to group, and even between villages. A 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 385 


Patwin town sometimes sold one of its dances to another, the payment 
going to the chief. 

The valley Patwin of Colusa held the Hesi, but not the next two most 
important ceremonies of the Maidu at Chico, the Waima and Aki. The other 
Maidu dances which these Patwin admit as being also their own are the 
K’aima, Toto, Lole, Keni (borrowed from them by the Chico Maidu), Salalu, 
Moloko, and Silat or Grizzly Bear, which last, however, they called Sika, and 
made in the place of the Waima,. The Wai, Waima, or Wai-saltu was a Grand 
Island ceremony, and the Gilak was made there and at Knights Landing. The 
Yuke was an unidentified Colusa dance or ceremony. 

At Cortina Valley, in the foothills, the known dances are Hesi, Toto, Lole, 
Keni, Coyote (Sedeu), Grizzly Bear (Silai), Duck (Wai-saltu or Waima), 
Salalu, and Gilak. 


The Grand Island Watma is said to have been more like the Colusa 
Sika than like the Chico Maidu Watima. The yaitu or initiate who 
is the chief performer les in the dance house without moving for 
two nights and two days, except that nightly he pays a visit to his 
sacred paraphernalia. On the second afternoon a sweating dance 
is held to four songs. When these are concluded the recumbent 
performer at last sits up. By this time the dancers are in a frenzy 
and bleeding at their mouths. Shouting ho, ho, ho, they plunge 
through a little side door in the north wall of the dance house and 
rush northward. Men standing on the roof answer with the same 
call, to guide the delirious dancers back, while the singers, who have 
mounted to the same station, chant a long song which begins by 
naming al] the places within the dance chamber, then the parts of 
the exit, and proceeds northward, enumerating each slough and 
spot to the end of the world. The last words are wanaiyelti yeduro 
mitalmu mato tawaihla pute tawathla, “at-rear-end (the north of 
the world) on-back you-he your bed feathers bed”—as the chief 
performer has been doing. ‘The dancers are followed on their north- 
ward course by their relatives, who finally calm them and induce 
them to return. A man who was not headed off would keep running 
and never come back, it is declared, and some are said to have been 
lost in this way. Once a dancer was found two days after with his 
head in a swamp, and another one drowned. Both were carried 
back to the dance house, sung over, and restored to life. Even the 
runners who return on their feet fall insensible at the door and must 
be treated before they regain their strength and faculties. The 
same evening the dancers, now enacting deer, are hunted with nets 
amid great excitement. 

This performance seems to be the enactment of a myth. The Hesi 
cycle is said to have originated among the animals at Onolaitotl, the 
Marysville Buttes. The deer people here sang four songs while they 
sweated, then rushed to plunge into the water. Their foes used this 


386 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


~ 


opportunity to ambuscade and exterminate them, for which reason 
there are no deer on these peaks. 

While there are 12 steps of yactu membership at Colusa, only 10 
impersonated saltwu have been recorded, and it is unlikely that each 
“degree” corresponds with a spirit enactment, especially since the 
Patwin, like the Maidu, seem to have no clear idea of ranking the 
impersonations beyond the two or three most sacred. 


The Moki, who wears a full-length cloak of crane or heron (wakiwak or 
doritu) feathers, is the highest. Besides appearing as this spirit, the performer 
directs the Hesi. 

The Sili comes next in sacredness, and like the Maidu Sili wears a fish net 
around his body. About his head are ropes of black feathers. 

The Yati is known to the Colusa Patwin from Maidu ceremonies, but was 
not enacted by them. 

The Kot-ho is wholly plastered with mud. : 

The Sika appears in the Grizzly Bear ceremony of the same name. There 
are other performers, called Napa, in this dance, who carry staves named shdi, 
which are cut at designated places. There they sometimes find bears, who at- 
tack them. If a man is killed by the bears he is left unburied until the cere- 
mony has been concluded. This was the practice for any death that occurred 
during a ceremony. These Napa dance but are said not to represent spirits. 

The Temeyu comes in the Toto, a fact that elevates this rite from the rating 
of a minor dance to that of a fairly important ceremony among the Patwin, 
as is also indicated by its replacing one of the two annual Hesi in recent. times. 
The Toto is directed by the Kuksu. The Temeyu wears a cloak like that of 
the Moki, but made of raven feathers and hung with little tablets of yellow- 
hammer quills. 

The foregoing are the dangerous impersonations. Of the safer ones, those 
which any initiate undertakes without hesitation, the 7’uwya@ or Tonpa or 
“big-head ”’ is easily the first or ‘‘ heaviest,’ and with it is associated the 
female Dado. A young man first assisted the 7’wya, then appeared with him 
as the Dado, then was ready to assume the 7’uya costume. Boys, it is said, 
were “caught” for the Hesi, kept in the dance house unt’l its conclusion, and 
made to carry regalia and serve the men; but this was not considered an initi- 
ation and no payment was rendered for such knowledge as the youngsters 
might pick up. It was not until they were adult that they really were in- 
structed and became yaitu. 

The Dihli wears long feathered sticks like those that make up the enormous 
headdress of the 7’uya, but arranged in a horizontal plane. The one arrange- 
ment resembles a magnified pincushion, the other a hat brim. 

The Witili had grass hung over his face and on his body, and wore two 
flowing yellow-hammer bands from the back of his head. 

The Kuksu occupies a special rank. He directs the Toto dance, is reckoned 
a saliu, but does not enter the most sacred ceremonies; he serves as messenger 
and punishes people that misbehave. Anyone that he has punished is thereby 
qualified to enact the Kukswu himself. Among the central Wintun of Grindstone 
Creek, who did not possess the Hesi until after 1870 but with whom the Kuksu 
character is likely to have been ancient, it is said that the man who enacted 
this spirit received his power by going into the hills and calling upon the Kuksu 
himself. The spirit appeared, cut him into small pieces, and those who followed 
and were versed in the procedure restored him to life. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 387 


Except for the Kuksu, none of the most important impersonations of the 
Pomo are enacted by the Colusa Wintun—the Shalnis, Ghosts, and Ash Ghosts. 

The Chimmatu, or clown, is an important personage, but is not reckoned 
a spirit, probably because his identity is~inconcealed. He is a carrier of news. 

The southeastern dance house faces east, with a rear door at which 
women look in (Fig. 35). In old days they were forbidden to view the 
/lesi and during less sacred ceremonies were allowed in only on the 
first and last nights. Since the boli dances came into vogue the 
restrictions against their presence have been moderated. The floor, 
wole, is carefully allotted. The left or northern edge is occu- 
pied by the uninitiated, or at least by nonparticipants. The south 
side is subdivided. By the drum, holwa, and rear door sit the yompu 
novices. In the middle of N 
the south side is the place 
of the chief, the owner of 
the dance house. ‘This posi- 
tion, therefore, is the sektw 
wole, the “chief’s floor.” 
By him sits the particular 
initiate who has charge of 
the ceremony that is in prog- 
ress. Between the novices’ 
and the chief’s station is the 
yai-wole, consisting of three 
separately named places for 
dancers. The yaitwu wole, or 
full initiates’ place, is by the 





Hic. 35.—Patwin dance house. <A, Dancers’ en- 
trance, replacing ancient roof entrance; B, 


front door. Between the 
chief and the full initiates 
are a number of places or 


rear door; ©, chief post; D, drum; F, fire; 
G, second main post; W, uninitiated spec- 
tators; X, wole or floor of yompu, novices ; 
Y, of sektu, chief; Z, of yaitu, initiates. 
(After Barrett.) 


- (Compare Figs. 19, 39.) 
seats, each named after its 


“degree,” in ascending order to the right. During the //esz the 
rule is that each of these seats must be occupied by at least one 
member of the proper rank, otherwise the spirit impersonators be- 
come angry and djurpiri, that is, throw things about. A boy thus 
begins his ceremonial life at the rear of the house, moves gradually 
to the right, and concludes his career at the front entrance. When 
he begins, his father makes a payment which entitles him to this 
succession, so that as he advances to a higher seat he may eat there 
without danger. 

The southern Wintun are reported to have possessed one characteristic 
feature of the Pomo ghost ceremony: the introduction of women into the 


dance house in order to meet the spirits of their dead relatives or husbands 
and make gifts to them. Unfortunately there is no hint as to the place in the 


388 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [pULL. 78 


system at which this enactment was introduced; and the Colusa people deny 
the practice. 


THE PATWIN HESI. 


The Hest of the western Patwin begins in the evening and 
lasts for four days. The modern “ghost dance” rites that have 
been added to it seem to center about a pole erected in front of the 
dance house. This pole is wound with cloth of different colors, and 
carries a species of banner. The Patwin say that these recent ele- 
ments in their worship relate to the dol¢, who seem to be the spirits 
of dead human beings, whereas the sa/tu who are impersonated in 
the older ritual are spirits of more or less divine character. It may 
be added that flags and wound poles were used elsewhere in the ghost 
dance of 1872. 


The head and general manager of the Hest among the modern hill Patwin 
is an old man who at times dances in the long enveloping feather cloak of the 
Moki. The identification of the official with the Moki impersonator may be 
an ancient practice. 

The 7’uya or ‘ big-head”’ dancers are arrayed in the brush at some distance 
from the dance house, and calls are interchanged between them and the di- 
rector on the roof. They appreach the entrance in a ritual manner, and dance 
into the house backward. Besides the characteristic headdress, the dancers 
wear a skirt of feathers or rushes and carry a split-stick rattle in each hand. 
Kiach set of dancers is accompanied by one or more chelitu, who may be called 
leaders. The chelitu signals the beginning and end of the songs, and directs 
the steps and motions of the dancers. Part of the time he also dances with 
or opposite to the ‘“ big-head.” His costume comprises a head net filled with 
white down, a tall crown of magpie feathers called laya by the Maidu, and the 
inevitable headband of yellow-hammer quills. In one hand he carries a bow, in 
the other a quiver filled with arrows. It is evident that the modern Chelitu is 
a combination of official and dancer; he does not seem to impersonate any 
spirit. 

Each “ big-head”’ dances a quarter of an hour or more, stopping for brief 
intervals during which the leading singers, who are armed with cocoon rattles 
and carry the air, continue, while the chorus, whose main function is to shout 
he he he to the shaking of split-stick rattles, cease temporarily. One “ big- 
head ” succeeds the other until the entire set has danced, whereupon they retire 
to undress at a distance. In a full set of dancers, the “ big-heads”’ are accom- 
panied by one or more ‘ women.” 

The first dance of the ceremony is made by the people of the home village. 
By the following day the residents of other towns have arrived, each in a body, 
and made a formal approach in file to the dance house, headed by their own 
“big-head ” dancers in costume. As things went in the old days of Indian 
prosperity, there were often enough large villages represented to make the 
dancing almost continuous after all had assembled. 

It is probable that spirits other than the “big-head’”’ and the ‘“‘ woman” 
appeared either with these or between the big-head dances, since such was the 
Maidu custom. 

Early each morning a fire was built in the dance house, and a song started 
to which the participants in the ceremony danced, as close to the fire as 


fo 


ee 


KRORBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 889 


possible, until they reached a profuse sweat, whereupon they rushed out and 
into the near-by stream. Except for the dancing and the larger number of 
participants, this act did not differ from the ordinary daily sweating. 

Visitors to the Hesi did not live in the village but camped outside. After 
they had filed into the dance house they were assigned seats in a particular 
section of it. 

The clown wore no special dress. He imitated the Moki, or director, in 
voice and manner of speech, and ridiculed him as well as the dancers and 
singers. There was one in each village, besides a minor personage who played 
a similar part in dances of less sacredness. Both positions were for life, and 
the holders were always addressed by their title in place of their names. 


The //esi songs normally consist of a phrase of a half dozen words 
repeated four times or a multiple thereof. Such a “stanza” may it- 
self be repeated indefinitely or may be varied by the substitution of 
new words for two or three of those first sung. Part of the language, 
but usually only a part, is archaic or of esoteric significance, 80 that 
the song does not make complete meaning except to the initiated. 

Somewhat similar to the songs are speeches made by the Moki 
or person in authority. These are delivered in a very high voice 
and jerky phrases. Here again an ordinary person can understand 
perhaps half the words, but others being beyond his comprehension, 
and some of even the intelligible ones being used in a metaphorical 
sense, the exact meaning can not be clear to the populace, although 
the setting of the speech must help to indicate its drift. While the 
form of these orations is strongly ritualized, the subject matter 
is prescribed only in the most general way, and they are largely 
composed on the spur of the moment. The following will serve as 
examples: 


LAUD ET 1 BR op SAS ceils onl ae a a I Ca Om Be thus! 

RPO (eee teeta nee ee PL!) Ge Cs: LOS)! 

WS et ee ee ee Be Nd fe Be good! 

layakaroboti layakaro___-___________. Be good! good! 

TALUS el es eee 8 Be eae That be glad of! 

BORE Age edd d es Sesh ee ee ee eS That rejoice in! 

Pee OMAN OL se gee ee ee This speech rejoice in! 

ee 2 TELL epee ee eee ee sen Be ee This rejoice in! 

BUM INO ITU CO. oe ae tee These roses rejoice in! 

wile chalal lamuro miletihla_________. Healthy roses rejoice in on you! 
TONE gL NLO' oP an OD) cole OC SAP ie ane ate ue Approve! (Say yes). 

ONT Na eee ee ee Se Approve! 

US aie ee WTO 28) ers ko ge Approve we come! 

“LAP UD RAE a2 FEM es igs OD a RE a LS Approve we come! 

EEN OP TSB a FERR S F UN oR ee SERA DAR Tes Cen Thus we shall do! 

ACY WE Ta Soo a ia kl a SP a ir 2 Shall approve! 

RAUL ER R22 Oh sai aS a ge og ae ad Shall be glad! 

MRCP COG OT te ee Bhs ee _ Father will be glad! 

Sg RAT: WoL ED EG wt 94 a ae MF CO TE ee eee Mother’s brother will be glad! 


we labacho uto..-_---_.___ pS TOE aE ie ae Older brother will be glad! 


390 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY fBuLL. 78 








eura pele  buya bla. ie Thus we when gather! 
eurasnele huvahia 2 42) ee ee oes Thus we when gather! 
pihlazpeleslamutos so pee ee ee Thus we shall rejoice! 
pelenod CRO 2a ee as Our speech! 

POLENO Wee Vik ee PO a ret eee Our speech ! 

pira weyuro______ Spi Abie Ba 2 eit, Sheba ante Thus be glad! 
weyusha chu weyusha____.wes_—_____. Was glad I, was glad! 
chilalamushsr sey eos pe Bet ee I rejoiced ! 

LaInUro ODULO 2 <r h oe ee eee Rejoice say it! 
lgMuro. WeVUL0 2 ie oe ee Rejoice glad! 

DUDS “OUFO 2s Ao rn Lee eee See That approve! 

Dlitia (amir. eee ee ee eee ee eae That rejoice in! 


Another: 


WU ULU LU Ue re oer ee ey ee Wuuu, wuuu! 

Wille SCR UL 22. en oa Soe ee ne ener earners Healthy chief! 

Wie SORT oe oe ees) teen ae eee oe eee Healthy chief! 
Wiledachwl Gs He ee Sree ay Healthy ! 

nang savdleda chil spends oe ener perce ee My healthy! 

NAT wilech Usekaye ee ee ee ee My healthy ! 

wiledachuy helairachu.. 2 23>. = Healthy sway! (or shake). 
Tilainma wile lelorochuss 2822s. 2e- Children healthy made! 
loibama wile lelorochu___-L_______U_ = Girls healthy made! 
seribama> wile *Mlorocht_ 2222222 22S Youths healthy made! 
pidachu nanu wiledachu______--_--_- That my healthy! 
chalal. wiledach(siee. 243). 8 229 S252 Roses healthy ! 

Dolesw tledachil seni eee eee Be eek Ghosts healthy ! 
pidachu pDulakibetis peal es, soot setae That come-out with! 


The constant -chu may mean “1;” the -da, like the -ro in the preceding ser- 
mon, seems to be a grammatical form used chiefly as a formal expletive. It is 
clear that these series of ejaculations are not addresses in the sense of our 
speeches, but ritual frames of somewhat variable content. The type of oration 
is probably old; the content has been made over to accord with mannerisms of 
the modern ghost-dance propaganda. Thus, the constant chalal, “rose,” in the 
sense of “ beautiful,” is said by the Indians to be a boli word. Wile, “‘ healthy,” 
seems to belong to the older saltu stratum, since the older people were wont to 
utter: he’some wileda when a person sneezed (compare Yuki yoshimi). Both 
in the old and in the modern speeches there are many cryptic words. Thus, 
hamak, dried and pulverized salmon, was ealled “ water meal,” mem gori; for 
hlut, dance house, kul’’a was said; for depi, emerge, pulaki; for djoki, salt, 
paharakma, with reference to its cracking or crunching sound when chewed. 


CHAPTER 27. 
THE MAIDU: LAND AND SOCIETY. 


Territory, 891; divisions, 392; settlements, 3938; designations, 894; population, 
394; use of land, 395; political organization, 896; the chief, 399; trade, 399; 
war, 400; marriage, 401; social practices, 402; names, 408; the dead, 403. 


TERRITORY. 


The Maidu, long classified as an entirely independent stock, are 
the second branch of the Penutian family encountered in a southerly 
progress through California. 

Their territory may be described as consisting of the drainage of 
the Feather and American Rivers: or differently stated, the region 
from the Sacramento River east to the crest of the Sierra Nevada. 
The precise boundaries of the group are, however, involved in some 
uncertainty at almost every point. 


From Mount Lassen east the line of demarcation toward the Atsugewi fol- 
lowed the watershed between Feather and Pit Rivers. Beyond, it becomes un- 
certain. EKagle Lake, Susan Creek or River, Honey Lake, and Long Valley 
Creek—an interior system behind the end of the Sierras—drain a tract the 
ownership of which is doubtful. Susan Creek and the Susanville region have 
usually been ascribed to the Maidu, but there are Atsugewi claims. Eagle 
Lake has been variously attributed to the Atsugewi, the Achomawi, and the 
Northern Paiute. Atsugewi ownership seems the most likely. Honey Lake was 
not far from where Maidu, Paiute, and Washo met. It seems not to have had 
permanent villages, and may have been visited by all three of the tribes in 
question. On the map the problem has been compromised by extending all 
their territories to its shores. Long Valley Creek was most likely Washo. Any 
Maidu claims to this stretch are likely to have been counterbalanced by rights 
or visits of the Washo to Sierra Valley on the Maidu side of the Sierras. Long 
Valley was probably habitable throughout the year, at least in places: Sierra 
Valley could be occupied only in summer. Its winter snows are unusually deep. 

South of Sierra Valley the crest of the Sierras takes a westward turn before 
resuming its south-southeasterly course. In this offset lies Lake Tahoe, a 
favorite summer home of the Washo. The map makes the upland boundary of 
the Maidu pass within a few miles of the lake. It is, however, doubtful whether 
the Maidu followed the various branches of the American River up to their 
extreme sources. Farther south the Washo are known to have exercised hunt- 
ing rights across the summits of the Sierra, almost halfway to the plains. It 
is not unlikely that they similarly crossed the crest in the Maidu region. Since 
this range is unfit. for permanent habitation above an altitude of 4,000 to 5,000 
feet, but since its crest runs from 8,000 to 12,000 feet, a belt of considerable 
width is involved in this uncertainty of ownership. On the other hand, the 
lack of permanent villages makes the question Seem more important on the 
map than it was ‘in native life, 


391 


392 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The southern boundary of the Maidu toward the Miwok has been drawn 
along the Middle Fork of the Cosumnes. The north, middle, and south branches 
have all been mentioned in this connection. The actual boundary is more likely 
to have been the divide between some two of the forks. After the Cosumnes 
begins to swing south through the plains to unite with the Mokelumne, the 
interstock boundary left it and cut in a westerly direction across to the Sacra- 
mento. Here there is particular conflict of authority: but it would seem that 
the line in the plains was not far south of the lower American River. 

The western limit of Maidu territory has generally been said to be the Sac- 
ramento. But actually this main artery served as a line of demarcation only 
as far up as the mouth of the Feather or a little beyond. From there on the 
Wintun held the marsh and slough belt on both sides of the stream. . Butte 
Creek is the principal one of a series of south-flowing parallel streams which 
the Maidu occupied in this region west of the Feather River drainage. 

Toward the Yana their boundary was reached either immediately north or 
south of Rock Creek, and farther up it followed the watershed between Feather 
River drainage on one side and Deer Creek and Mill Creek on the other, back 
to Mount Lassen. 


DIVISIONS, 


A comparison of vocabularies shows very quickly that Maidu 
speech falls into three languages: a southern one, spoken over a full 
half of the entire Maidu area, and two northern tongues which pass 
under the appellations of northwestern and northeastern. The south- 
ern Maidu, or many of them, call themselves Nishinam or Nisinan, 
whereas the two northern divisions use the term “ Maidu”—more 
exactly Maidii, or in the nominative or absolute case of the word, 
Maidim. This word means “ person.” ‘The etymology of Nishinam 
may be “ our people.” 

The northeastern Maidu inhabit a distinct topographic area: the 
upper reaches of the ramified drainage of the North and Middle 
Forks of the Feather River. The long, high wall of the Sierra here 
breaks up into a less regular formation. Among the masses and 
spurs of mountains lie flat-bottomed valleys, apparently old glacial 
lakes, Jt is these valleys, a dozen or more in number, plus perhaps 
the valley of Susan River, that provided homes for this division. 

The northeastern language is not known to have been split into 
dialects, and if any existed they are likely to have been of little 
moment. 

The northwestern Maidu were below the high Sierra, part of them 
in the foothills where the south, middle, north, and west branches 
of Feather River converge, and on upper Butte and Chico Creeks; 
and part in the open Sacremento Valley along the lower courses of 
the same streams. The topography is quite different in the plains 
and in the piedmont country. Habits of life were consequently some- 
what diverse also; and hand in hand with this distinction of customs 
went one of speech. There are many indications of still further 
dialectic complication; but as all of them are imperfectly known, 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 393 


the area covered by the northwestern Maidu language has been left 
on the map without indication of subdivision. 

The southern Maidu held the whole of the American drainage plus 
the Bear and Yuba Rivers, which technically are aflluents of the 
Feather, although entering it in its lowest course. In this vast 
tract there are almost certain to have been divergences of idiom be- 
tween the extreme north and south, as well as between those divisions 
living actually on the Sacramento and those at the upper limit of 
habitation in the mountains. The available vocabularies indicate 
that these presumptive differences must have been actual; but again 
the data on which it is possible to build are too unsystematic to allow 
of either classification or mapping. ‘The Nisinan are therefore 
also represented as if they constituted the sort of uniform block 
which we know they were not. 

In any event, however, the speech differences within each of the 
three Maidu languages were not more than dialectic, or at least not 
of a character wholly to prevent intelligibility. The primary north- 
eastern, northwestern, and southern idioms, on the other hand, are 
diverse enough to warrant their designation as separate although 
cognate languages. Each has a fair proportion of basic words that 
are peculiar to it. Each also is about equally different from the two 
others, although northeastern is somewhat the most distinctive. 

It may be added that the appurtenance of the dialect of Honcut Creek, be- 
tween the lower Yuba and Feather Rivers, is uncertain. It has been included 


in the northwestern language in Plate 1. Actually the dialect seems to have 
been transitional between the northwestern and southern. 


SETTLEMENTS. 


Plate 87 shows these fundamental divisions of the Maidu as well 
as such of their more important local settlements as are known. 
Information as to the latter is rather irregular. In some regions 
minor villages have been included, in other tracts even the major 
towns have not been recorded. At several points the names appear 
to refer to the particular hamlets, often in the vicinity of some 
American town, in which the modern Indians have gradually con- 
centrated as their numbers diminished, rather than to the villages 
that were important in aboriginal times. The securing of informa- 
tion of this character is difficult on account of the disturbance 
of native life for nearly 70 years, as well as because of the prevail- 
ing ignorance of the Indians regarding all tracts more than a few 
dozen miles from their place of birth. 

The settlements recorded on Plate 37 are: 

Northeastern Maidu: 1, Oidoing-koyo; 2, Nakang-koyo; 3, Hopnom-koyo; 4, 
Ko-tasi; 5, Tasi-koyo; 6, Yota-moto; 7, Silong-koyo., 


394 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [RuLT. 78 


Northwestern Maidu: 8, Paki; 9, Yaukti; 19,,Bahyu; 11, Tadoiko; 12, 
Michopdo; 13, Eskini; 14, Yunu; 15, Nim-sewi; 16, Otaki; 17, Tsulum-sewi; 
18, Konkau; 19, Taikus; 20, Toto-ma; 21, Tsam-bahenom; 22, Hokomo; 23, 
Benkiimktimi; 24, Kalkalya; 25, Hoholto; 26, Kulayapto; 27, Tsuka; 28, 
Tsaktomo; 29, Yuma; 380, Ololopa; 31, Bayu; 32, Botoko; 33, Taichida; 34, 
Bauka. (Nos. 35-38 should perhaps be included in this division.) 

Southern Maidu: 35, Helto; 36, Toto; 37, Honkut; 88, Tomcha; 39, Yupu; 
40, Mimal; 41, Sisum; 42, Okpa; 48, Hoko; 44, Yikulme; 45, Ola; 46, Taisida; 
47, Pan-pakan; 48, Yamakti; 49, Wokodot; 50, Tsekankan; 51, Usto-ma; 52, 
Kushna; 53, Kulkumish; 54, Hembem; 55, Molma; 56, Pitsokut; 57, Pushuni; 
58, Seku-mni; 59, Yodok; 60, Yalisu-mni; 61, Ytiktilti; 62, Chapa; 63, Siwim- 
pakan; 64, Kolo-ma; 65, Tumeli; 66, Indak; 67, Ekele-pakan; 68, Chikimisi; 
69, Oncho-ma ; 70, Opok; 71, Bamo; 72, Wapumni. 

Spots which are mentioned as inhabited sites but not included in the map 
are the following: Natoma, Kohes, Kiski, Wili, Hoktem, Tankum, Tsamak, 
Wesnak. On Bear River below the foothills, in ascending order, are said to 
have been Homiting, Woliyu, Lelikian, Talak, Intanto, Mulamchapa, Lidlipa, 
Solakiyu, Kaluplo, Pakanchi, Shokumimlepi, Bushamul, Shutamul, Chuemdu, 
Opelto, Pulakatu, Kapaka, Yokolimdu, and Tonimbutuk. 

A number of endings occur repeatedly on village names. Such are -koyo, 
“valley” or “land”; -sewi, “‘stream”’; -wmni or -amni, familiar also on Miwok 
and Yokuts names; -oma or -omo, perhaps meaning ‘“‘ people of’; -ko; -to, -do, 
or -da; -kan or -pakan; and perhaps -st. The ending of Nishi-nam or Nisi-nan 
recurs in Tosim-nan, “ north people,” a term which the Maidu of the Cosumnes 
drainage apply to themselves with reference to the adjacent Miwok. 


DESIGNATIONS. 


Few names for the Maidu are known. Pujunan has had some cir- 
culation in books, but is arbitrary as a designation for the stock, 
being based on the name of a single village, Pushuni. The Atsugewi 
call the Maidu Tikisui. The Achomawi are said to call them 
Pakamali, but this term has also been recorded as the Achomawi 
name for the Atsugewi. The northern Paiute, it is stated, call the 
Maidu Wawa. The Washo designation is not known. The Miwok 
say Tamuliiko, which means merely “northerners.” The Yana terms 
are given as Wawaltpa’a and Pachamisi, but these are likely to 
refer to specific localities. The latter term suggests Baldjamaisi, 
the Yahi name of a Maidu village or district. The Yahi knew a 
number of Maidu localities, but lacked a generic term for the people. 
The Spaniards seem not to have designated them as an ethnic group, 
and Americans are wont to content themselves with the inclusive 
“ Digger.” 

POPULATION. 


There is no adequate means of estimating the number of Maidu. 
The figure assumed in this work, 9,000, seems very liberal. It is 
derived only from comparison with groups like the Pomo and Yokuts 
for which a measure of computation can be attempted; with con- 
sideration of the size, surface, and climate of their respective terri- 


a we 
¥ 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 395 


tories. The actual numbers may well have been several thousand 
more or less. ‘The ethnologist who has studied them most put them 
at 4,000. To-day, if the last Federal census may be trusted, they 
have become the least shrunken of the five Penutian stocks, with 
about 1,100 full-blood and mixed-blood survivors. 


USE OF LAND. 


Land as such was not really owned. That is to say, its use was 
free and common to all members of the community. As to how 
far fishing and hunting rights in specific localities belonged to in- 
dividuals or families is not clear. Concrete evidence is lacking and 
generic statements conflict. It does appear that fish holes were 
sometimes owned and that fences for deer drives could be erected 
in particular places only by certain families. The individual hunter, 
however, it is said, could search for deer and pursue them without 
restriction of any sort in the entire territory of the community or 
political group of which he was a member. 

Twenty miles is said to have been an unusual distance for a hill 
or mountain Maidu to travel. In the valley journeys may have been 
longer. No northern Californian would go far from his home. 
Beyond a dozen or two villages there lay a narrow belt known only 
by hearsay or through occasional meetings with other visitors. Every- 
thing farther was utterly unknown. It is probable that the western- 
most Maidu had only the vaguest cognizance, if any, of the most 
easterly Pomo; and the intervening Wintun occupied a compara- 
tively narrow and open strip of land. Even within a man’s ken, 
half the villages were likely to be hostile or under suspicion. 

Village sites varied according to topography. In the valley they 
stood beside affluents of the Sacramento. 

In the foothills the Feather, Yuba, American, and smaller streams 
flow through deep, narrow canyons. Permanent settlements were 
therefore generally on the ridges that separate the parallel streams, 
either on the crests or on knolls or terraces part way up. Minor fea- 
tures of topography seem to have determined the particular choices. 
The same was the practice of the Miwok, whose habitat is in the cen- 
tral part of the same slope of the Sierra. As one looks at the map 
of these two stocks, the villages seem placed quite randomly. The 
reason is that the basic structure of the land—a vast gentle slope 
furrowed into innumerable deep gashes by the westward or south- 
westward drainage—could not be utilized by the Indian, as it was 
in most other parts of California, in which the location of settle- 
ments can be predicted from a good map with some accuracy. For 
the foothill Maidu and Miwok a spring, a clearing, a level, a south- 





396 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


western exposure, or any other of a number of essentially local and 
varying features was the deciding consideration. 

The surface of the country is as broken in the Coast Range as in 
the Sierra, and if anything more irregular; but its scale is smaller 
and more intimate. The plan of the Sierra is so grand as to be 
scarcely observable on the ground except as an idea; its effect 1s one 
of endlessness and monotony. All the Coast Range people lived on 
their streams; in the extreme north, the year round; in the Athabas- 
ean and Yuki region, throughout the winter; from the Pomo south 
to the Chumash, perhaps less regularly according to season and with 
frequent departures, especially in summer, but still with an invari- 
able return to the same home by the flowing water. Much the same 
habits prevailed among the Wintun and Yokuts of the great valley. 
Something of this mode of hfe must have been followed by the 
Maidu also. But the only reference is to movements in the mountains 
proper; and in the foothill slopes the conformation of the Sierra may 
have interfered. 

In the northern high Sierras the mountains are practically unin- 
habitable. The flat-bottomed glacial valleys charm the eye with the 
soft vivid green of their carpet. But they are snow blanketed half 
the year, and likely to be spongy meadow or outright marsh most of 
the remainder, The northeastern Maidu therefore built along the 
edges overlooking the valley, with the pine timbered highland on 
one side of them and the open level on the other. A farming or 
cattle-breeding population might have selected sites in the flat 
stretches. For a people living directly upon nature, the Maidu choice 
of locations was by far the most practical. 

Like most of the Californians who inhabited timbered tracts, the 
Maidu frequently burned over the country, often annually. It ap- 
pears that forest fires have been far more destructive since American 
occupancy, owing to the accumulated underbrush igniting the large 
trees. Of course the Indian was not attempting to protect the stand 
of large timber: he merely preferred an open country. This is shown 
by the fact that he also burned over unforested tracts. Travel was 
better, view farther, ambuscades more difficult, certain kinds of 
hunting more remunerative, and a crop of grasses and herbs was of 
more food value than most brush. 


POLITICAL ORGANIZATION, 


The political organization of the Maidu was on the same basis as 
that of the Yuki and Pomo: a group owning a certain territory in 
common, knowing themselves as a group, acting largely as a unit, but 
actually residing in several settlements. In the northeastern divi- 
sion, where the land is mountainous with a few definite valleys inter- 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 397 


spersed, the houses of each group were in one of these valleys, or in 
a few cases, such as the larger expanse of Big Meadows, in a part 
of a valley. In the hills and Sacramento plains, the topographical 
segregation of the groups was less obvious, but is likely to have 
been basically similar. 


For instance, American Valley, in which the little city of Quincy now stands, 
harbored one such nameless group. The valley as a whole was called Silo-ng- 
koyo, that is “Silo val- 
ley” or “ Silo land.” The 
same name was applied 
also to one of a half dozen 
settlements in the valley, 
that which stood where 
the high school has since 
been erected. This, al- 
though not the most popu- 
lous village, had _ the 
largest ‘sweat house” 
or ceremonial chamber, 
which probably means 
that the man who had the 
most authority within 
the group and was its spokesman lived here, This settlement was, however, 
called Nukuti as well as Silo-ng-koyo. Nukuti is evidently the specific name of 
the site: Silo-ng-koyo, it would seem, could have been applied to the settlement 
itself only as a representative of the valley. Krom our point of view, we should 
rather expect Silo to be the site, and the valley to have been named from it. 

The settlements, as lettered in Figure 36, were as follows: 





Fie. 36.—Maidu settlements in American Valley. 





* Sweat 

Houses. houses.” 
SMC ERG Seeds ty eee he eee PE a i 6-7 i 
B. Silo-ng-koyo or Nukuti_____________ a ES 2-3 i: 
CRON OTTERS OR Ne eee is let ee ed  aeee oe Se a Pe Oh ae 4—5 1 
PP SPs RAS os oe RR 2h | Doe ees Pe ae ee 2 eee 0 1 
LON PAT Hoe 2 a er ne oh) Res TR ee a ae 4—5 0 
The ASP V IES beta 5. All aM Ba ea tl NES SSE RON PD Rani ail Lae ees 2-3 0 
PUREST ree 0! he SOU A eh do Cite eT 18—23 4 


On the basis of 5 souls per house, this would yield a population of about 125 
for the “tribe.” This basis may be too low. But 10 people in each dwelling 
is the maximum assumption possible—the Yurok averaged 74 in substantial 
houses of wood—so that the group probably did not exceed 200. The mountain 
Maidu have generally been described as living in the brush-covered hiibo, which 
was a small structure. The informant who furnished the foregoing list called 
the “sweat houses” k’umii (northwestern dialect k’wm), and the ‘ houses” 
k’umi-ng-hibo. The former were entered only through the roof; the latter had 
a door on the ground. The “sweat houses’? must have been inhabited, else 
Satkini would hardly have consisted of one of these standing alone. 

It may be added that Nukuti to-day shows a single pit, 8 or 4 feet deep and 
about 12 by 18 feet across, lying at the foot of a large rock with a westerly 


898 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Buu 78 


outlook. This pit evidently represents the ‘sweat house.’ No other pits re- 
main: from which it would appear that the “ houses” were not seriously ex- 
cavated and therefore presumably slight and rather small edifices. The sweat 
house, too, does not nearly attain the size of the more capacious earth-covered 
assembly chambers described in the hills and plains. 

Similarly, Indian Valley or Tasi-koyo about Taylorsville had three settle- 
ments: 
“ Sweat 


A. Yodawi (with the largest sweat house), 14 Houses. houses.” 
miles from Taylorsville, across the stream__ 10-11 1 
B. Ong-koyo-diknom, 3 miles distant____________ 4—5 1 
C. Kiishdu (now called Tela-ng-k’umii, “ Taylor 
sweat house”) vat ‘Taylorsvillel2ec25 sss 6 1 
20-22 3 


This tribelet must have had much the same strength as that in American 
Valley. . 

In Big Meadows, or more probably their eastern part, Naka-m-koyo was the 
leading settlement and also the name of the district. The site itself was at 
the famous Big Spring. Wishotpiming was a village belonging to this group. 


There is nothing in the scheme of organization suggested by these 
data that does not exactly fit the Yuki and Pomo plan: but the unit 
groups, each comprising several settlements and yet forming a recog- 
nized community, are wholly without parallel among the Yurok and 
Hupa. 


It may be added that the northeastern “villages” shown on Plate 37 seem 
quite generally to be the eponymous settlements representative of such groups, 
while for the northwestern and southern divisions the entries appear some- 
times to comprise the separate settlements of a group and sometimes to be 
confined to the leading one. 


The area claimed by each village community was very definitely 
known and sometimes marked. It hag even been said that the bound- 
aries were more or less regularly patroled to guard against poach- 
ing. Even game that had been wounded outside but died within the 
territory of a community belonged to the latter people and not to 
the hunter. This rule, however, is said not to have been observed by 
the high mountain people. 


It is stated that four communities in eastern Butte County between Oroville 
and Mooretown once met to agree on the precise limits of their lands and on 
certain devices by which these should be marked. One took a crescent, another 
three vertical lines, and so on. These symbols were then scratched into natural 
rocks that served as corner stones. ‘This arrangement is almost certainly 
colored by an imitation of land surveying and eattle branding; but, apart from 
the marking of lines and the use of symbols, it may rest on a genuinely native 
practice. 

There is no trace of any system of social or political classification 
other than the village communities, nor of any fictitious or exo- 
gamic kinship groups, 


_~—oh * eee 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 399 
THE CHIEF. 


The quality of chieftainship varied according to region. The 
southern Maidu, particularly those in contact with the Miwok, 
made more of the institution. Their chief was hereditary, received 
part of all larger game, and sometimes had young men hunt for 
him outright. He lived in the village dance house, or his dwelling 
served as assembly chamber for the group. In the north, this close 
connection between the dance house and the chief perhaps did not 
obtain as rigorously. The chief is also said to have been chosen 
here for his wealth and popularity, irrespective of descent. It is 
further stated that he did not receive more than an average share 
of food. Ue could be deposed whenever he became unsatisfactory 
to the majority. These statements may apply rather to the simple 
mountain Maidu than to the people of the valley, whose wealth in 
property and ritualistic organization make it difficult to believe that 
their chief men should have been so inconspicuous.! 

Such scanty evidences of descent as succession in office and inher- 
itance of property rights afford invariably point to the Maidu count- 
ing in the male line. 


TRADE. 


The valley Maidu traded considerably with the Wintun. They 
received beads—that is, money—above all else. What they chiefly 
gave is not known. The beads were counted by tens, not measured, 
although handled on strings. From the valley and hills the beads 
flowed into the high Sierra, together with salmon, some salt, and 
nuts of the digger pine which grows only at moderate levels. The 
return was that of a hunting people: bows and arrows and deer- 
skins, sugar-pine nuts, and perhaps some other local food products. 
A similar trade prevailed between the mountaineers and the Acho- 
mawi to their north, and indicates that the general status of north- 
eastern Maidu culture was less advanced than that of the Achomawl, 
rude as was the life of the latter; or at least, that the mountain 
Maidu were the poorer. Obsidian for arrow points and a green 
pigment for bow decoration reached the Maidu from the north, 
probably also from the Achomawi. With the Paiute and Washo to 
the east the northeastern Maidu had little communication. The 
southern Maidu of the uplands may have been in somewhat closer 
touch with these neighbors. Wild tobacco from the border district 
of Honey Lake appears to have been traded in all directions. 





1 The data on the southern Wintun agree with the statements on the southern Maidu, 
and further enhance the probability of northwestern Maidu chieftainship being hereditary 
and influential, especially in the valley. 


3625°—25 27 





J 
mn 


400 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [RULT.. 
WAR. 


The principal fighting weapon was the bow. Stabbing spears with 
obsidian heads and simple sticklike clubs were used occasionally. 
Shields were unknown, but both types of Pacific coast armor were 
worn now and then. The elk-hide coat was perhaps more charac- 
teristic of the valley; the waistcoat of rods, of the mountains. The 
wood for the latter was mountain mahogany. It is said to have had 
a high collar, behind which the warrior could shield his head. The 
rod armor is probably to be viewed as one of the many influences 
which the Achomawi have exerted on the northeastern Maidu. It is 
a type that extends from the northwestern tribes across the State to 
the Achomawi. 

Attacks against the enemy were almost always made at daybreak. 
In open fighting great reliance was placed on dodging arrows and a 
constant dancing was kept up to disconcert the foe’s aim. So far as 
possible the side of the body was presented to him as being narrower 


than the front. It is probable that in such battles the two lines were. 


separated by nearly arrow range. At 50 yards an arrow from a 
powerful bow would be distinctly difficult to dodge. 

Men were taken prisoners only to be killed. They were tied to a 
pole in the dance house and mutilated and burned to death. Several 
of the devices mentioned show some ingenuity of cruelty, but the 
torture gives the impression of a spontaneous expression of hatred 
rather than of any refined system of prolonging anguish. Foes of 
distinction seem to have been shot to death in a dance around them. 
If only the dead body or even the head of a foe could be secured, it 
was brought home and treated as if it were a living prisoner. Scalps 
were taken and danced about by men and women, but there are no 
details on record as to the cut of the scalp or the nature of the cele- 
bration. This scalp dance appears to have been a mountain rather 
than a valley practice. 

The usual northern Californian system of paying for the slain pre- 
vailed. It seems to have been fairly well worked out in the valley, 
where it is said that war parties, or a group of negotiators dressed 
as if for war, would meet in a conference to discuss the exact terms 
of settlement. In the mountains blood money was more irregular, 
and it is said that it did not always prevent the subsequent taking of 
revenge. If this statement can be accepted there could have been 
little incentive to settle for a killing. Possibly the reference is to 
people who were too poor to pay adequately, and these may have 
comprised a considerable part of the population. 

Feuds are likely to have been almost as common between Maidu 
villages as between them and foreigners. There is no evidence that 
any considerable group of Maidu towns ever united in a common 


Aa 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 401 


movement against aliens. At the same time there were foreign 
groups toward whom distrust or enmity was chronic. Thus the 
northern valley people had more or less constant difficulty with the 
Yana, the northeastern Maidu with the Yana, the Achomawi, and 
the Washo. Hostilities between the Maidu and Wintun of the val- 
ley were intermittent and probably affairs of individual villages. 
As nations, the two groups seem to have been rather friendly, and 
at any rate to have communicated considerably. The mountain peo- 
ple apparently got on better with the Northern Paiute than with 
most of their other neighbors. The friends and foes of the south- 
ern Maidu are not known. 


MARRIAGE. 


Maidu marriage customs exemplify very accurately the variations 
of levels of culture that coincide with habitat in different altitudes 
in California. 

In the Sacramento Valley the suitor remained at home.and sent 
a representative with shell money. The price was displayed, dis- 
cussed by the girl’s family, and if considered insufficient, returned. 
The father might also accept the offering, give it to a brother, and 
then demand an equal amount for himself. It is said that the girl’s 
consent was usually secured, or that at any rate she was likely to 
be advised of the offer before it was made; but this is not wholly 
in accord with the custom of other tribes among whom marriage 
by purchase prevailed. 

In the hills, little or no money passed. The young man indirectly 
declared his suit by repeatedly visiting the girl’s home and pointedly 
engaging in conversation on indifferent topics with her father. 
Having given due notice in this way, he went hunting or fishing, 
regularly bringing his catch to the girl’s home, without, however, 
uttering a formal declaration. Acceptance of the gifts encouraged 
him to continue. After he had sufficiently shown his capacity and 
good will, he visited once more. A separate bed was now prepared 
for him and the bride, apparently without any words having yet been 
spoken on the matter, and the couple were considered married. 

The mountain people dispensed even with this indirect and un- 
specified prepayment. The suitor merely visited in the evening 
and remained. If the girl did not want him, she sat up all night, 1f 
necessary. Otherwise he joined her. She was probably influenced 
considerably by the attitude of the family, and it is likely that a 
half understanding, or at least an indication of intention, previously 
existed among the young people. The only thing that resembled 
payment was that the young man remained with his bride’s parents 
for some months, hunting and working for them, Even after he 


¢ 


402 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY. [BULL. 78 


took her back to his own parents, or to a separate house in his home 
village, he occasionally visited and provided food for them during 
several years. An excellent hunter might even have a girl sent to 
him as wife; in which case it would be bad form for him to refuse 
her. | 

Among all the Maidu, kinship alone is said to have been a bar to 
marriage, and there existed no artificial incest groupings. The man 
was free to wed in his own or another village. Since his home settle- 
ment, however, consisted largely of kinsmen, he more commonly 
went elsewhere for his wife. In normal cases the permanent home 
of a couple was in the man’s village, but a first residence with 
the bride’s parents was the rule everywhere. This was clearly to 
render service as whole or partial purchase payment, and not a 
reminiscence of any principle of exogamy. [Even in the valley it 
seems to have been added to the formal price as something that cus- 
tom demanded without bargaining. 

As to polygamy, the Maidu rule was the usual one in California. 
Chiefs, rich men, and old men kept as many wives as they could; 
the majority contented themselves with one. The levirate was in 
force among all the Maidu. In the mountains a man had a first 
claim on his wife’s sisters. If he failed to exercise his right, it 
passed to his brother. | 

Among the hill and mountain people, where no real payments had 
been made, divorce was merely a matter of the wish of either party. 
In the valley a man could return his wife and claim his purchase 
price if she were unfaithful or otherwise definitely objectionable. 


SOCIAL PRACTICES. 


The taboo between mother-in-law and son-in-law seems to have 
prevailed among all the Maidu. It is specifically mentioned that 
among the valley people the two would neither converse nor look at 
each other, and that if she met the young man, the old woman would 
cover her head. | 

The valley women delivered in their special huts, those of the 
hills in a secluded spot outdoors, and those of the inclement moun- 
tains inside the living house. For a stillborn child, the subsequent 
observances were made more rigorous, much as by the northwestern 
tribes. 

The mountain Maidu tied the child’s umbilical cord to its cradle. 
This is perhaps a Plateau Shoshonean practice: at any rate it pre- 
vails in the Plains area. 

The hill people feared and destroyed twins. Sometimes the mother 
was killed with the children. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 403 


Before as well as after the birth of a child the husband and wife 
alike were under restrictions. These constituted what may be called 
a semicouvade, such as prevailed over the greater part of California. 
Meat and fish were forbidden, and both parents abstained as com- 
pletely as possible from all labor, especially hunting. In the north- 
ern valley the period lasted 10 days after childbirth, and husband 
and wife jointly occupied the woman’s hut. In the foothills, the 
period of restriction was determined practically rather than ritual- 
istically, enduring until the woman was able to walk about easily. 
She remained in her hut, the husband at home. In the mountains, 
both parents fasted and kept quiet until the remnant of the umbilical 
cord fell from the child. 


NAMES. 


Maidu names generally had a meaning, but this was often trivial, 
sometimes obscene, and usually of obscure reference. The name of 
a dead relative was generally bestowed upon the child by the time 
it was 2 years old. Often an additional nickname came into vogue. 
At the time of their initiation, the boys received a new name, which 
was that of a dead member of the society, probably bestowed when 
a man reached the higher grade of yepont. The mountain people 
having no Kuksu society, of course did not follow this practice. It 
is not known whether they had any corresponding device for re- 
placing the child name by an adult one. In the hills women are 
said to have received new names, or at least new designations in the 
family, during adolescence, after the birth of the first child, and as 
old age began to be reached. Among all the Maidu there seems to 
have been an inclination to terminate the taboo which lay on the 
names of the dead, by bestowing these names upon a near member 
of the family at the first opportunity after a year or so had elapsed. 

The following are names of hill Maidu, given on entry into the 
Kuksu cult: Vomiting-baskets, Licking-deer, Licking-head, Tied- 
wing, Mother’s Stomach, Void-in-river, Stuck-in-the-ear, Pine-nut- 
eater. These can hardly be symbolic of the religion in themselves. 
They are evidently typical California names of traditional origin 
and little significance; the cult enters chiefly as machinery for their 
bestowal. 

THE DEAD. 


As to disposal of the dead, evidence is somewhat variable. Burial 
seems to have been the rule, the hill people showing the most fre- 
quent inclination toward cremation. In the valley, burning is said 
to have been resorted to only for persons who died away from 
home, ashes being more easily transported than a corpse. The 


404 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Ruur. 78 


mountain division always buried. The southern practice was cre- 
mation. 

Among all divisions interment was in a flexed position, the body 
being roped in a skin, that of a bear if possible. Personal property 
was broken and buried with the corpse, or burned. The house was 
usually burned down. This was particularly likely to be done for 
people of note. The cemeteries lay at the edge of the villages, the 
reason assigned being fear of grave robbery. 

Men shortened their hair for the death of a few of the nearest 
relatives, women for a larger number. A widow cut or burned her 
hair off close and covered it with pitch, which was never deliberately 
removed. In the mountains, widows wore a buckskin thong with 
beads of pitch until the mourning anniversary. The hill people, for 
the death of a husband or wife, put on a mourning necklace which 
served as a sort of badge of participation in the next five years’ anni- 
versaries. The hair cut in mourning is said by the Maidu to have 
been secreted, not worked into belts or ornaments, as among certain 
tribes both of northern and southern California. This. statement 
is confirmed by the absence of any articles of human hair in museum 
collections from the Maidu region, 


CHAPTER 28. 
THE MAIDU: ARTS AND IMPLEMENTS. 


Dress, 405; houses, 407; sustenance, 409; mortar and metate, 411; textiles, 414; 
boats, 416; bows, 417; tools, 417; pipes, 418; musical instruments, 419; 
games, 419; money, 421. 

DRESS. 


Maidu clothing was similarly scant in the summer heat of the val- 
ley and the snowy winter of the mountains. A deer or puma skin 
with the hair side next the body, a rabbit-skin blanket, or a pair of 
skins sewn together, was worn as a loose mantle at need; but there 
was no true garment. The mountaineers are said to have donned 
grass-stuffed moccasins for travel in the snow. Such use may have 
kept the feet warm, but would quickly ruin the footgear. The calf 
was protected by a deerskin legging, the hair side inward, tied above 
the knee and wound to the leg with a thong. Both moccasin and 
legging were presumably for journeys or the hunt rather than for 
daily wear. The moccasin was of the usual California variety: un- 
soled, single piece, seamed up the front, and coming well above the 
ankle. 

The snowshoe varies locally in California, but only in detail. It 
consists of one or two withes or thongs traversing a small oval hoop 
longitudinally, and two to four crosswise. There is no netting, no 
tailpiece, and no provision for heel play. The device fulfilled only 
the most minimal requirement; but it could be made in half an hour 
by an unskilled operator, and is typical of Californian culture. 
(Fig. 68.) 

The netted cap completed the costume of Maidu men. It was in- 
dispensable in ceremony, through allowing headpieces to be skewered 
into the contained hair; and was convenient in many occupations, 
although we are uncertain whether it was worn habitually. 

Women’s clothing was constituted essentially of two shredded bark 
aprons, preferably of maple, the front one smaller and tucked be- 
tween the legs when the wearer sat down. Grass may also have been 
used, and old women occasionally went naked. The mountain women 
inclined to buckskin fringes, essentially of the type that prevails 
through all of northernmost California, but, it is said, with less pro- 
fuse ornamentation of pine nuts. Outdoors in winter, women added 
moccasins and a skin. robe. 

405 


406 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY : [BULL 78 


There is some doubt whether the Maidu women wore caps. There is not a 
specimen in any museum. The southern and valley Maidu may be presumed not 
to have used this article. The northeasterners declare that they had them, 
and that they were flat-topped baskets like those of the Achomawi, Modoc, and 
Yana. Perhaps the fashion was imitated from one of these neighboring peo- 
ples; or the caps may have formed a more or less regular object of intertribal 
trade, as between Wailaki and Kato. In any event they are not worn to-day. 

Several. methods of hair dress are described. It is not clear 
whether these represent regional customs or individual variation. 
In the south the bunched hair was tied with string at the back of the 
head. As this is also a Yana device, it must have been known to 
the northwestern Maidu, and may have been practiced by them. The 
northern mountaineers wore their hair loose; the valley people are 
sald to have inclined more to the head net for a forehead band. 
Women’s hair, which was often cut half length, hung loose, or was 
held by a band passing under the chin. This was a strange habit, 
and, if correct, indicates that caps were not worn. 

Hair was perhaps most frequently trimmed with a glowing coal, 
but a flint edge bearing on a stick is also mentioned. Combs of porcu- 
pine tails, pine cones, and pine needles were in use. Only hair on the 
face was pulled out; at that the northeasterners are said occasionally 
to have left the upper lip covered. 

The Maidu are on the fringe of tattooing tribes. In the northern 
valley women bore three to seven vertical lines on the chin, plus a 
diagonal line from each mouth corner toward the outer end of the 
eye. The process was one of fine close cuts with an obsidian splinter, 
as among the Shasta, with wild nutmeg charcoal rubbed in. Toward 
the east and south the more painful pricking-in method was followed, 
the cheek decoration becomes lost, the chin lines are fewer, until 
finally tattooing becomes sporadic and individual in character. or 
men there existed no universal fashion: the commonest mark was a 
narrow stripe upward from the root of the nose. As elsewhere in 
California, lines and dots were not uncommon on breast, arms, and 
hands of men and women; but no standardized pattern seems to have 
been evolved by any group, except for the female face. (Fig. 45, e, f.) 

There is said to have been no ritual of any moment when a girl 
was tattooed. The operation must generally have come near her 
puberty, but seems not to have been very definitely associated with 
the adolescence ceremony. 

Ornaments were worn in the ear chiefly by women, in the nose only 
by men. Girls had their lobes pierced in the adolescence dance, but 
less was made of the act than by the Achomawi. Where the Kuksu 
society existed, the perforation of the septum occurred more ceremo- 
niously in the initiation of boys. Ear ornaments were pieces of 
haliotis on thongs; or more characteristically, incised bird bones or 


KROFBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA AQT 


polished sticks, with or without feather tufts or shell pendants. The 
horizontal nose ornament was a feather, a pair of feathers, or a 
feathered stick. 

Glass beadwork has obtained as slight a foothold among the Maidu 
as with most California groups. Its occurrences can be traced to 
contact with Northern Paiute and Washo, who in turn appear to 
owe their inclination to indirect or ultimate influences from the 
Plains. The western Mono reveal their eastward affiliations in a 
greater fondness for bead weaving than, for instance, the neighbor- 
ing Miwok and Yokuts display. The Colorado River tribes have 
devised some distinctive and well-chosen uses for beads; but these 
seem to be of local origin. In general, glass beads are woven in 
California, not embroidered on skins. 


HOUSES. 


The Maidu possess two names for houses: /’wm and hibo. The 
k’um or kumi or k’umii is the large earth-covered structure, the 
hiibo a lean-to of bark or brush. But the relative use of the two 
types is not wholly clear. The x’wm was the dance chamber; also 
a sweat house; also a dwelling. The same edifice was not always 
used for all these purposes; but it is characteristic that the ceremonial, 
the sweating, and the living house were built alike and called the 
same. Other than in function, they seem to have differed only in 
sizes, and these were variable. Villages of consequence had a dance 
house. Small settlements may have danced in their most available 
dwelling. An important rite would only be held in a big town, in all 
hkelihood. 

The Auibo was only a dwelling. How far its relation to the ;’uwm 
was determined respectively by the owner’s wealth, by the season, 
or by region, must remain in abeyance; but the last seems the most 
important factor. The valley people inhabited large and small /?’wm 
almost altogether. In the foothills and higher Sierra, the much less 
weatherproof Avibo was the usual family domicile. Exponents of the 
direct influence of climate are wont to overlook such cases of the 
best shelter where it is least needed. There is indeed an unquestion- 
able correlation with environment; but it is subtle. The mountaineers 
are poor and unskilled; the valley dwellers leisurely, painstaking, 
and well provided. So it happens that the very ones exposed to 
inclemence are the least in position and the least accustomed to take 
efficient action for their protection. 

As to season, as soon as the rains were over the hill people aban- 
doned their winter houses, whether these were A’wm or Adibo, and 
lived under open brush roofs, or in the most flimsy shelters of leafage. 
The mountaineers did the same, so far as their briefer and cooler 


408 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


summer allowed. The valley people are said to have remained with 
their i°wmn throughout the year, merely moving out under an adjacent 
porch or brush shade in the period of heat. Such a habit, however, 
would contradict the normal central Californian practice of more or 
less movement in summer. 

The large inhabited %’uwm are stated to have contained several 
families, each with its assigned portion of floor space. Whether 
these were all kin, or how far the related families were reckoned 
as separate familes by the Maidu, are interesting but unanswered 
questions. 


The k’um was round, 20 to 40 feet in diameter, and dug out with sticks and 
baskets to a depth of a yard. The sides of this shallow pit were lined with 
poles, split logs, or bark. ‘Two, occasionally three, oak posts were set up in 
the middle, in line with the door and fireplace. The one behind the latter 
was the ritual center of the structure, and was called great or spirit post. 
It may be conjectured that for a dwelling these uprights sufficed: but a dance 
house had four more on each side, between the middle and the walls—10 in 
all. The center posts rose from 10 to 20 feet, according to the size of the 
edifice, the side uprights little more than half as much. The roof was carried 
by eight logs, which sloped from the ground over the side pillars and rested 
with their higher ends on two larger logs which extended from the main posts 
respectively to the entrance and to the rear. Then came cross poles, more or 
less following the circumference of the house; then bark, sticks, pine needles, 
and the like; and finally earth to a depth of a foot. The smoke hole was in the 
middle of the roof and served as the principal door. The descent was by a 
notched log. A two-pole ladder with tied crosspieces is mentioned by some of 
the Maidu; but the idea has an unaboriginal flavor, and its report needs cor- 
roboration. The door in the front served for draft, bringing in wood, and 
occasional exit or entrance, especially by women or children. It was built 
out into a little tunnel, which must slope up to reach the ground. The orienta- 
tion is unknown, except for the valley, where the door faced south or southwest. 

This type of earth lodge prevailed among the entire stock with the excep- 
tion of the most extreme southern Maidu, who, in common with their Miwok 
neighbors, replaced the row of two center posts by a square of pillars, inter- 
connected at the top, from which the roof beams radiated; and among the 
northeasterners, who set three principal uprights, one behind the fire and 
two abreast it. This gives a pair of longitudinal girders, instead of one, 
from the “spirit post”? forward; and these run directly into the door-tunnel 
frame. This conecept—that of a ridgepole forking into the door—is repeated 
by the northeastern Maidu in their hiibo, and reappears among the Achomawi. 
On the other hand, the valley Maidu form of k’um is very similar to that of 
the Wintun and Pomo in its structural plan. 

The hiibo, in some dialects wyi, was a conical hut, 10 to 15 feet across, sup- 
ported by several poles leaned and tied together over a shallow excavation. 
Bark, sticks, slabs from dead trees, pine needies, and leaves in any combina- 
tion kept out the weather more or less successfully. Thatching is not men- 
tioned; perhaps the “leaves” imply it. The disturbed earth was banked up 
the sides as far as it would reach, some 2 or 3 feet. Occasionally a more 
pretentious house had a center post. The -northeasterners built a doorway 
by setting up two Jow stakes with a stick across. From this frame light 
beams sloped to the intersection of two or three poles leaned together from 





a 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 409 


the edges of the hollowed ground. The remainder of the house rested on this 
primary framework. 

At least the northerly Maidu had their women build huts for themselves 
for solitary habitation during their periodic illnesses; as to the southerly 
divisions, information fails. These structures were small and poorly made 
hiibo. 

A little apse or niche was often built at the back of their houses by the 
mountain Maidu for the storage of food. The Yuki refer to a similar arrange- 
ment, Which may have had a wide distribution in California. 

A bed is reported for the earth lodge: A platform of willow poles, 
covered with pine rushes or other soft material, along each side of the 
house, and high enough, at times, to allow of storage underneath. A 
log along the inner edge served both as part of the framework and as 
pillow. The inmates consequently slept with their heads toward the 
fire, Skins, and presumably tule mats, according to locality, formed 
the bedding; and deerskins, or preferably woven blankets of fur or 
feathers, the covering. The earth house, however, was so warm when 
fired and closed that naked sleep was often comfortable. In the 
smaller houses and brush huts a mere layer on the ground replaced 
the platform. It will be seen that the Maidu had not attained to the 
use of individual beds. The Patwin and Chumash are other Cali- 
fornian peoples for whom there is record of beds that consisted of 
more than mats or skins spread on the floor. 


SUSTENANCE. 


The list of animals disdained as food was small. Foremost was 
the dog, regarded as virulently poisonous by most northern Cali- 
fornians; then the wolf and coyote; and, among the southern Maidu, 
the grizzly bear. The buzzard is the only bird mentioned; and this 
concludes the number, except for reptiles and amphibians, all of 
which were scrupulously avoided. 

Invertebrates were freely eaten; worms, the larvee of yellow jackets 
and probably of other insects, grasshoppers, crickets, locusts, and 
fresh-water mussels were relished. 

Of fish, the salmon came first, in the region of the larger streams, 
and next the lamprey eel, whose extraordinary fatness appealed to 
the Indian’s palate much as it did to the Roman’s. In the higher 
mountains trout were nearly the only fish available. 

Deer vertebrae were crushed in mortars, and the meal caked and 
set before the fire. Salmon backbones were also pounded, but eaten 
raw. Both these practices are likely to hayo had a wide Californian 
distribution. 

Deer were often hunted by companies of men. They were driven 
over cliffs, or past hunters hidden near the runways. The mountain- 
eers headed the animals against a grapevine fence with egresses, at 


410 | BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


which the deer were shot, or with angles in which they were cornered 
and clubbed. It is probable that the barrier restrained the game 
by the fact of its artificiality rather than by actual strength or close- 
ness. Drives of this type were undertaken with prayers and magical 
observances, and strict taboos were in force for the families of the 
hunters. 

Individual hunters stalked with the deer-head mask, or ran the 
game down, either on foot or with snowshoes. Elk were most fre- 
quently taken by the latter method. The animal, unable to feed or 
ruminate, becomes so weak in a couple of days that the hunter can 
overtake it. 

Bear hunts were opened ceremonially. The common species 
had its cave entered before the end of hibernation, and was then 
killed by magic plus a well-directed arrow or two. If the proper 
form were gone through, the natives believed that the animal re- 
sponded by quietly arising and exposing its heart. Hunting griz- 
zlies with the bow was dangerous, on account of the vitality and fre- 
quent ferocity of the wounded animal. The plan was for a number 
of men, carefully posted behind stones or trees, successively to en- 
gage the brute in pursuit while others shot, until 1t succumbed to 
the number of arrows. 

Rabbits were taken in long nets, as by the Washo and Northern 
Paiute. The little animals were driven at full speed and enmeshed 
their heads or entire bodies and were promptly clubbed. 

Birds were killed in greatest numbers by nooses and nets. Quail 
will often follow even a low fence rather than fly over it, particularly 
along their runways. <A fine noose and bait at occasional gates 
usually trapped a bird. For waterfowl a series of nooses, each held 
open by a leaf of grass, were stretched over the surface of a stream. 
Ducks, geese, pigeons, and crows were also netted. The latter were 
scared up at night and caught in a fan-shaped net held up from a 
willow bush. Pigeons often flew regularly through gaps in ridges 
where they were an easy prey. Geese were attracted under a row 
of nets by a live decoy, and then enmeshed by the pull of a string 
reaching to the hunter. Ducks sometimes caught themselves under 
similar nets hung over a bank where they touched releasing strings 
in the dark. Saimon could be harpooned in riffles and at weir open- 
ings. In deep water they were taken with nets held from scaffolds, 
much as by the Yurok and Shasta. Fishhooks were of little conse- 
quence; they consisted of pieces of bone tied and pitched to form an 
angle. 

The acorn cache or granary of the type described for the Miwo 
was used by the Maidu of the valley as well as the foothills. The 
northeasterners do not seem to have followed this practice: in ad- 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 411 


dition to the built-in compartment, they wove large baskets like 
those of the Achomawi and the northeastern tribes. 

Of acorns, those from Quercus kelloggii, chrysolepis, and wizlizeni 
were preferred. 

Neither the acorn soup paddle, whose distribution reaches from 
the Tolowa to the Northern Miwok, nor the looped stick of the South- 
ern Miwok and Yokuts, has been reported among the Maidu.t Cer- 
tainly in most cases they stirred their acorn mush with a mere stick, 
and picked up the cooking stones with a pair of sticks. The mush was 
scooped up with the index and middle fingers, and these sucked off— 
the commonest method in California. Worked spoons were scarcely 
known, but river mussel shells were occasionally employed. 


MORTAR AND METATE, 


In the coast region the metate is not known from San Francisco 
Bay or to the north. In the interior, in the same latitude, the Maidu 
used the implement. It was nothing but a slab, said to have been 
set at a slight tilt. The metates of the more southerly ‘Sierra tribes 
are generally considerably hollowed in all directions, as if the muller 
were rotated rather than handled with the back-and-forth motion 
of the typical Pueblo grain metate. With this accords the shape of 
the muller itself, which is rounded or irregular, whereas the Pueblo 
“mano” is a rectangular block. The Klamath-Modoc metate is 
small; the muller has a peculiarly two-horned handle, but its bearing 
surface is circular. The basic type thus is that of the Sierra; inci- 
dentally, a similar implement must have been employed by the 
Achomawi, to judge by their location. All through the interior 
region the metate is used for dry seeds. The acorn is probably too 
oily to be pulverized by rubbing. Nevada has metates of the in- 
terior Californian kind. The Mohave, who are agricultural, use a 
metate which is wholly of the Pueblo variety, except that, lacking 
stone houses, they do not mortar it into a mealing bin. The non- 
agricultural tribes of the south have metates whose hollows, to judge 
by all available specimens, are basin-shaped; that is, they resemble 
the Sierra utensil in having the surface rubbed circularly. A num- 
ber of brick-shaped rub stones in museum collections, however, indi- 
cate that the Pueblo metate, which wears into a segment of a cylin- 
der under the back-and-forth motion of the hard stone, must also have 
been known in southern California beyond the Mohave and Yuma; 
though whether before the advent of the missions and their Mexican 
followers remains to be determined. 3 





1In fact, the paddle has been denied; but there is one in the University of California 
Museum. 


A BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULL. 78 


The metate has been described by some authorities as part of the 
maize complex, that is, associated with the cultural influence which, 
spreading from southern Mexico, carried agriculture into the middle 
portions of the continent. This is hkely to be partly true. Grain is 
better ground than pounded into flour, apparently. But if this is 
the origin of the implement, its use has outstripped the cultivation 
of the plant which was the center of the complex. The southern 
Plateau and the greater part of California, if not more northerly 
regions, have then borrowed the grinding concept without taking 
over the basic agricultural industry which gave rise to it. The alter- 
native interpretation is that the California-Great Basin metate 
originated independently, in response to a need for the utilization of 
small dry seeds of grasses, sages, and Composite. This is not an 
unreasonable conjecture; but if true, it raises the question whether 
the utensil may not also have been devised in Mexico -before agri- 
culture was followed, and to have been subsequently associated with 
that practice. In either event, the association of the metate with 
maize culture is considerably weakened. 

Another problem arises in the relation of mortar and metate. The 
most obvious form for a mortar is a hole of some depth in a log or 
block of stone. Both these types are in use in southern California. 
They continue in central California, although the bowlder mortar be- 
gins to be generally replaced by a hole in bedrock. In the northern 
part of the State, however, the globular mortar was not employed 
by the recent Indians, except in small forms for special purposes, and 
is replaced by the flat slab with basketry hopper. ,The distribution 
of this type is not exactly definable. It extends farther south on 
the coast than inland. But the area in which the use of the slab with 
hopper is exclusive, and therefore most characteristic, is clearly the 
north coast region, in which the metate is not known. It is a reason- 
able conclusion that the two phenomena are connected: that one is 
the equivalent of the other. The metate is almost certainly the more 
fundamental and ancient. Jt is a simpler form and it is far more 
widespread. That pounding should first have been performed on a 
flat slab is conceivable, but only conceivable. Further, the entire slab 
and hopper region is archeologically underlain with numerous mor- 
tars. Against this fact there can only be set a southward extension 
of the hopper. But a basketry hopper on a deep globular mortar 
such as 1s occasionally found in southern California is essentially a 
superfluity. It can increase utility but little, and must often add 
considerably to inconvenience of use. As a matter of fact this ano- 
malous combination seems never to have acquired a firm hold on 
custom in the southern region in which it is found. In the Chumash 
area the slab and hopper existed beside the deep mortar, as revealed 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 413 


by excavations. But the globular form is much the more prevalent 
here; and-it is to be doubted whether the use of the hopper is very 
ancient, since the asphalt joints, which alone survive as evidence, 
would perhaps not be likely to be preserved buried in contact with 
a smooth slab for many centuries. 

It seems, then, that the ordinary mortar, most commonly hollowed 
out of a block or bowlder, but made also in bedrock or wood accord- 
ing to local opportunity or exigencies, once prevailed over all Cali- 
fornia. ‘Then came the metate, perhaps from the southwest area 
via southern California, or through the Great Basin, or by both 
routes. In southern and middle California it became established by 
the side of the mortar, one implement being utilized for seeds, the 
other for acorns. The metate, as the shell mounds prove, did not come 
into use on San Francisco Bay, nor did it penetrate to the northern 
coast. In this latter region, however, as well as in some marginal 
areas of its own distribution, such as among the most northerly 
Maidu, the metate appears to have influenced industrial habits suffi- 
ciently to cause the adoption of a slab as mortar, which of course 
necessitated the use of a hopper. The hopper then in reflux may pos- 
sibly have spread southward to the edge of the agricultural area; but 
this last conjecture must be carried very tentatively, because the 
southern Californian hopper is so different in technique and use from 
that of the north that 1t might have been devised independently. 

The natural supposition that the hopper is the intrinsic result of a 
high development of the basket industry, an adept people finding it 
easier to weave a basket than laboriously to peck out a stone, is there- 
fore to all appearance erroneous. Imitation of a utensil of different 
purpose, or at least a suggestion derived from such a foreign object, 
seems to have been at the root of the development of the pounding slab 
which involved the hopper as a by-product. The art of basketry was 
only called upon to provide the by-product. The originating stimulus 
came from a stone form, not from any exuberance of basketry activity. 
This at least is indicated for northern Califorma. The coiled hopper 
of the south may be a labor-saving device. 

Of course, all the evidence for the foregoing chain of reasoning 
is indirect. Proof or disproof must come from fuller knowledge, 
perhaps through excavations. If the metate is found in the most 
ancient deposits through the same regions in which it now occurs, the 
foregoing hypothesis of its spread from the south will be applicable 
only to a very remote period, or entirely invalidated. It is conceiv- 
able that just as the implement is lacking from the earliest as well 
as the latest levels of.the San Francisco Bay shell mounds, it may 
have been used in southern California and in the Sierra Nevada 
thousands of years ago as to-day, in which case the problem concern- 


414 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [buLL. 78 


ing it would take new shape. The instance does reveal incisively 
how little historical use we can yet make out of the data of California 
archeology, outside of the San Francisco Bay district, in consequence 
of nearly all explorations having been devoid of stratigraphic deter- 
minations or a correlating point of view. 

The hopper is said to have been more frequently dispensed with 
than used by Maidu women. It is very probable that custom was an 
affair of geography in this matter. The southern Maidu almost cer- 
tainly followed the Miwok practice of doing without. Bedrock 
holes are found in their territory, but the basketry hopper has not 
been reported. Available specimens are wholly from the north- 
eastern division, which has contact with the twined weaving Yana 
and Achomawi. In fact, the Maidu hopper is made in the charac- 
teristic Xerophyllum technique of northernmost California, and may 
therefore be set. down, like the patterned burden basket, as a direct 
imitation of their northern neighbors by the more northerly Maidu. 

The globular mortar possessed much of the magical esteem among 
the Maidu which it enjoyed with the Shasta, except that it was not 
regarded as self-moving and a spirit. It was called a spirit basket or 
pain basket; used by doctors as a receptacle for charms; was far 
too powerful to be tolerated in the house; was sought after but feared: 
of course was not employed for grinding; and was always found, 
never made. According to some accounts, mortars were once people; 
by others, they were attributed to the Creator or his antithesis Coyote. 
All looked upon them as potential and hallowed; and the meal with 
which secret society initiates were sprinkled was taken from a mor- 
tar, much as the Luiseno drank their toloache from one. 


TEXTILES, 


The most characteristic Maidu baskets are coiled. The materials 
are peeled willow and peeled or unpeeled redbud (Cercis), the 
foundation always three-rod, the edge finished by mere wrapping. 
Normally there are only two colors, a brownish red on a white or 
neutral background which turns soft buff with age. Rather rarely a 
black, produced by burying pine root fibers in charcoal and mud, 
was substituted for the redbud. Patterns are comparatively simple, 
and show more feeling for the appearance of the basket as a whole 
than for intricacy of detail. They are most frequently disposed in 
diagonals, either parallel or zigzag. Horizontal or circumferential 
patterns are distinctly less common than in the Pomo- Yuki-Wintun 
region, and vertical or radiating ones are rare. As among the Miwok, 
the direction of the coil is always clockwise, as seen from the hollow 
of the basket, except in flat baskets, which invariably run in the op- 
posite direction, ‘This difference seems to be due to the insertion of 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 415 


the awl and sewing splint from the inside or top in flat specimens, 
from the outside in all others. The Pomo women, by the same stand- 
ard, appear to work all their baskets from the outside; the Yuki, 
most of whose vessels are fairly shallow, from the inside. The Maidu 
use no feathers or pendants in their basketry, and know no oval forms 
or constricted necks. Their ware is self-sufficient and artistically as 
pleasing as any in California, but in elaborateness falls short of that 
of the Yokuts, and especially that of the Pomo. 

I'wining was used for carrying, storage, and tray baskets, all more 
or less openwork; for a short-handled seed beater; and for fish traps. 
Its regular form was two-strand, but it is likely that three- 
strand twining was known and occasionally employed for starts or 
strengthening. 

The northeastern Maidu, and they alone, have taken over the over- 
lay twining of northernmost California in all its features, including 
the typical materials: hazel shoots, pine roots, Verophyllum, and 
maidenhair fern. These were employed chiefly for close-woven and 
patterned carrying baskets, which are scarcely distinguishable from 
those of the Yurok and Achomawi, Mortar hoppers and perhaps 
caps were made in the same technique. In fact, the art has obvi- 
ously been introduced bodily from the Achomawi or Atsugewi, and 
exists among the northern mountain Maidu as a current separate 
from the remainder of their basket making and without appreciable 
influence on it. It is an instance of a cultural “ complex” having 
been adoped entire and juxtaposed beside an existing one. 

In the foothills and perhaps in the valley districts of the north- 
western Maidu, seed beaters were often or prevailingly made in 
wicker ware—one of the rarest techniques in California. This form 
is closely paralleled by a Pomo one, and may therefore be ascribed 
also to the intervening Wintun. Except that the unusual degree to 
which the Pomo had developed all aspects of basketry gives them 
a probability of precedence, there is nothing to show which one of 
the three peoples originated this aberrant local type. 

The universal Californian tule mat was twined with string by the 
Maidu. The rushes employed were Scirpus lacustris and Typha lati- 
folia. The mats served as seats, beds, camp roofing, and doors. 

String was a two-strand twist of the bark of Asclepias or Apocy- 
num. Heavy cord was made by successively joining such twine in 
pairs, not by uniting three or more strands at a time. 

In the sloughs and stiller reaches of the streams in the valley 
seines could be employed. In the swift waters of the mountains the 
typical central California dip net was used: a- conical sack at- 
tached to an arc of stick bisected by the handle, which passed 
across the opening of the net. The shuttle was a pair of slender 


wy O 


BO20 °4-20-——28 


416 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY caunHars 


sticks lashed in the middle. One or several fingers served to meas- 
ure the width of the mesh. 

The net cap, which confined the men’s hair, was begun on a loop 
hung from an erect stick. A slender rod was slid through the last 
row of loops. Several stitches were followed, but most or all of these 
_ techniques were carried out with a single string knitted or looped on 
itself. 

The woven rabbit-skin blanket, most highly prized for bed cover- 
ing, but also worn on occasion, is common to California, the Great 
Basin, and the Southwest. The skins were cut into strips a half inch 
or more wide, which were left uncured. As these dried, they curled or 
twisted on themselves, leaving the soft hair side everywhere exposed. 
The strips were then knotted into a long furry line. This was wound 
back and forth between two stakes to form a vertical plane of hori- 
zontal warps. Into this the continuous double weft, two lines of the 
same material, was twined alternately up and down, and knitted to 
the outermost warp on each turn. The completed blanket was thick, 
soft, and warm, while the hide strips gave it great durability. 

In the Sacramento Valley water birds are more numerous than 
rabbits, and the blankets were usually of feathers. The manufacture 
was identical except that the more fragile bird skin was first twisted 
with a string. 

It is possible that similar blankets were made of close-woven cord. 
with feathers knotted in. The valley Maidu and Wintun appear to 
have used the technique, which has long since gone out of use, but 
are only known to have employed it for red woodpecker belts and 
ceremonial apparel. All their more modern pieces of this kind have 
the feathers glued to a deerskin, like the Yurok headbands. 

The carrying net of the Pomo and of the south was not used by 
the Maidu, but, besides the pack strap of skin, they possessed one of 
string which was woven and braided into a band where it passed 
over the forehead, but composed of half a dozen cords through the 
remainder of its length. The addition of cross strings would con- 
vert this “tump line” into a carrying net of Pomo type. The flat- 
ness of the band portion confirms the conclusion reached elsewhere 
that among the majority of the Maidu the women wore no caps. 


BOATS. 


The valley Maidu navigated on tule balsas, log rafts, or flat, square- 
ended dugout canoes. The use of all three types by one people is 
remarkable. It is perhaps to be ascribed to the fact that the employ- 
ment of boats was only sporadic, in the crossing of streams or hunt- 
ing of birds. In the foothills, streams are too rapid to be navigable. 


‘es 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA A417 


In the high valleys of the northern Sierra a canoe was occasionally 
serviceable. It was made of a fallen pine or cedar burned to suitable 
length, and hollowed with ignited pitch, which was checked with 
handfuls of damp earth. This dugout was rough and blunt ended. 
It was either poled or paddled. 


BOWS. 


The Maidu bow in its best form was made in the mountains of 
sinew-backed yew and traded to the valley. It is practically identi- 
eal with the bow of the Yurok, except for not attaining quite the 
same degree of breadth and thinness. The sinew was applied in 
small parallel shreds, each chewed entirely soft and dipped into a 
glue of salmon skin. The characteristic decoration was bands of 
triangles painted in a green mineral pigment imported from the 
north and used also by the northern Wintun. 

The best arrows had a foreshaft set into the main shaft of syringa, 
Philadelphus Lewisii, or rose bush, Rosa pisocarpa. If the fore- 
shaft was omitted, a “vestigial” wrapping of sinew marked the 
point where it might have been inserted. Straightening was done 
with the teeth. The perforated wooden straightener may have been 
known, but has not been reported. Grooved sandstones served for 
smoothing. The release is the “primary” one: thumb and index 
finger. The left hand held the bow nearly horizontally, the index 
finger crooking over the arrow. 

The quiver was the entire skin of a suitable animal, turned fur 
side in, with a strap from fore to hind legs passing over the wearer’s 
left arm. This appears to be the usual type of quiver in California. 
In fighting, rapidity of delivery was of course all important. The 
quiver then was merely a reservoir, and the arrows for immediate 
use were clamped under the arm. 

Arrow poison was sometimes made by teasing a rattlesnake into 
biting a deer liver. The septic effect of such a preparation is likely 
to have been much greater than the toxic, 


TOOLS. 


A skin-dressing tool is rarely mentioned in California and is 
seldom represented in museum collections. It is possible that 
a stone broken for the occasion often sufficed. The Maidu hafted a 
small chipped blade to the end, or both ends, of a wrapped stick; the 
tool was moved centripetally. The mountaineers frequently sub- 
stituted a deer ulna rubbed to an edge at one end. 

There is some reference to a roughly chipped ax, but its existence 
is doubtful in view of the Maidu being known to follow the common 
California custom of working lumber with horn wedges and fire. 


418 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


It is possible that small trees were occasionally hacked down with 
a hand-held flint or piece of trap. Larger trees were utilized only 
after they had fallen, and were burned into lengths. 

In the northeastern Maidu territory some ground and grooved 
ax heads have been found, but the natives disclaim their manufac- 
ture. The lucky finder of one might use it for its original purpose 
or asa weapon. These axes appear to represent an ancient sporadic 
infiltration from the east, and it is significant that they have not 
penetrated beyond the border Maidu. 

For knives and arrowheads the Maidu used obsidian obtained in 
trade, apparently from the north, and local flint and basaltlike stones. 
The latter material answered for a tolerable knife; a good arrow 
point was possible only in obsidian or flint. A flint mine in a cave 
at Table Mountain near Oroville was sacred. Offerings—beads or 
dried meat are specified—were thrown in; only as much material was 
carried away at each visit as could be detached at one blow; and the 
operator crawled out backward. 

Large blades of obsidian, single or double pointed, were probably 
not knives, as the local antiquarian usually assumes, but shamans’ 
paraphernalia. All the evidence from central California points to 
this use: the Maidu add that such pieces were worn hung from the 
neck. 

The Maidu fire drill is that of all California: a flattish hearth with 
cups near the edge and guide notches for the carbonized wood powder 
running out from the pits; the drill about a foot and a half in length, 
and rather less than half an inch in diameter. The buckeye, Aescu- 
lus californica, furnished the favorite material, and dried grass the 
tinder, both as among the Yana. There seems to have been no idea 
that the apparatus would operate better if drill and hearth were 
of different woods. 


PIPES. 


The Maidu pipe was normally of wood—apparently a short tube 
tapering somewhat to the mouth end—the generic Sierra type, as 
contrasted with the longer stemmed anid bulbous bowled form of the 
Pomo and their neighbors. The stone pipe was similar, though rarer, 
and mostly used in reigion—by shamans or the ceremonial clown. 
Sometimes a prehistoric specimen was discovered; if made by the 
Maidu themselves, the stone pipe was gouged through with an end 
of antler pounded by a stone. It is said that this drill was not 
rotated, but the use of sand in the bore seems to refute this assertion. 
Perhaps the statements as to the untwirled tool refer only to work 
in steatite, which cuts readily. 


— 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 419 

Tobacco was taken from the roofs of the earth-covered houses: 
it may have been planted there. The species used by the mountain 
Maidu was Vicotiana attenuata. 


MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. 


The flute is a straight tube of elder wood with four holes. It 
was blown for pleasure and in courtship. It is a curious fact that 
the only wind instrument capable of producing a tune appears 
among none of the American Indians to have been used ceremonially. 

The musical bow is a device definitely reported from the Maidu 
and Yokuts, but probably shared by these groups with a number of 
others. Among the Maidu it was sometimes an original hunting 
bow that was tapped or plucked for amusement, one end being held 
in the mouth. At other times the bow was made for the purpose, and 
was considered a shaman’s means of conversation with spirits. 

The Maidu used all three central Californian forms of the rattle. 
The shaman’s instrument was of Attacus cocoons containing gravel 
(Fig. 87). The split-stick rattle went with dances, especially of the 
{KKuksu organization. It was either quivered or beaten against the 
palm of the hand. The deer-hoof rattle was particularly associated 
with the girl’s adolescence ceremony, as is the case in the greater part 
of California, and was most prevalent with the northeastern Maidu 
among whom this ritual looms conspicuously. 


GAMES. 


Maidu games present several peculiarities. No form of the ring 
and pin game has ever been found, nor are dice known to the northern 
Maidu. The pole and hoop game is also unmentioned and, if it 
existed at all, must have had a scant development. Ball games dif- 
fered according to sex. Women used a stick to toss a double-ended 
“ball.” This consisted of two billets of wood or a pair of acorns 
on a string, a braided rope of hide, or a long bundle of bark. The 
game proceeded either like shinny, or took the form of a race be- 
tween two lines of women, each line trying to pass the ball to the 
goal faster than the row of opponents. The men’s ball game fol- 
lowed the latter plan, but the ball was of skin stuffed with deer 
hair and was kicked with the foot along a posted line of players. 
This method of play is a cross between the two usual Californian 
types of the game: shinny and the football race. Contests were be- 
tween villages, and in the valley took place principally at the con- 
clusion of the mourning ceremony in autumn, 

The guessing game employed the pair of marked and unmarked 
bones usual in all of central California. Perhaps its chief peculiarity 
was that each side started, in civilized fashion, with one-half of the 


[BULL. 78 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 


420 








“Ba Yes Le | i N 


dry 





es 


eo Pare 





ft 


By ek 





eae NW Aut 


if 


ive 


py 








Cc 





Maidu 3; 


b, 


okuts ; 


Y 


a, 


rattles. 
d, Yuki; f, Miwok. 


cocoon 


1lifornian 


€ 
« 


37,—Central C 


Fig, 


. 
> 


@e; YJ; Pomo 


C, 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 4921 


counters, whereas the usual California custom is to begin with a neutral 
pile. In the valley the game was for 8 counters, in the hills and moun- 
tains for either 10 or 16. The marked bone was called sw/u, the plain 
one hindukuw; but in guessing, the exclamations fep and we were used 
to refer to them. In general, the unmarked bone is guessed for, but 
there existed a great variety of cries and gestures indicative of the 
choice made. A pair of players shuflle the bones and thus offer 
four possible combinations. A doubly wrong guess loses two 
counters, a wholly correct one wins the play. If the guess is half 
correct, one counter is paid and the divined player surrenders his 
bones. ‘The next guess, on his partner’s shuffling, determines whether 
the two of them resume or whether they lose the play to their op- 


ponents. 
MONEY. 


The common currency was the Pomo disk bead, transmitted by the 
Wintun, and perhaps coming from the south also. The beads from 
the west were often traded unsmoothed, so that the Maidu performed 
much of their own money polishing, but the clamshells came to them 
broken and strung, not as wholly raw material. Baked magnesite 
cylinder beads also came from the west, but completely finished and 
very precious. Haliotis was another valuable obtained from the 
Wintun, but went into ear ornaments and necklace pendants, scarcely 
serving as currency. Dentalia, of unrecorded source, reached the 
Maidu occasionally. They are said to have been valued highly, 
but appear to have been too rare to be used as standard money. Their 
chief use is likely to have been in the northeastern mountains. 

The southern Maidu called the standard currency howok, olivella 
kolkol, haliotis tilo. The following are valuations of nearly 50 
years ago. 

Howok, 1,160 pieces, stringing to 80 feet, average thickness per bead a little 
less than a third of an inch, valued at $230, or 5 to a dollar. The largest beads, 
nearly an inch in diameter, 4 to a dollar. A string of 177 beads of smallest 
diameter, valued at $7, or 20 beads to the dollar. Kolkol, rated at a dollar 
a yard. A 1-inch magnesite cylinder from the Pomo, valued at $5. These 
native appraisals are very much higher than any reported from the Pomo or 
southern Californians; which fact seems to be due to Maidu remoteness from 


both sources of supply. The southern Wintun valuation of beads as given in 
Chapter 26 is also lower: about a fourth. 


CHapPrer 29. 
THE MAIDU: RELIGION AND KNOWLEDGE. 


Shamanism, 422; valley shamans, 422; hill shamans, 423; mountain shamans, 
425; special classes of shamans, 427; girls’ adolescence ceremony, 428; the 
mourning anniversary, 429; the Kuksu cult, 432; Kuksu spirits, 483; the 
Kkuksu dance cycle, 484; the several Kuksu dances, 485; first salmon ob- 
servance, 487; calendar, 437; the soul, 4839; the world, 440; local currents 
in Maidu culture, 441. 


SHAMANISM. 


The Maidu shaman operated on “ pains” or disease objects, but 
his power rested less on control of these than on his possession of 
guardian spirits. The “pain” is called omeya in the valley and 
7’u in the mountains. The spirits are named hakinz (kukina, gak’int), 
which is the same word as is applied to the ancient spirits or mythical 
divinities who are impersonated in the Kuksu ceremonials. The 
kakinéi acquired by the shaman may be animals, but more frequently 
are mountains, rocks, lakes, or waterfalls; that is to say, the spirits 
inhabiting such geographical features and known by the names of 
these. Among the northern Maidu the novice undergoes a period 
of instruction at the hands of older shamans; who, without being 
organized into a body, appear to be actuated by a spirit of profes- 
sional helpfulness. It should be stated, however, that the first com- 
munication with spirits is believed to be excessively and often se- 
riously distressing. The novice becomes very ill, and the older 
shamans’ activity may, in the native view, be as much a treatment 
of sickness as assistance extended to a prospective colleague. 


VALLEY SHAMANS. 


The valley Maidu of the Chico region describe the practice of their 
shamans in very much the same way as do the Yuki; from which 
fact it can be concluded that the central Wintun served as a connect- 
ing link. A man who is out alone, perhaps a hunter in the brush, 
suddenly has a vision and falls unconscious. During his trance a 
spirit instructs him. On awakening the future shaman bleeds, and 
on returning home he fasts. Sometimes the seizure occurs as a per- 
son is diving for fish or mussels, and he has to be drawn ashore. The 
spirit now keeps reappearing in dreams and the man falls ill. He 
is thoroughly secretive about his experience. In fact, it is not until 
old age that a shaman begins to tell much about his spirits. The 


422 


1 hod 


KROUBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 423 


older men, however, recognize his symptoms and treat him, singing 
by his side all night and toward morning dancing with him or hold- 
ing him up if he is too weak. The novice seems usually to be very 
feeble at this period and to bleed frequently at the mouth. The 
period of treatment is not known, but seems to endure for some time. 
The older doctors gradually test the young man by throwing into 
him, or inserting into his nose, magical objects called sila. If the 
‘candidate bleeds or can not extract the si/a he will not be a successful 
shaman. 

The “ pain” which is sucked out is described as usually feathered. 
It is powerful enough to cause the shaman to fall in a faint as soon 
as he gets it into his mouth. It is shown to the patient and then 
buried. | 

The valley Maidu also appear to have had a form of nonshaman- 
istic doctoring resembling the Kuksu treatment of the sick by the 
Yuki and Pomo. This was resorted to for repeated bad dreams. 
The patient was sung and danced over in the dance house. The chief, 
it is said, did the dancing, standing by the main post. It is likely 
that this “chief” was one of the headmen of the Kuksu organiza- 
tion. The account does not mention whether feather regalia were 
worn or definite spirits impersonated ; but the cocoon rattle was used. 
Verv high payment was demanded for this treatment. 


HILL SHAMANS, 


The hill Maidu make less mention of animals as guardians. Their 
shamans communicate with spirits as such. It would seem that these 
are sometimes the ghosts of kinsmen, since there is a distinct tendency 
for shamanism to be hereditary in this division, and there is prece- 
dent in northwestern California and among the Shasta for the idea 
that a future doctor has his first communication with the spiritual 
world through his ancestors. Another reminiscence of the customs 
prevalent to the north is the fact that female doctors are recognized 
by the hill Maidu, although their ability is usually less than that of 
men. ‘There is a period of preparation by means of dancing and 
singing in the dance house, apparently under the supervision of older 
shamans. At this time the novice gradually comes to be on terms of 
ereater friendship with his spirits, and many other visitors from the 
supernatural world are believed to attend. Those who are present 
hear them either uttering the cries of animals or speaking. 

The hill Maidu distinguish between doctors proper, that is, shamans who 
suck, called yomi, and others who merely dream and are known as nétdi. 
Of course sucking shamans also have dream power. They may therefore be 
regarded as a class which has attained to higher faculties than the dreamers. 


This distinction between the clairvoyant and the curing shaman seems to exist 
aimong all of the Maidu, as in fact through most of northern California, 


424 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The dreaming shamans hold assemblies in the dance house during the winter 
months. Formal invitations are sent out by means of knotted strings, and 
a feast is offered for a day or two before. At night the fire is smothered with 
ashes until the house is perfectly dark. After the dream doctor has sung for 
a while and beaten the main post with his cocoon rattle, the spirits begin to 
arrive. The doctor asks them questions and answers them by ventriloquism. 
The clown of the Kuksu organization is present and mimics the proceedings. 
In spite of the awe inspired by what is going on, laughter at the clown’s 
apings is in place. A part of such meetings is the singing of certain songs to 
which the bottoms of large baskets are rhythmically beaten. 


The pains sucked out are very various, according to hill Maidu 
belief: bits of wood, stone, or manufactured objects, bones or teeth, 
insects and worms of various kinds, and the like. They are ex- 
hibited—if animals, always still alive—and then buried. 

The shamans’ pipe is also considerably used. Smoke is blown on 
the patient while orders are given. to what resides in him to depart. 
This treatment seems to be particularly favored for headache. It 
is not known whether the doctor ever attempts to suck through his 
pipe. 

The hill Maidu doctors held public competitions, very much like 
those of the Yokuts, and somewhat similar to the contests in which 
the Yuki hulk’tlal members engage. They gather in the dance house 
from long distances. Each doctor, having previously fasted and 
prepared, dances for himself. The clown is the leader of the dance. 
Any touching of a competitor, either with the body or with a held 
object, is debarred. Power is exerted by a supernatural shooting or 
transmission. The hands are held against the breast and then thrown 
forcibly forward as if warding off or sending out mysterious influ- 
ences. After a time the weaker contestants begin to be taken with 
seizures and pains, some bleeding from the nose, some rolling on the 
floor. Others follow, and such as have recovered from the first 
shock busy themselves sucking out the cause of the later victims’ suc- 
cumbing. As the number of competitors decreases and the survivors 
are those of the intensest power, the excitement and the imaginative 
faculties of the audience as well as participants increase. [flames 
and light are seen about the few who are still contending, and they, 
to demonstrate their strength, cause lizards or mice to appear and 
disappear. Finally the contest narrows to a pair, and when one of 
these yields the lone survivor is victor of the occasion. It is said 
that women have been known to win, although as a rule their milder 
powers cause them to be among the first to be taken ill. ; 

It is evident that the minds of the contestants must be strangely 
affected. Whatever legerdemain they may consciously avail them- 
selves of, there is no question that they beleve in the power of their 
rivals, A man might pretend to supernatural powers which he was 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 495 


aware he did not possess, but would scarcely deceive consciously for 
the purpose of exhibiting his inferiority. 

The ceremony concluded, all go out and bathe carefully, then re- 
turn to purify themselves still further by smoking. The clown, who 
appears to be no contestant, but who has stood in the thick of the 
battle, is specially treated to free him from any remaining influ- 
ences. 

This description applies to the northwestern hill Maidu. The southern Maidu 
held similar competitions; the northern Miwok did not. Shamans’ contests, 


however, reappear among the Yokuts, and, perhaps in simpler form, among 
the southern Wintun. 


MOUNTAIN SHAMANS. 


Among the northern Maidu of the mountains the hereditary prin- 
ciple appears still more strongly. It is said that all the children of 
a shaman invariably follow in his footsteps, death resulting if they 
refuse to accept his spirits. This is, however, native theory and not 
practice; for inasmuch as this Maidu division also recognizes shamans 
whose parents have not been doctors—in fact declare that any man 
who wishes can acquire spirits—it follows that if the theory were 
lived up to, the entire population would long since have become 
shamans. Women doctors are of some importance, particularly 
in the Big Meadows region where contact with the Achomawi and 
Atsugewi has been intimate. 

A hereditary shaman acquires his parent’s spirits only after the 
latter’s death. In this way the identical spirits remain in a line of 
descent for generations. Dreaming of them makes the novice ill, and 
with his sickness his dreams increase, the spirits thronging about 
him and worrying him with their talk and songs. The spirits at 
first are violent and angry, and it is only gradually, through the ef- 
torts of older doctors who are called in, that their aggressiveness 
and hatred begin to disappear and they become friendly with their 
new owner, or rather associate. He makes them presents of beads 
and of feathered wands. The process usually requires a whole 
winter, the novice, who seems not only genuinely ill but thoroughly 
frightened, being treated and danced with by the older doctors in 
proportion as his spirits are numerous and powerful. Often the 
attendant shamans have to call on their own spirits to hold those of 
the newcomer that are trying to do him harm. During the dance 
the novice sings the songs that his spirits have already revealed to 
him, striking the main post of the house with his rattle. Sometimes 
the spirits reach down from the smoke hole and carry the rattle up 
on the roof, where it can be heard pounding. 

If the spirits are those of animals, these animals are never eaten 
or killed by the shaman. More usually, however, they are inhabitants 


426 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 


of topographical features in the vicinity; and in their treatment of 
the novice the older shamans begin by calling upon all the rocks and 
lakes which are known to harbor spirits. 

After the night dancing has gone on for some time, the novice’s 
ears are pierced. After this he resorts to haunted mountains or 
ponds to spend the night. If possible he bathes, losing consciousness 
in the water. He awakens on the shore, then walks and sings for 
hours about a fire. When he finally sleeps, he once more hears the 
spirits thronged about him. In the morning, after another swim, 
he hears the spirits talking in other places, and then for two or three 
days follows them about the country, lured on by their voices and 
totally refraining from food. 

There is a discrepancy here. The above is the procedure said to 
be followed by hereditary shamans after they have had their first 
dreams at home and have begun to be trained. Their purpose is 
said to be the acquisition of spirits additional to those which their 
father had. Men who are not doctors by heredity, on the other hand, 
are stated to seek the lonely places deliberately, obtaining the good 
will of the spirits there by gifts, and then to return home to dream 
further, or at least to undergo the course of training which has been 


described. 


The shaman’s paraphernalia are not destroyed at his death among the north- 
eastern Maidu, but are carefully preserved for his children. Should they be 
too young at the time, their mother or some other relative maintains the knowl- 
edge of their hiding place. These paraphernalia include certain objects called 
yompa (hill dialect yomepa) which apparently are made by the shaman out of 
feathers and other objects. Similar devices are employed by the Achomawi. 
These charms are used to kill. Singing a certain song, the doctor points the 
yompa at his victim, who is thereupon entered by a part of the object. The 
sila or killing objects of the valley Maidu are also known here. These are 
thrown into people. 

The pains which the mountain Maidu believe to cause death are minute, 
animate, and more or less movable. Many are sharp, others have the shape of 
insects or tiny reptiles. If they are sucked out by a benevolent doctor, they name 
the shaman who sent them and then die. The extractor causes them to dis- 
appear by rubbing between his hands or buries them. If on the other hand the 
pain can not be extracted, it flies back, after death has ensued, to the doctor who 
sent it, returning to a place appointed by him. He has instructed one or more 
of his spirits to attend this place. They hold the returned pain, and after the 
wizard has addressed it soothingly and asked it not to harm him, he suddenly 
seizes it, nestles it into feathers, and hides it away. It is not clear whether it 
is believed that evil shamans find these pains or whether they frequent the 
mountains in order to manufacture them. At any rate, pains as well as spirits 
address their controlling shaman as father. 


Tt is clear that two currents of thought have influenced the sha- 
manism of the mountain Maidu. The concepts of female shamans; of 
dreaming of ancestors; of the inheritance of spirits; of acquiring 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 427 


them in lonely outdoor places, particularly lakes; and of the inde- 
pendent power of motion of the pains, are characteristic of the tribes 
of northeastern and northwestern California. The other traits of 
the shamanism of the mountain people possess a distinctively Maidu 
or central Californian aspect. 


SPECIAL CLASSES OF SHAMANS. 


Rain doctors or weather shamans are mentioned among the Maidu, 
but little is known of them. This was a profession more important 
in southern and central California than in the north, and the Maidu 
appear to be near the limit of its diffusion. 

The valley Maidu had rattlesnake doctors whose particular gift 
was the treatment of snake bites, and who conducted public perform- 
ances, possibly somewhat along the lines of the great rattlesnake cere- 
mony of the Yokuts. For the southern Maidu a A’auda dance or rite 
is reported, held in spring to prevent snake bites during the year. 
Certain men were paid for their services in this connection, but the 
account leaves it obscure whether they were shamans or Kuksu di- 
rectors. 

The grizzly bear shamans clawed out their victim’s eyes and then 
dispatched him. If encountered in their enterprise, they might offer 
a heavy reward for the preservation of their secret. This would 
indicate that they attacked those whom they bore a personal grudge, 
much as a witch might try to poison an enemy. The general basis of 
this belief is clearly the world-wide werewolf idea; its peculiarly 
north central Californian flavor hes in the fact, already mentioned 
in another connection, that, magically endowed as the bear shaman 
must be, he does not turn himself into the animal, but disguises him- 
self as one by physical apparatus. This is also the Miwok concep- 
tion. The Maidu and Pomo say that their bear doctors wore long 
strings of beads as armor within the animal skin: the Yuki explain 
the beads as intended for burial in case of a fatal mishap. The 
Maidu mention oak galls as being carried to produce a sound similar 
to that made by the mass of the bear’s entrails as he shuffles along. 
The Pomo speak of baskets half filled with water for the same pur- 
pose. The very detail of all the accounts renders them almost in- 
credible; and complete bear doctors’ suits modeled for museums do 
not dispel doubts because they may only prove the belief in bear 
shamans, rather than the reality of the practices. Perhaps it is possi- 
ble to compromise on the interpretation that there were men con- 
trolled by an emotion that made them find satisfaction in reproducing 
the animal as closely as possible in their persons, and hoping or im- 
agining a power over their foes. But that they actually exercised 
their murderous inclinations while in the disguise passes comprehen- 
sion. 


AI8 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Another interpretation is that the bear shamans as here described 
have been fused in native imagination with grizzly bear impersona- 
tors in the Kuksu cult, or that white reporters have failed to dis- 
tinguish them. 


GIRLS’ ADOLESCENCE CEREMONY. 


The Maidu nicely illustrate the universal Californian law that the 
elaborateness of adolescence rites for girls stands in inverse ratio to 
the general development of culture. 


The northern valley people called the ceremony dong-kato or yupt-kato; and 
apart from the restrictions which the girl herself underwent, the ritual con- 
sisted only of singing for about five nights. There was no dance. The nightly 
songs, in which men as well as women participated, began in the living house 
with what was called the grasshopper song and concluded in the morning with 
a song from the top of the roof with the words: “‘ The dawn begins to show 
on manzanita hill.” The girl remained covered the whole time and, except while 
the singing was in progress, secluded herself in a separate hut. At the conclu- 
sion of the period of singing a feast was given, and custom exacted that the 
parents must give away anything they were asked for. 

In the hills a dance called wulu accompanies the singing. The girl was 
painted with five vertical lines on each cheek, one of which was erased each 
morning. - With a companion, both having their heads covered, she was stood 
in a ring of pine needles which was set on fire and the girls told to escape from 
it. After this she was washed by women in a sand pit like that used for leach- 
ing acorns. The wulu dance commenced after dark. Men looked on and women 
took part. They stood in a cirele holding hands. They wore no ornaments. 
In the center of the ring were several old women, who swung their arms— 
in which they held a skin, a string of beads, or something similar—alternately 
up to the right and left, while the circle of younger women and girls, revolving 
either Way, swung their clasped hands in and out to the Same rhythm. After a 
number of hours the dance might cease, but old women continued singing. 

In the mountains, both men and women danced, and the ceremony lasted 10 days 
and was repeated in full a month later. People were summoned from a distance 
by smoke signals lighted in the hills by the girl and her mother. She carried 
a deer-hoof rattle during the entire 10 days. Each morning and evening she 
brought in firewood, and at intervals trained herself for the future, as it were, 
by carrying and depositing logs and heavy pieces of wood. The first four and 
last four nights of the ten were spent in dancing: the middle two constituted an 
interval of rest, marked only on the following morning by the piercing of the 
girl’s ears by her mother with an awl of cedar wood. The dancing was outdoors, 
men and women holding hands about the fire. At other times they formed a 
line looking eastward over the sitting singers and the fire. In either case the 
girl danced with them, yielding her rattle to one of the singers. At dawn the 
songs were concluded, the rattle was thrown to the girl, she caught it and ran off 
at top speed. General license was not only tolerated but almost obligatory dur- 
ing each night of the dance. 

On the morning following the tenth night came the wiulu, which was danced 
as in the hills and by women only, the girl, however, joining with the dancers 
in this region. The women now used clap-stick rattles. Toward noon the 
dance ceased, the girl with a number of companions bathed, and then ran 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 429 


them a race back to the house. The remainder of the day was spent in games 
and feasting. 

The customs of the southern Maidu are not known. 

Much the same restrictions were imposed on the girl among all 
divisions. ‘They were of the type customary in California. She ate 
as little as possible, was permitted neither meat nor fish, might not 
scratch herself except with sticks or bones provided for the purpose, 
and so far as possible was kept covered up so that she might not 
look about. 


THE MOURNING ANNIVERSARY. 


The Maidu are the first tribe of those considered to this point who 
practiced a great annual mourning ceremony in honor of the dead. 
This rite was made among all the tribes of the Sierra Nevada and 
throughout southern California. It was not practiced by the Ach- 
omawi, the Yana, or any of the Wintun divisions. The Maidu there- 
fore represent its northernmost extension. There is little doubt that 
the origin of the ceremony, in many respects the most outstanding 
religious practice of the tribes in at least half of California, lay con- 
siderably to the south of the Maidu, most likely in southern Cali- 
fornia. Its general distribution is much the same as that of the 
toloache cult, but slightly more extensive. It is possible that 
the two worships had a connected source; but it is only in southern 
California that they are brought into relation, although even there 
it is but slight. It is conceivable that the only factor that prevented 
the spread of the toloache religion to the northernmost groups which 
made the mourning ceremony, the Miwok and Maidu, was the absence 
of the toloache plant from their territory. This conjecture could 
be accepted as practically certain if it were known that the toloache 
cult was more ancient than the Kuksu religion. If, however, the 
latter worship existed first in central California, its presence might 
well have been sufficient to keep out the rival toloache ritual; whereas 
the mourning anniversary might have been accepted as a nonconflict- 
ing addition. 

In any event there appears to be no connection or association of 
any kind between the mourning anniversary and the Kuksu religion 
among the Maidu. , 

The mourning anniversary is best known from the hill Maidu, 
who call it zstw. In English it is usually known as “burning” or 
“ery.” It was held in early autumn, about September or October, 
often on the cemetery site or near it. Since the confusion of the 
burning offered favorable opportunities for successful attack by 
foes, a clear rising ground was usually chosen, in which, moreover, 
the soil was soft enough for interments. 


430 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [puLL. 78 


On this burning ground was erected an open inclosure up to 50 
or 100 hundred feet in diameter and consisting of a brush fence a 
yard or two high, following the line of a circle of earth that had 
been heaped up a few inches. There was always an entrance to the 
west, and often one to the east also. This simple structure is cer- 
tainly derived from a southern source. It is the only ceremonial 
edifice of the southern California Indians. North of Tehachapi it 
is made chiefly or only for the mourning anniversary, but appar- 
ently is invariable for that rite. This circumstance alone would be 
sufficient to differentiate the mourning very fundamentally from the 
Kuksu religion, which is so intimately associated with the large 
semisubterranean dance house. 

Each community, whether consisting of one or several settlements, 
appears to have had only one dstw ground, which was used by suc- 
cessive generations. It was in charge of a director, the relation of 
whose status to that of the chief and the shamans is not wholly clear. 

This director issued mourning necklaces on receipt of payment 
from a member of the family of each dead person. The family then 
participated in several of the annual rites and at the fifth one re- 
deemed its payment by return of the string, which was then burned by 
the director. The necklace consisted of a string on which beads were 
arranged in a certain recurring order of ones, twos, or threes, a cer- 
tain pattern being traditionally fixed for each community or burn- 
ing ground. Should a death occur within the five years, the same 
necklace was worn for a new period of five years. Poor people who 
could make no payment are said sometimes to have received property 
instead of giving it; but they made repayment upon the return of the 
necklace. It will be seen that no one made any profit in either form 
of the transaction. 

According to other statements, the mourners themselves issued 
necklaces or strings to their friends as invitations. The guest paid, 
and attended all wstw in which his host participated until the latter 
redeemed and burned the string. Somehow this version seems more 
consonant with the spirit of the California Indian. 

Actual notification was sent to other villages by means of strings 
with knots, of which one was untied each day. The home commu- 
nity, of course, entertained everyone. 

The course of the rite was as follows: 

On the first evening the actual mourners visit the burning ground 
about sunset, cry for a time, and sprinkle meal on the graves. 

On the next day the inclosure is repaired and put in order and 
poles 15, 20, or more feet long are prepared for the offerings that are 
to be burned. A vast accumulation of valuables of all sorts has long 
been made for this occasion. A widow, for instance, especially on 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 431 


her first burning, is likely to have spent her whole time since her 
husband’s death in the manufacture of baskets that are to be con- 
sumed. Each family prepares its own poles, which in the evening 
are planted to the north and south of the fire, in sets of about half 
a dozen. So far as possible each pole is strung from top to near the 
ground with objects of one kind. Larger articles and quantities of 
food are piled at the base of the poles. The fire is then lighted by 
an old man. A period of bargaining often follows, objects that are 
to be consumed being exchanged or even sold. When this confusion 
has quieted down, the director delivers an oration of the customary 
Californian kind, carefully instructing the people in what they per- 
fectly well know how to do. Thereupon wailing, crying, and singing 
begin, to continue throughout the night. Exclamations of pity for 
the dead are constantly uttered and bits of food or other small ob- 
jects are from time to time thrown on the fire. Each group of 
mourners seems to think of its own dead and to sing its own songs 
independently of the others. It is the occasion that is joint, and there 
is nothing in the nature of communal acts. 

About the first signs of dawn the poles are lifted down and the 
objects stripped from them and thrown into the fire. The old people 
sway and wail with redoubled vigor, and intense excitement is shown 
by all. Often the offerings smother the fire, which must be given 
respite to flare up anew. The mourners beat their heads and blow 
out hard. As it begins to be light, and the last of the goods are 
being burned, the climax of grief is reached, and old women have 
to be restrained from throwing themselves into the fire. 

The alleged purpose of the ceremony is to supply the dead. 
The amount of property destroyed must have been immense by 
aboriginal standards. As late as 1901, 150 poles of baskets, Amer- 
ican clothing, and the like, were consumed at a single Maidu burning. 

When the fire has finally died down the participants are almost 
prostrated with fatigue and reaction. After a short rest the director 
orates again, instructing the people to eat, gamble, and make merry, 
which they proceed to do for a day or more. Such an aftermath 
of celebration is a regular part of the ceremony everywhere in Cali- 
fornia. 

While the rite has here been called an anniversary, it will be seen 
that it is more accurately an annual ceremony among the hill Maidu. 
Custom varies locally through California between the two forms. 
On the whole the precise anniversary is the type that prevails where 
the ceremony is made rather for distinguished individuals than for 
all of the dead of the year; which is as might be expected. 

On occasion the Maidu ceremony is made more elaborate by the 
introduction of images of the dead. These, of course, are con- 


3625°—25——29 





432 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY IBULL. 78 


structed chiefly for persons of note. They are made of stuffed wild- 
eat skins richly decorated with valuable dance regalia and made up 
to resemble as nearly as possible the human figure. They are set 
up on stakes near one of the entrances to the inclosure and during 
the night are occasionally “fed.” ‘Toward the end of the burning 
the figures are walked toward the fire, as if they were alive, and 
thrown into the flames. The images are known as kakini biisdi, 
“the spirit is within,” and are regarded as actually containing the 
ghost of the dead person. The Maidu state that an insult offered one 
of these figures was deadly, and that even an accidental offense 
against one was heavily atoned for. It is not impossible that a senti- 
ment prevailed which looked upon injury or revilement of the image 
as a specially favorable opportunity for the expression of deep- 
seated hatred; such emotions are characteristic of the California 
Indians. 


In the northern valley the ceremony ran along similar lines as in the hills, 
but from what little is known of it—its practice having been discontinued for 
many years—it was considerably different in details. It is said, for instance, 
that for a man the mourning necklace was made by his brother and given to 
his widow or a near female relative. At the anniversary he received the 
string back and paid the wearer, who did not burn or destroy the money thus 
received. This looks almost like a payment for the wearing of the necklace, and 
not at all like an invitation or badge of participation. It is also said that the 
valley Maidu held a circular dance without definite regalia in the dance 
house on the night following the burning, and before the gambling and merry- 
making. . 

The northeastern burning was simpler than that of the foothills. Here the 
ceremony was made, at irregular intervals, for two successive years, beginning 
about a year after the death of a person of prominence, to whom it directly 
referred. The same inclosure was used as in the hill region and the general 
procedure was similar, except that the number of offering poles is likely to 
have been much less among the poorer people. Images are also said not to have 
been used. On the whole it appears that the rite did not exercise the minds of 
the mountain people very much. 

For the southern Maidu information is, as usual, scant, which is doubly to be 
regretted, since the practice of the valley and the mountains in the region are 
almost certain to have differed considerably. The ceremony is said to have 
been comparatively simple, but in view of its holding an important position 
among the Miwok and Yokuts to the south, this statement must be taken as 
implying a difference of ritual from the northern Maidu rather than a notably 
minor significance. It does appear, however, that the southern Maidu agreed 
with the northern mountain Maidu in making the ceremony irregularly for 
their notables rather than annually for every one. They used images. The 
American name for the rite in this section, as among the Miwok, is “ cry.” 


THE KUKSU CULT. 


The Maidu form of the Kuksu religion is the best known of any. 
Its general features having been already presented in the comparative 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 4338 


discussion of the cult in a foregoing chapter on the Wintun, it re- 
mains only to indicate the tribal individualization. 


KUKSU SPIRITS. 


The deities enacted by the northwestern Maidu of the valley are 
listed in Table 3. This enumeration is either exhaustive or nearly 
so, and appears to apply, with some changes, especially in the names 
of the spirits, to the valley Patwin as well as the Maidu. 


TABLE 3.—Marpvu Sprrir IMPpERSONATIONS. 





Apparel. Notes. 




















Character. | Ceremonies. | 

PACES alata ticharals os Hesi, Duck, Aki | Complete feather cloak.., Highest in rank. 

he ROR atte Ay Pie agen se ae ago a | Kawe headdress; bow...| Second highest. No 
songs for. Cry: 

wuhu. 

Se argh ie meses ib pny il Boia Kawe headdress. ........ Not led by mest. 
Cry: sohe. 

BER eee tele ey a] ee as Pam ip Fe aN ae yes ah Rae 5 OR GES fa No mest. Cry: haho. 

RR Se iieare Salers aint "Eh ee et ih Sony bees. 1 RR eta aes No mesi. Cry: wuhur. 

PERM certs eon b as Reet Se ier 8 item Coren Te aie PE Cry: wuhut. 

Yiiyinang-wetu..|..... US pal ne one iy te gs wegen ea ante 

Alea th "6 rete phn aE aes OWE. Ue ober Big-head headdress. . . - - The kuksu of other 
tribes. 

AA Soren sata Sap gape aes Sys reas tes Woodpecker-scalp head- | Represents woman. 

dress band. 

SoS eae e A Ree A, PISO Otte ~ seca g athe Laya feather mask; net.) Thirdinrank. Runs 
race. 

ssh Bie i Ay ea os Cap tece heme A ah Grass mask; net........ 

WeGUaee erect es cra. wt = - ily ete od areca Net cap; plastering of 

mud. 
A) UR a SAS aed. Hest, Coyote.....- Sikli feather cape; 
coyote head. 

Happier. : Hest, Goose.......| Sikli feather cape... .-. 

Pano-nkakini....| Grizzly bear... .. - Bear skin; osa headdress.) Cry: wuk-wuk. 

Stimi-nkakini...| Deer.....-....5-- | Deer mask..............| 


a | | 





The J/oki is also called Wiita, which seems to be a Maidu equivalent of the 
more familiar Patwin term. 

There appear sometimes to have been two Moki in charge of a ceremony. 
This character differed from all other spirit impersonations in that it was not 
learned separately and that one did not pay for initiation but was selected for 
the honor and paid for refusal. 

The Yati or cloud spirit stands for a long time looking between his legs in 
the Hesi or Aki, He is approached with the payments due him by the Sili, 


43 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


who is covered, from the crown of his head down, by a plain net. The Sili, 
who is a spirit that is fond of chasing people, then pursues the Yati or the 
two race away from the dance house and back to it. The loser is thought to be 
in danger of his life. The Sili, when angered, throws coals of fire about him 
like the Pomo ash ghost. 

The typical ornament of the Dii Was an approximately diamond-shaped head- 
band solidly covered with the glistening scarlet scalps of woodpeckers and 
fringed with raven feathers. This object, woh-du in Maidu and tarat in 
Patwin, is the Sacramento Valley equivalent of the woodpecker scalp bands 
of the Yurok Jumping dance. 

The deer impersonators represented spirits called Wishdum-simi, “lift up 
the deer.” 

None of the spirits are mentioned by name in their presence, but are referred 
to merely as saltu or kakini. 


THE KUKSU DANCE CYCLE. 


Table 4 shows the dances of the northwestern valley Maidu, ar- 
ranged downward in time sequence from October to May, and with 
the horizontal position indicative of their respective sacredness. The 
rituals in the first three ranks are all “ pay dances” performed by 
spirits. Those in the two following columns are “common dances,” 
but those in the fourth, somewhat contradictorily, are said to have 
contained one spirit impersonation each. The essentially supple- 
mentary dances of the last rank are little known. The Loli, Luyi, 
and Avenu follow closely on the Hest. The Loli would seem to pre- 
suppose the //zwe, its male counterpart elsewhere, but this has not 
been reported from the Maidu. The 7Z’oto is Maidu, but its position 
is undetermined. It seems that these semiprofane dances were likely 
to be held at almost any time between or even within major cere- 
monies. Some of them seem to have been acts or exhibitions that 
might be hitched on to a major ceremony or given in its inter- 
missions. 

A lke irregularity evidently characterized even the more elaborate 
common dances, those in fifth position in Table 4, since every in- 
formant cites these in a different order. As regards the spirit dances, 
however, all authorities agree, so that it is obvious that these consti- 
tuted the unalterable framework of the yearly sequence, into which 
the common dances were fitted, with some idea of a proper place for 
each, indeed, but yet rather loosely according to the exigencies of the 
occasion. 

The classification of the dances in this table is substantiated by 
the number of spirits that might be represented in each, as deducible 
from the preceding table: es?, in the first rank, 14; Duck and Axi, 
in the second, 9 each; Grizzly bear and deer, third rank, 1 each; 
coyote and goose, fourth, 1 each; all others, none. 


KROBBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 435 


TABLE 4.—SEQUENCE OF MAtpU DANCES AND CEREMONIES, 
Hesi. 
Loli, Luyi, Kenu. 
Waima, duck. 
Salalu. 
Pano, grizzly bear. 

Oleli, coyote. 
Ota. 
Tsamyempi, creeper. 
Woiti. 
Yelimi (or Anosma, turtle). 

K’aima, goose? 
Aloli. 
Yok’ola. 
Weyo. 
Moloko, condor. - 

Siimi, deer. 

Kiikit, sitting. 
Ene, grasshopper. 
T’s’amba. 


THE SEVERAL KUKSU DANCES. 


The Hesi was performed substantially as it has been outlined for the Pat- 
win. The two groups seem to have attended each other’s ceremonies rather 
frequently. 

The Lol«i was for women only, a line or circle of whom held a long rope of 
swan or goose down. 

The Luyi was not instituted at the beginning of the world by the Creator, 
the Maidu say, but by a man who followed his dead wife to the ghosts’ dance 
house. This story as well as the facts that the usual feather ornaments were 
not worn, and that the performers, Men and women, danced standing in a 
circle, suggest that the ritual may be a production of the modern “ ghost 
dance’ movement, or made over by it. 

The duck dance, Waima-ng-kasi or Hatma-ng-kasi, is or can be visited by a 
variety of spirits, but possesses none peculiar to it. It comprises a dance made 
by men not representing spirits who shout hat, hat, hat, in imitation of ducks. 
A statement that the Waima-ng-kasi can at will be repeated later in the winter 
perhaps refers to this particular performance, rather than to the ceremony 
as a whole. 

The Salalu-ng-kasi is little known. Its place was early in the series. 

In the Pano-ng-kasi or Pano-ng-kamini, the grizzly bear dance, the Pano-ng- 
kakini or bear spirit impersonators imitated the actions as well as the ap- 
pearance of the animal. This, with the parallel deer impersonation, is the 
only spirit that does not enter the Hesi. Kach enactor had as assistant an initi- 
ate into the general society, who was his pupil and successor, and paid for the 
special instruction received. This tallies with Patwin and Pomo statements 
indicating that the right or ability to enact this impersonation is not part of 
membership in the society as such, but individually acquired or inherited; and 
may help to an understanding of the obscure status of bear shamans. 


436 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 


In the coyote dance the impersonator of this animal, or rather spirit, also 
mimicked it. Women danced in a part of this ceremony. 

The Oya is little known, but is in some way asociated with the coyote cere- 
mony. It is mentioned as having been influenced by the boli, or ghost dance 
movement. 

The Tsamyempi is named after the nuthatch or a similar small bird that 
circles or ‘‘ creeps” about tree trunks. After the house is darkened, a per- 
former slides spirally down the sacred main or rear house post, clasping’ this 
with his legs while his body hangs down. He and his mates wear curtains of 
down strings over the face. This disguise suggests an impersonation, but the 
Maidu refuse to recognize the Tsamvempi actor aS a spirit. While rated as 
“common,” the dance is, however, clearly one of consequence, as other inter- 
ludes, in which two men in raven feathers play hide and seek, reveal. Among 
the Pomo the essential features of the T’samyempi appear in a full four days’ 
ceremony, the Dama. The Miwok equivalent is the Akantoto, the Patwin un- 
known. 

No details are available on the Woiti. 

The turtle dance, called by its Patwinmame Anosma (or Akcholma) more fre- 
quently than by its native equivalent Yelimi, comprises a two-man performance 
mimetic of the fox, but how its tortoise symbolism is expressed remains obscure, 

A portion of this ritual is named Hela-ng-kasi or gambling dance, from 
the performers holding shredded tule and circling their arms like players. This 
name points to a connection with the Pomo Hela-hela, meaning unknown. 

The K’aima-ng-kasi is named after a large water bird, probably the goose or 
crane, It balances the coyote dance. The K’opa who appears is reckoned as 
a spirit. A relation to the Yuki Kop-wok—kop, kopa, is “feathers” in that 
tongue—can not be pressed beyond the bounds of conjecture. 

The Aloli and Yovk’ola are associated or come in succession. Perhaps they 
are only parts of one ritual. In the former there is a curious act performed 
by two men and two women, who in turn sway a cradle containing a make-be- 
lieve baby while swinging a pair of feather ropes suspended from the ceiling. 
In the latter a fringe, similar to that of the 7samyempi but longer, is worn, and 
some informants connect the two dances. 

The Weyo is disputed as a true dance. The name may possibly refer to the 
skunk. 

The Moloko or condor dance is very little known. The bird is the object of 
much regard by all the California Indians. 5 

With the Sitimi or deer dance, about March, the ascending order of major 
ceremonies is well on its concluding way. The impersonators wear deer heads, 
but appear to represent spirits associated with the deer and not the animals 
themselves. Other dancers spot their bodies black and white to resemble fawns, 

The K’iikit or “sitting,” the Hne or “ grasshopper,” and the 7’samba dances 
are undescribed. The first two are associated. 

With the Aki, in April or when the leaves come out, the last of the great 
ceremonies, barring the repetition of the Hesi, is reached. This ritual can 
hardly but have had equivalents among other groups, but its name defies transla- 
tion in Maidu and does not recur elsewhere. In the Aki occurs a sort of trapeze 
exhibition, in which a personage called Lali, wearing the woodpecker scalp head- 
dress of the Di spirit, swings by his feet from a roof beam, ‘To this there is a 
parallel in the Pomo Dama. 


KROEBER} HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 437 


The cycle thus outlined is that followed by the northwestern Maidu 
of the valley. The series of the foothill people is less known, prob- 
ably because there was much less of it. The northeastern people 
of the mountains are said to have borrowed some of the dances, or 
elements of them, from the lowlanders; but as they possessed no 
secret society, so far as is known, these importations, whether old or 
recent, must have remained unorganized fragments in their hands. 

On the southern Maidu, information fails us, but those of the 
valley about Sacramento may be conjectured to have adhered fairly 
closely to the practices of the northwesterners of the vicinity of 
Chico, with some approximation to Miwok rituals; while the upland 
villages perhaps again followed them to the extent of an abbreviation. 

It should be added that the Maidu, like the Patwin, make use of 
a number of ritualistic circumlocutions or sacred words in Kuksu 
songs and orations. © 


FIRST SALMON OBSERVANCE. 


Like many of the northern Californians, the Maidu, at least in 
the northwestern foothills, had a first salmon observance. It was 
hardly elaborate enough to be named a ceremony. <A shaman caught 
the first fish of the season, cooked it on the spot, and gave morsels to 
all in the village. This threw fishing open for the year. There may 
have been more of the rite than has been recorded, but it must have 
been a simple affair in comparison with the momentous ceremonies 
of the Yurok and Karok. It would be interesting to know whether 
the “shaman” acted in virtue of his actual shamanism—that is, 
supernatural power over the spirits individually acquired by him- 
self—or because he also happened to have been taught the requisite 
prayer and rite. 


CALENDAR. 


The Maidu calendar recognizes 12 lunations with more or less de- 
scriptive epithets. It opens in spring, appears to contain no clear 
reference to the solstices, and to possess no fixed points. There is no 
mention of a device for correction, and it may be presumed that the 
Maidu dispensed with any, leaving a lunation unnamed whenever 
their moons ran too far ahead of the year as determined by seasonal 
events. 


438 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 


TABLE 5.—NoORTHERN Martpu CALENDAR. 











Month. Valley reckoning. Foothill reckoning. 

Maryehieseeeeueses Shawl, Doe KONO ris KONO | itm mews 
flowers. | 

ADruless S0foe se 3 Laila; grass att. ee Win-uti (“black 

oaks tassel’’). | 

May: 20: seer Kon-moko;seeds, fish, | Tem-diyoko; fawns. 
geese; esi. 

June: se oe Neng-kaukat (‘‘big | Nem-diyoko (‘“‘big 
summer’’). month’’?). 

Jilyisers ene ees Buri; teutokrylse?2 20- Kaui-tson (‘‘ground 

burn’’). 

ATUSUSt ee | Tem-simi; acorns | Eslakum (‘m iL. 
ripen. dle”’’). 

September..-...-- Kum-menim She- | Mat-meni (‘‘acorn- 
meni; acorns gath- bread’’). 
ered. 

October: eh fts-2 Shahwodo; acorns |} Bapaboka.........- 
cached; Hesv. | 

November. .....| Yapakto; winter di- | Bo-lye (“trail 
vided. oa 

December: . . . :.|;Omhincholi; ‘ice lasts | Sap2iot-. . 2h scr ae - 
all day. | 

January... :-:.), Yeponi (ceremonial | Into i. 128 2. fae 
initiate’) or Bom- 
pene (‘‘two trails’’). 

February ....-..| Kaka-kano; pattering | Omi-hintsuli 
showers. (“squint rock’’). 











* 

















[BULL. 78 


Mountain reckoning. 


Bom-tetno (“trail 
sit along”’). 


Kono. 


Kiilokbepine (‘‘old 
women ——?’’). 


Se-meni (‘‘seed”’). 


Tem-tsampauto 
(‘smal tame 
freeze’’). 


Tetem-tsampauta 
CMLaAro G. ative 
freeze’’). 


Kanaipino (‘‘under 
burn’’). 


Bom-hintsuli (“trail 
squint’). 


Bo-ekmen = _ (“‘trail 
breaks open’’). 


It seems that the mountain people actually counted only nine 
moons, leaving those of summer nameless. It is clear that the reck- 
oning in valley, hills, and mountains has diverged, names originally 
descriptive having become crystallized rather arbitrarily as regards 


season. 


This appears from the fact that month names containing 


the same element appear in the three regions not only at diverse times 
of the year but in variable order. Thus: 








Kono, kon-— 


Nem-, neng-, “‘large”’ 


Tem-, ‘‘small?”. . 


Se-meni, ‘‘seed ” 


-hintsuli, ‘‘squint”’. 


Bo-, bom-, ‘‘trail”’ 


Valley. Hills 

SORE OR ee May 281425) AL) March. ... 
Fem on ores JUNOsee hice ere de a 
Eafe ee AUPUSte Mote Dee ve yee 
ie hte ee = See Peplem ber Ie... cele eee 
dtd hae December........| February. 
Bn eee he) January......--..| November 








: Mountains. 





April. 


October. 
September. 


ER IAS January. 
January, 
February, 


March. 








KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 439 


The valley people divide their calendar into halves, from Shaw? 
to Temsini and from Kummenim to HKakakano. Whether these 
divisions refer merely to summer and winter, or whether they 
represent an attempt to note the equinoxes, is not clear. The two 
periods are not the dance season and quiet season of the Kuksu cult. 

On the whole, a more distinctly unastronomical calendar than that 
of the Maidu can hardly be imagined. 

Four seasons were recognized by the Maidu, counted as com- 
mencing with the first appearance of the phenomena referred to. 
Two lists from the northwestern foothills corroborate each other, 
and run in the spirit of the month calendar. 

Spring: Yo-meni, flowers. 

Summer: AKaukati, earth, dust, or thilaki, dry. 
Autumn: Se-meni, seeds, or mat-ment, acorn bread. 
Winter: Ko-meni, snow. 


In line with this series is a set of four seasonal festivals or weda 
mentioned by the hill Maidu: the Hoktom, an open-air affair in 
spring; the /lakwm in the dry season, about July; the Ushtwu or 
Ushtimo around September (this is the “burning” or mourning 
anniversary) ; and the Yakai near Christmas. 

The mountain Maidu know the Milky Way as “morning star’s 
path ”; the Pleiades as dotodoto; Ursa Major is “ looking around”; 
Job’s Coffin is hemuimu, perhaps from the word for roasting. The 
rainbow is associated obscenely with the coyote, as by the Yurok. 


THE SOUL. 


What we call the soul, the Maidu named heart. ‘“ His heart is 
gone away ” means that a person is dead. In a swoon or in a dream 
a person’s heart leaves his body. Sickness, however, is due not to 
the departure or attempted departure of the soul, but to the presence 
in the body of a “ pain” or disease object. 

The northern valley people believe that a dead person’s heart 
lingers near the body for several days. It then journeys to every 
spot which the living person had visited, retracing each of his steps 
and reenacting every deed performed in hfe. This accomplished, 
the spirit seeks a mysterious cavern in the Marysville Buttes, the 
great spirit mountain of the Maidu, where for the first time it eats 
spirit food and is washed. Its experiences here are a repetition of 
those of the first man of mythology. From the Marysville Buttes 
the spirit ascends to the sky land, flower land, or spirit land, as it 
is variously called. 

The hill residents tell of the same journey traveled by their dead. 
But these reach the abounding sky land—“ valley above” is an 
equivalent rendering—by going east along the path of the sun, 


440 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY {BuLL. 78 


instead of to the Marysville Buttes. The Milky Way is also pointed 
out as the road of the spirits. Its fork is the parting of the ways 
for those going to the good or the bad land in the sky according 
to their life on earth; but it is far from certain that this idea of 
reward is aboriginal. We may be confronted here by a ghost dance 
idea. | | 

The mountain people also make their dead wont to linger for a 
time, particularly those attached to their family. But they de- 
scribe them as careful not to look on their relatives, for, as among 
all the Maidu, the glance of a ghost, or sight of it, is fatal. The 
retraveling of the earthly course is not mentioned by the mountain 
Maidu. Like the hill people, they believe that their ghosts go east- 
ward and lve with the Creator. Once a ghost’s face has been 
washed on its way, it is a spirit forever. Those few who are merely 
in a trance and are to return to life are not washed at the entrance 
to spirit land. 


THE WORLD. 


The earth was believed to be round and surrounded by water. 
In fact it floated on this sea, held by five ropes that had been 
stretched by the Creator. A shaking of these ropes made earth- 
quakes. This concept of the tying of the world reappears hundreds 
of miles to the south among the Luisefio. The ropes of which the 
mountain Maidu tell reach in our cardinal directions and to the 
northwest, which by them is also reckoned a direction. 

This insistence on five as the ritualistic number is another instance 
of the influence which the tribes of extreme northern California 
have exerted on the northeastern Maidu through the medium of the 
Achomawi. In the hills four is the number of ceremonial import 
more frequently than five, and in the valley four or a multiple thereof 
distinctly prevails. It may be added that four exercises this function 
wherever the Kuksu organization exists. 

It is also clear throughout California that four and six tend 
strongly to be associated with directions, but that five has no such 
implication. When, therefore, the northeastern Maidu reckon five 
horizontal cardinal directions, it is plain that an attempt has been 
made by them to reconcile the quintuple concept of then northern 
neighbors with the directional number ideas of their southern and 
western kinsmen. . | 

A new moon was regarded as respectively favorable or unfavorable, 
with reference to weather, health, and crops, according as its horns 
pointed up or horizontally. This type of belief is so widespread 
among American Indians that it can scarcely be interpreted as a con- 
cept borrowed from the whites. We may be dealing with an item of 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 44] 


folklore which long ago underwent a world-wide diffusion, or pos- 
sibly with one of those rare and suspected things, a direct and spon- 
taneous projection of the human psyche into culture. 


LOCAL CURRENTS IN MAIDU CULTURE. 





The traits in which the Maidu of the high northern Sierra—that is, 
of Plumas country—stand apart from the remaining Maidu and re- 
semble the tribes of northeastern and through them those of north- 
western California, may be recapitulated thus: basketry in overlay 
twining, including severa] distinctive vessels, such as the cap, the 
mortar basket, the large storage basket and the close-woven carrier: 
rod armor in waistcoat form; the porcupine tail comb; the fringed 
and wrapped deerskin apron; the deerskin legging for men; the use 
of five as a ritualistic number; the absence of Kuksu cults; and sev- 
eral elements in shamanistic belief, such as the dreaming of ancestors, 
bathing in lakes, a considerable importance of women, the motility of 
pain objects. 

The valley Maidu resemble the Yurok and Hupa in those customs 
into which money enters, such as wife purchase and settlement for 
the slain, and in the failure to elaborate an adolescence ceremony. 
The content of the two cultures shows very few specific similarities. 
The resemblances thus spring from likeness of level or degree of 
civilization, rather than from direct importation as with the north- 
eastern Maidu. 


CHAPTER 30. 
THE MIWOK., 


Geography, 442; culture, 445; material arts, 447; the Kuksu religion, 449; other 
ceremonies and beliefs, 451; social practices, 452; totemic moieties, 4538; 
marriage of relatives, 457. 


4 


GEOGRAPHY. 


The Miwok comprised three territorially discrete groups: the Coast 
Miwok, the Lake Miwok, and the Interior Miwok. The first two 
have already been described. The Interior Miwok constituted by 
far the largest portion of the stock. With the Maidu on their right 
hand, the Yokuts on the left, Washo and Mono behind them, they 
lived on the long westward slope of the great Sierra, looking out 
over the lower San Joaquin Valley. A few, the Plains Miwok, were 
in the valley itself, where this is intersected by the winding arms 
of the deltas of the San Joaquin and the Sacramento. The bulk of 
the group were a true foothill people, without claims to the floor of 
the valley, and moving into the higher Sierra only for summer resi- 
dence or hunting. 

A primary cleavage of speech separates the Plains from the Sierra 
Miwok, exactly as among the Yokuts. The Plains speech is a little 
the nearest that of the Coast and Lake divisions in its forms as well 
as in location. The dwellers in the foothills followed three principal 
dialects, which in default of native names have come to be known 
as northern, central, and southern. The latter stands somewhat 
apart; the two former are similar to each other and evince some 
approach to the Plains dialect. There are some subdialects within 
several or all of these four idioms; but they are rather insignificant 
and may be disregarded. 

The Sierra territory of the Miwok extended from the Cosumnes 
River on the north to the Fresno on the south. Roughly, the north- 
ern division held the drainage of the Mokelumne and Calaveras; 
the central, that of the Stanislaus and Tuolumne; the southern, that 
of the Merced and adjacent smaller streams. But there was some 
transgressing of these natural limits, as appears from Plate 37. 

The exact boundaries of the Miwok are still a matter of controversy at many 


points, especially as between the Plains division and the adjacent Yokuts, 
Wintun, and Maidu of the delta, all of whom are practically extinct. 


442 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 443 


Thus the entire tongue of land between the lower Cosumnes and Sacramento, 
as well as Grand, Andrews, Tyler, Staten, and Brannan Islands between the 
easternmost and westernmost channels of the Sacramento, have sometimes been 
assigned to the Maidu., Sherman Island and a tract to the southeast seem to 
have been Miwok, but there is some conflict of evidence as to the location of 
the line separating the Plains Miwok and the most northerly Yokuts in this 
vicinity. 

The region from Michigan Bar to Plymouth has been variously claimed as 
Maidu, Plains Miwok, and northern Miwok. The whole northern boundary of 
the Miwok, in fact, is obscure, the North, Middle, and South Yorks of the 
Cosumnes, as well as various compromises between these, being cited by dif- 
ferent authorities. The Middle Fork has been followed in Plates 1 and 37. 

On the eastern front discrepancies are even wider, but simmer down sub- 
stantially to technicai differences. The Miwok lived permanently as far up 
into the Sierra as the heavy winter snows permitted; in summer they moved 
higher; and no other people held residence between them and the crest. The 
Washo had admitted hunting and therefore camping rights almost down to Big 
Trees in Calaveras County. They may have enjoyed similar but unrecorded 
claims elsewhere; and the same may possibly be true of the Mono. Very likely 
there were tracts that were jointly visited on friendly terms by the Miwok and 
their trans-Sierra neighbors. The “ boundary” may therefore well have been 
shifting as amity or hostility prevailed. In this connection it may be noted that 
in the region of the headwaters of the middle and south Stanislaus the Miwok 
and Mono were on bad terms in recent times, while along the Merced they were 
more at ease with each other. 

On the south it is reasonably certain that Fresno River itself separated the 
Miwok from the Yokuts, except for a small tract below Fresno Flats where the 
Miwok held the southern bank of a northward bend of the stream. The exact 
location of the village of Hapasau is in doubt. The name is Yokuts; the location 
may have been on the Miwok side of the river. 

As for the West, it has sometimes been assumed that the Miwok ranged as 
rightful owners over the whole eastern and more fertile side of the lower San 
Joaquin Valley, but the evidence is nearly positive that this tract was Yokuts, 
and that the precise commencement of the first foothills marked the boundary 


or 


between the two stocks. This is the line that has been followed in Plate 37. 


Like Wintun, Maidu, and Yokuts, “ Miwok” is not originally a 
distinctive tribal or group name, but the native word for people, 
plural of méwii, “ person.” The northernmost Miwok respond to the 
designation Koni, which is their Maidu name; and those of the ex- 
treme south are often known as Pohonichi, which appellation seems 
to be of Yokuts origin; whether connected with Pohono Falls in 
Yosemite is less certain. 

Chauchila appears to be the name of both a Yokuts tribe on the plains and 
of a Miwok village in the canyon of Chowchilla River, whose designation has 
been applied also to a larger Miwok group or division. It is scarcely probable 
that the same name was in use by both stocks in aboriginal times. The Ameri- 
can is likely to have been responsible for its spread. Before the conflict can be 
solved we shall have to be in a position to distinguish between ancient native 
usage and more modern terminology adopted by the Indians in their relations 
with the whites. 


444 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


Moquelumnan is an artificially derived synonym of Miwok that has 
attained some book usage. An earlier term of similar nature that is 
now happily obsolete is Mutsun, based on the name of a Costanoan 
village taken as a designation of the conjoined Cestanoan and Miwok 
groups. 

Among themselves the Miwok are content to refer to one another 
by village, or employ an endless succession of “ northerners” and 
similar directional names that never crystallize into specific designa- 
tions. The same people that are northerners to their neighbors on 
one side are southerners to those on the other, and so on ad infinitum, 
even beyond the boundaries of the stock, as far as knowledge extends. 
A group of people as a unit possessing an existence and therefore a 
name of its own is a concept that has not dawned on the Miwok. 
Humanity must appear to them lke a uniform sheet spread over an 
endless earth, differentiable only with reference to one’s own location 
in the whole. A national sense is weak enough among most of the 
California Indians; but there are usually a few generic names for 
outside groups of foreigners. If the Miwok have such, they have not 
become known; except Koyuwe-k, “salt people,” for the Mono. 
Mono-k seems to be a recent term. Even the Washo are only “ east- 
erners” or “uplanders.” Lisnayu-k denotes either the Yokuts or 
the Costanoans of the vicinity of Pacheco Pass. 

Their four standard terms are Tamuleko, Tamulek, or Tumitok, northerners; 
Chumetoko, Chumetok, or Chumteya, southerners; Hisotoko, Hisatok, or Hit- 
toya, easterners; Olowitoko, Olowitok, Olokok, or Olwiya, westerners; or other 
close dialectic variants. 

Among the Plains Miwok names in -mni are frequent which suggest the tribal 
appellations of the Yokuts: Mokelumni, Mokosumni, Ochehamni, Lelamni, 
Hulpumni, Umuchamni or Omochumne, Sakayakitimni. As with the Maidu, the 
words probably denote a political community named after its principal or 


permanent settlement. 
The same appears to hold of names ending in -chi. 


Something over a hundred Miwok villages are shown on Plate 
37. The total number of those whose names have been recorded is 
considerably larger; but some are in doubtful or conflicting records, 
others are vaguely located, and in general the condition of knowl- 
edge concerning the settlements of the group—even those included 
in the map—is far from satisfactory. We are in total ignorance, 
for instance, to what extent near villages were truly independent or 
only outlying settlements that recognized their political and social 
unity with a central larger town. 

The villages that can be both named and approximately located are, as shown 
on Plate 37: 

Plains Miwok: 1, Hulpu-mni; 2, *Yumhui; 3, *Yomit; 4, *Lulimal; 5, *Su- 
kididi; 6, *Mayeman; 7, *ChuyumkKatat; 8, Umucha; 9, Supu; 10, Tukui; 11, 


—:* 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 445 


Mokos-umni; 12, Ocheh-ak; 13, Mokel(-umni) ; 14, Lel-amni; 15, Sakayak-iimni. 
(Starred names are in the southern Maidu language.) 

Northern Miwok: 16, Yule; 17, Omo; 18, Noma; 19, Chakane-sii; 20, Yuloni; 
21, Seweu-su; 22, Uptisiini (Fig. 40) ; 28, Tukupe-sti; 24, Pola-sii; 25, Tumuti; 
26, Sopochi; 27, Ketina; 28, Mona-sii; 29, Apautawilti; 30, Heina; 31, Kiiniisii; 
32, Penken-sii; 33, Kaitimti; 84, Hechenti; 35, Huta-sti. 

Central Miwok: 36, Sasamu; 87, Shulaputi; 38, Katuka; 39, Humata; 40, 
Akutanuka; 41, Kosoimuno-nu; 42, Newichu; 438, Yungakatok; 44, Alakani; 
45, Tuyiwti-nu; 46, Kewe-no; 47, Tulana-chi; 48, Oloikoto; 49, Wiiyti; 50, 
Tipotoya; 51, Loyowisa; 52, Kawinucha;.53, Takema; 54, Tulsuna; 55, Hang- 
wite; 56, Wokachet; 57, Sutamasina; 58, Singawii-nu; 59, Akankau-nchi 
(cf. 67); 60, Akawila; Gil, Kapanina; 62, Chakachi-no; 63, Suchumumu; 64, 
Waka-che ; 65, Kotoplana ; 66, Pokto-no; 67, Akankau-nehi (cf. 59) ; 68, Kuluti; 
69, Pota; 70, Wolanga-su; 71, Tel’ula; 72, Tunuk-chi; 78, Kesa; 74, Hochhoch- 
meti; 75, Siksike-no; 76, Sopka-su; 77, Pasi-nu; 78, Pangasema-nu; 79, Suka- 
nola; 80, Sukwela; 81, Telese-no; 82, Hunga; 838, Olawiye; 84, Kulamu; 85, 
Hechhechi; 86, Pigliku (Miwok pronunciation of ‘ Big Creek’) ; 87, Sala. 

Southern Miwok: 88, Sayangasi; 89, Alaula-chi; 90, Kuyuka-chi; 91, Angisa- 
wepa; 92, Hikena; 938, Owelinhatihti; 94, Wilito; 95, Kakahula-chi; 96, Awal; 
97, Yawoka-chi; 98, Kitiwina; 99, Siso-chi; 100, Sope-nechi; 101, Sotpok; 102, 
Awani; 103, Palachan; 104, Kasumati; 105, Nochu:chi; 106, Nowach; 107, 
Olwia; 108, Wasema; 109, Wehilto. 

In 1817 Father Duran, voyaging from the Golden Gate up San Francisco 
Bay, through the delta, and some hundred miles up the Sacramento, encoun- 
tered or reported Chupcanes, Ompines, Quenemsias or Quenemisas, Chucumnes, 
Uamnes, Chuppumne, Ochejamnes, Guaypems, Passasimas, Nototemnes, Tau- 
quimnes, Yatchicomnes, Muquelemnes, and Julpunes. The first of these groups 
were Costanoan; the next probably Maidu or perhaps in part Wintun; from 
the Ochejamnes on, the list refers to Plains Miwok and the northernmost 
Yokuts. It seems, therefore, that all five of the great Penutian divisions were 
represented among the natives of whom this little expedition makes mention. 


Nine thousand seems a liberal estimate for the number of interior 
Miwok in ancient times. This allows more than 2,000 to each of the 
four divisions. But all specific data are wanting. The 1910 census 
counted 670, only one-half of them full blood. The Miwok have thus 
failed to preserve as large a fraction of their numbers as the Maidu, 
but have done better than the Yokuts. The Plains division came 
pretty thoroughly under mission control and shows very few sur- 
vivors. The three foothill groups escaped this well-meant but nearly 
fatal influence. 


CULTURE, 


The civilization of the Miwok is imperfectly known, and is the 
more difficult to reconstruct in that the culture of all their immediate 
neighbors, except in some degree that of the Yokuts, is also unre- 
corded in detail. 

Even in a larger sense, comparison with the stocks to the east and 
west is mostly. invalidated by the profound difference of habitat. 
As between the adjacent Sierra dwellers on the north and south, the 


446 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Maidu and the Yokuts, Miwok affiliations incline somewhat more to 
the former; but perhaps this fact is at bottom to be ascribed to en- 
vironmental adaptations, the Maidu being in the main Sierra dwell- 
ers like the Miwok, whereas the Yokuts, although in part situated 
in the foothills, were so much more extensively a plains people that 
their civilization as a whole has no doubt been intensively colored by 
this circumstance. 

The strongest link with the Maidu is the presence of the Kuksu 
cult of the Sacramento Valley, with its long variety of rituals, im- 
personation of spirits, distinctive costumes, and the accompaniment 
of the large semisubterranean dance house. ‘The complement is the 
absence among the Miwok of the Yokuts jimsonweed cult. 

Another important link in the same direction is the apparent lack 
of the more definite tribal organization of the Yokuts. 

So far as Miwok mythology is known, on the other hand, it is 
rather of Yokuts type. This fact is surprising, since an anthropo- 
morphic creator 
tends to appear in 
the beliefs of the 
tribes addicted to 
the Kuksu religion. 
It is true the Cos- 
tanoan and Sali- 
nan stocks, who 
participate in the Kuksw cult and lve in the same transverse belt 
of California as the Miwok, seem also to lean in their mythology 
toward the Yokuts more than to the Sacramento Valley tribes. A 
less specialized type of cosmogony is therefore indicated for the 
southern Kuksu-dancing groups.* 

The organization of society on the plan of two totemically con- 
trasted halves, which was first discovered in California among the 
Miwok, extends south from them to the Yokuts and western Mono. 
It has not been reported from the north. 

In material arts the balance again inclines northward. Coiled 
baskets, for instance, are made on a foundation of rods, as by the 
Maidu, whereas the Yokuts use grass. The Yokuts cap and con- 
stricted-neck vessel are also wanting. So is Yokuts pottery. Games, 
on the other hand, are rather of Yokuts type, so far as can be 
judged. Perhaps this is due to an association with the social or- 
ganization. (Fig. 41.) | 

In some minor points the Miwok follow varying practices accord- 
ing to the habits of their neighbors. Thus the southernmost Miwok 





Fig. 88.—Yokuts loop stirrer and Miwok paddle. (Compare 
Pls. 17, 44.) 








1Tf, as seems probable, the southerly Kuksu tribes (the Miwok, Costanoans, Esselen, 
and northernmost Yokuts) had no real society in connection with their Kuksu ceremonies, 
the distinctness of their mythology appears less surprising. 


BULLETIN 78 PLATE 37 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 





un 


WINNEMUCCA LAKE 


DOWNIEVILLE 
fork 


x 
te © 
O'OGRASS VAI 


a Qooutha65 
J 9.66 
PLACERVILLE 








TERRITORY «no VILLAGES 


OF THE 


MAIDU“MIWOK 


° (0. *15- =320_25 


LE IN MILES. 
a CMADERA 

















BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 38 





MIWOK ACORN GRANARY 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN *7&. 7 PLATEssS 





CRADLES 


a, d, e, Southern Miwok; b, Mohave; c, /, Northern Miwok 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 40 





CRADLES 


g, m, Valley Yokuts; h, i, 7, Kings River Yokuts; k, Eastern Mono; 1, Western Mono; n, North- 
western Maidu of foothills; 0, Northwestern Maidu 





KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 447 


often emjloy the grass foundation of the Yokuts and approximate 
the shape of their “bottle neck” baskets. South of the Tuolumne, 
too, the Yokuts looped-stick mush stirrer and the Yokuts type of 
basketry cradle are used. North of the Stanislaus the mush stirrer 
is a small, plain paddle (Fig. 38),as among the Achomawi and Pomo; 
and the cradle takes on the peculiar form of being built on two 
rods whose upper ends are bent forward as a hood support. (Pls. 
39,40.) Also, it is chiefly north of the Stanislaus that one-rod basket 
foundations are found alongside of the more usual three-rod coil. 
Here influence of contact with they 


adjacent Washo is likely. ‘i 
MATERIAL ARTS. 


The distribution of house types yoy 
in the Miwok region is still far 
fromclear. Thesemisubterranean 
dance house or hangi was known 
to the whole group. It rested on a 
square of four center posts, or on 
two rows of posts, whereas the frye 29. Miwok dance 





or assembly 


Yuki, Pomo, Wintun, and Maidu house. Diameter, 25 feet. Construc- 
j ts tion: 1, tole, posts, forked or notched 
employed a single large post, or on top. 2, chawik, ‘main rafters, ex- 
eee an iiGewapir thetoiotes shnGpaqe roe ee and west, 3; lolapay Giger 
: 4 beams on rafters. 4, shuchapa, brush 
diameter was as great as farther on beams, radiating from center. On 
this brush was a layer of grass, and 
: ) oT e n 5 ’ 
north, up to 20 yards ; the doo1 then of earth. Parts of house: 4, 
regularly faced eastyv yard ; the gen- wole; BB, oni; C, hawana; D, door or 
+ % fs ; tunnel—always toward east; H, smoke 
eral construction presented few hole, 3 feet square; perhaps the en- 
ea = A ayrorg hy . trance in ancient times; fF, fireplace. 
AW A 7 re € 4 oY ’ ’ 
noteworthy peculiarities. (Fig. (Ceunripires 0086.) 


39.) 

The sweat house was much smaller than the dance house, but 
built on the same plan. 

The Miwok living house, ocha or uchu, appears to have been often 
of the earth-covered type, although smaller and ruader than the dance 
house. It is not certain how far south the range of this extended. 
It mav have been rare in the higher foothills, and was probably 
not lived in more than half the year. A lean-to of bark was used in 
the mountains in summer; it may have been the permanent house of 
some sections. 

The cache or granary used by the Miwok for the storage of acorns 
is an outdoor affair, a yard or so in diameter, a foot or two above the 
ground, and thatched over, beyond reach of a standing person, after 
it was filled. Plate 38 shows the type. The natural branches of 
a tree sometimes were used in place of posts. There was no true 
basket construction in the cache; the sides were sticks and brush 
lined with grass, the whole stuck together and tied where necessary 


3625°—25—30 





448 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


No door was necessary: the twigs were readily pushed aside almost 
anywhere, and with a little start acorns rolled out in a stream. Even 
the squirrels had little difficulty in helping themselves at will. 

An outdoor cache coincides rather closely with the distribution 
of coiled basketry. None of the tribes that twine make use of any 
granary. This is no accident. A large storage basket is readily 
twined. Where there is a feeling that the proper way to make a 
basket intended to be preserved is by coiling, the laboriousness of this 
technique would incline toward the manufacture by other processes 
of vessels holding several bushels. 

The Miwok pound acorns with pestles in holes in granite expo- 
sures; on flat slabs laid on or sunk into the ground without basketry 

hopper; and grind them by crushing 

N and rubbing on similar slabs. The 
| conical and cylindrical mortars found 
in their habitat are prehistoric. 
Occasionally a small one is in use; 
but if so, it is employed by some 
toothless crone to crack bones, or to 
beat an occasional gift of a gopher or 
squirrel into a soft, edible pulp. 
Such a mortar may contain a pit or 
two for cracking acorns, and perhaps 





YY 6 1700 300 Ft. a groove in which bone awls have been 

whet lifetime. fault of 

Wig. 40.—The Miwok- village of ‘ ted for a an ef In default os 
Upiisiini. Lines are hill contours. anything more practical the owner’s 


Dotted line (X), old village site. 
YY, modern houses. A, pit of old- 
est dance house, diameter 50 feet. 
B, dance-house pit, diameter 65 
feet. OC, standing dance 
(plan shown in Vig. 39), diameter 


house | 


husband may now and then grind his 
tobacco in the same utensils. Ancient 
stone implements that have been put 
to secondary uses are rather common 


25 feet. S, spring Upiisiini, whence 


in California, and can still be seen in 
the name of the village. ; 


service now and then. That an object 
is already in use is if anything an added reason why it should be 
employed for another purpose. A neat people would feel differently ; 
but a glance into almost any California Indian home suffices to 
reveal that these people are actuated by but little sense of order as 
compared with the Plains or Pueblo Indians. 

Clamshell disk currency was less precious than in the north, though 
that may have been one of the directions from which it reached 
the Miwok. Its value in American terms is said to have averaged 
$5 a yard, only a fraction of the figure at which the southern Maidu 
rated it. Whole strung olivella shells went at $1 a yard among both 
groups. The cylinders made from magnesite by the southeastern 
Pomo reached the hill Miwok, but were scarce and valuable. Pos- 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 449 


sibly clamshell money traveled to them from the Chumash via the 
Yokuts as well as from the Pomo; whence its abundance and com- 
parative depreciation. 


THE KUKSU RELIGION. 


The Miwok follow the Kuksu ritual organization. Itdappens that 
we possess considerable knowledge of their individual dances and 
none at all of the society underlying these;? but the names and 
character of several of the ceremonies, their large number, the type 
of feather dress worn, the stamping of the foot drum, and the hold- 
ing of the performances in the earth-covered assembly chamber, all 
make the adhesion of the Miwok to the Sacramento Valley scheme 
of rites clear, even though the precise form which the system takes 
among them remains undetermined. 

The distinction between ceremony and dance and between cere- 
mony and impersonation, as it has been described among the Wintun, 
evidently recurs among the Miwok. Thus there 
is the Auksuyu, an exceptionally sacred perform- 
ance, seemingly occupying the same primary posi- 
tion that the Hest holds among the Patwin and 
Maidu, and the Guksu impersonator among the 
Pomo. In this Kuksuyuw appear at least three per- 
sonages: Auksuyu himself; Osa-be, or “ woman”; 
and AZochilo, who is perhaps the Miwok repre- 
sentative of the Sacramento Valley Moki, and  g 
whose impersonator is known as mochil-be. In pye. 41.—Acorn tops. 
addition, there is the Afochilast dance, held without = Pemo; b, Miwok. 
the drum, in which the J/ochilo appears impersonated by a sotokbe, 
and accompanied by the Osa-be. At some point in the Mochilasé, 
as in most Miwok dances, women participate; but they do not appear 
in the Auksuyu. 

Besides the Miwok rituals mentioned in Table 1 in the chapter on 
the Wintun, they practice the following dances: 





The Lileuwsi and Uchupelu are of a type with the Patwin Akantoto or creeper 
dance, the Maidu T’samyempi, and the Pomo Dama, in that in all of them there 
are acrobatic demonstrations. In the Akantoto the performer descends the 
center post of the dance house head first, clapsing it with his legs. The 
Uchupelu is similar, but less spectacular. In the Lilewsi, in which the drum 
is not used, the dancer is believed to fly about the darkened house. The songs 
tell of one, no doubt the impersonated spirit, who thus came to the Miwok 
country from Mount Diablo, the name of which reflects the native belief in its 
habitation by spirits. 





2Tt seems quite doubtful whether there was a society; there is certainly no trace of a 
communal one, 


450 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


The Kalea is a frequent and perhaps an important dance, which has survived 
until more recently than the majority. In it are worn a back cape of feathers 
similar to the Maidu sikli and the corresponding garments of the Patwin, 
Pomo, and Yuki; a large tuft; and two smaller ones, skewered into the net- 
gathered hair. 

The Tamula may be the “north” dance: tamal-in is the ordinary word 
designating this direction. 

In the Temayasu, a personage of the same name, who is followed by seven 
seyapbe, showers coals on the spectators, who may not laugh, evidently for 
fear of provoking his anger. The Temayasu thus evinces something of the 
nature of the Pomo “ash ghosts.” The Patwin Temeyu bears a similar name. 

A ritual called Sule tumum laksii, “ghost from drum emerging,’ also has 
close Pomo parallels. The performer, painted with horizontal black and white 
stripes, emerges from a tunnel under the drum and then dances upon if. 
It is likely that he is taken for a real ghost by the uninitiated. 

To the Sulesko, said to be named after a kind of spirit in some way asso- 
ciated with the sule or ghost of dead people, is ascribed a recent origin, It 
was performed to cure people made ill by such spirits. Four dancers wear 
something like face coverings of skin. This is a nearer approach to what are 
ordinarily considered masks than anything yet reported from California; but 
on the other hand, there is less reference by the Miwok to veiling of the face 
by feathers or grass in other dances than among the Maidu and Patwin. The 
Miwok Kuksuyu, indeed, has his features hidden by feathers; but the only 
other personage known to be disguised, other than perhaps by crude paint, 
occurs in the Helekasi, in which a piece of buckskin, with eyeholes cut in it, is 
worn around the head. 

The clowns, or Wo’ochi, who shout woo, appear in a number of ceremonies 
in an interlude named after them. They are painted white and evidently rep- 
resent coyotes. The gluttonous, greedy, tricky, but also insensate nature which 
the California Indian attributes to this animal is the character which is por- 
trayed in the actions also of the Maidu clown; but no avowed symbolic ref- 
erence to the contemned canine has been reported from the latter people. 

The Uzumati or grizzly bear ceremony came to the central Miwok from 
the west or northwest, they say; that is, probably, the northernmost Yokuts 
such as the Chulamni of Stockton, or the Plains Miwok. The performer, 
who was a dance impersonator and not a bear doctor or shamap, carried 
curved pieces of obsidian attached to his fingers in place of the bear’s claws. 
He imitated the animal in his dancing. This description accounts for the 
hitherto unexplained ‘“ Stockton curves,” as antiquarians have come to eall 
the semilunar flaked objects of obsidian found in ancient burials in the San 
Joaquin delta. 

Other dances or ceremonies were the Mamasu, Tula, Henepasi, Yahuha, Alina, 
Hekeke or “ quail,’ Wehena, and Olochina. There is also a Helika, which 
may or may not be the same as the Helekasi in which masks are worn, and a 
less sacred Helikna. 

A leading dancer called hoyuche, assisted by several echuto, appears in the 
Salute, Helika, Alina, and other dances. Whether the term indicates his 
leadership, a particular costume, or a spirit that he impersonates, is not known. 
A village chief is called echuto hayapo in distinction from the toko hayapo 
or head chief of a district. 

Besides the Helikna, the Aletii, Ahana, Ulula, and Helkibiiksu are mentioned 
as at least semiprofane. The drum is not used; the sobobbe or shouters who 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 451 


accompany the dancers in the major ceremonies are absent; and some, at least, 
of these dances are held outdoors, away from the gloom of the assembly chamber. 
Women take part in all these dances, whose general character is probably 
analogous to that of the Maidu Loli and Toto. In or after the Aletii two black- 
painted clowns, called Humechilwe, may appear. 

It is said that women were allowed to witness all dances, even 
the most sacred of those held in the assembly chamber. This would 
indicate a status of the secret society in the community rather differ- 
ent from that which obtains among the tribes in the latitude of the 
Sacramento Valley. Miwok women seem to have participated in 
probably the majority of dances. 

Nothing has been learned of the order or classificatory relations 
of the various major and minor dances so far enumerated. Yet 
it may be suspected that, like the Maidu ceremonies, they came 
in some sort of an orderly sequence at specified seasons of the year 
rather than randomly. 


OTHER CEREMONIES AND BELIEFS. 


Sule yuse, “ ghost hair,” or Sule sikanui, “ ghost scalp ”— a single 
word to denote “ ghost,” “dead person,” and “skeleton” seems to 
be customary in a number of the Californian languages—was the 
name of the dance of triumphant revenge held over a scalp. It was 
made in the dance house, as by the Yuki, and the drum was stamped. 

The Pota was a ceremony in which several rude dummies of 
tules were put up on poles. It appears likely that songs of malev- 
olence and perhaps other expressions of hatred were directed toward 
the figures. The images represented foes of the village: murderers, 
successful war leaders in past affrays, or shamans believed to have 
caused sickness and death. Care was taken to invite the towns to 
which these individuals belonged; but as no identification was given 
the image, and no names mentioned at the time, this method of 
revenge could contribute little but moral satisfaction to the preform- 
ers. The guests might suspect that it was their townsman who was 
meant, but as no insult was tendered, none could be resented; until 
later, when care would be taken that the visitors learned that it 
was their kinsman whom they had helped to revile. The whole pro- 
cedure is characteristically Californian. By impulse, the native 
is thoroughly peaceable. A plan of spoliation or oppression rarely 
enters his mind. But suspicion is ever-egnawing within him. Punc- 
tilious as he is not to commit a deliberate offense, he constantly con- 
ceives that others have wished him ill and worked the contemplated 
injury. And so he spends his life in half-concealed bad will, in non- 
intercourse, in plotting with more or less open magic, or occa- 
sionally in an open feud. He has always been wronged by some one, 


452 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


and is always planning a merited but dark punishment. Though 
they are rarely uttered expressly, he mutters his feelings about; with 
the consequence that those whom he hates soon have equal or greater 
cause for hating in return. There must be a subtle pleasure in pub- 
hicly dishonoring and threatening a foe, who may suspect but can 
not know that he is meant. But the satisfaction thus obtainable is 
an equally extraordinary one, and obviously peculiar of a people more 
given to keeping grievances alive by cherishing them than to ending 
them by an open appeal to the nobler violence that springs from 
indignation. . 

The A’alea seems to be made in connection with this Pota ceremony. 

The Azyetme, named from azye’a, the signs of a girl’s maturity, is an 
adolescence ceremony, as is also clear from the fact that the dancers 
are called kichaume, from kichau, “ blood.” There are four of these, 
men, painted with red streaks down the face, but they wear no 
feathers or costume. At present the dance is a short performance on 
and about the drum in the assembly house, and evidently a part of 
larger ceremonies that have other purposes. Originally, however, it 
was made for the girl, and probably over her as she lay for four days 
in. a trench dug in the floor of her home. 

The Miwok are said to have held that there was no after life; but 
this is a white man’s superstition about them. One of their favorite 
traditions, which they share with the Yokuts, relates the visit of an 
aboriginal Orpheus to the western or northern country of the dead in 
pursuit of his wife. 


SOCIAL PRACTICES. 


Cremation of the dead was the usual but probably not universal 
practice of the Miwok. 

Widows singed their hair off and pitched the face. In the southern 
districts the pitch was put on over smaller areas. The levirate was 
observed, but perhaps not invariably. 

The annual mourning ceremony included dancing as well as wail- 
ing, culminated in a burning of property, and ended with a ritualistic 
washing of the mourners by people of the opposite totemic moiety. 
Rude lay figures were made and burned for people of rank. 

Chieftainship was a well-defined and hereditary affair, as is shown 
by the passage of the title to women, in the male line. In the central 
division there were head chiefs, toko hayapo, whose authority was 
recognized over considerable districts; echuto hayapo, chiefs of vil- 
lages; and euchi or liwape (liwa, “ speak”), who were either the 
heads of subsidiary villages or speakers and messengers for the more 
important chiefs. A born chieftainess, and the wife of a chief, were 
both called mayenu. The husband of a born chieftainess was usually 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 453 


her speaker; the latter had authority after her husband’s death until 
the majority of her son. 

It is evident that concepts of rank were fairly developed, and it is 
regrettable that more is not known of this interesting subject. 


TOTEMIC MOIETIES, 


With the Miwok we encounter for the first time a social scheme 
that recurs among several of the groups to the south: a division of 
the people into balanced halves, or moieties, as they are called, 
which are totemic, and adhesion to which is hereditary. The de- 
scent is from the father, and among the Miwok the moieties were at 
least theoretically exogamic. 

The totemic aspects of these moieties are refined to an extreme ten- 
uousness, but are undeniable. Nature is divided into a water and a 
land or dry half, which are thought to correspond to the A7¢kua and 
Tunuka moieties among the people. Atkua is from kiku, water, 
but the etymology of Zunuka is not clear. Synonyms, though 
apparently only of a joking implication, are Lotasuna and Nosituna, 
“frog people” and “blue jay people”; or the contrast is between 
frog and deer, or coyote and blue jay. Ali these terms apply to the 
central and southern Miwok. The northern division uses a word 
formed from wall, “land,” in place of Zunuka; and the animal 
equivalents are not clear. There is also some doubt as to the form 
which the scheme takes among the northerners, some accounts deny- 
ing its existence, or that the individual’s adherence was determined 
by descent. It is apparent that the northern Miwok are institution- 
ally as well as geographically on the border of the moiety system. 

There are no subdivisions of any sort within the moieties. <As- 
sociated with each, however, is a long list of animals, plants, and 
objects; in fact, the native concept is that everything in the world 
belongs to one or the other side. Each member of a moiety stands 
in relation to one of the objects characteristic of his moiety—a rela- 
tion that must be considered totemic—in one way only: through his 
name. This name, given him in infancy by a grandfather or other 
relative, and retained through life, refers to one of the totem animals 
or objects characteristic of his moiety. 

Nor is this all: in the great majority of cases the totem is not 
mentioned in the name, which is formed from some verbal or ad- 
jectival stem, and describes an action or condition that might apply 
equally well to other totems. Thus, on the verb hausu-s are based 
the names /Tausu and Hauchu, which connote, respectively, the 
yawning of an awakening bear and the gaping of a salmon drawn 
out of the water. There is nothing in either name that indicates 
the animals in question—which even belong to opposite moieties. 





454 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


The old men who/bestowed them no doubt announced the totemic 
reference of the names; the bearers, and their family, kin, and more 
intimate associates, knew the implication; but a Miwok from another 
district would have been uncertain whether a bear, a salmon, or one 
of a dozen other animals was meant. Just so, Akulw means “look- 
ing up”—at the sun. //opoto is understood to refer to frog eggs 
hatching in the water; but its literal meaning is only “round.” 
Sewati connotes bear claws, but denotes “curved” and nothing 
more. /Htwmu is “to bask.” An individual so called happens to be 
named after the bear; but there is nothing to prevent the identical 
name referring to the lizard, if it were borne by some other man. 

It is true that the Miwok seem to pay some attention to these im- 
plications of their names, since they are aware of the totemic ref- 
erence of the names of practically all their acquaintance, as well as 
of kinsmen for some generations past. At the same time it is cer- 
tain that whatever totemic significance the majority of the names 
have is not actually expressed but is extrinsically attached to them. 

In fact, the totemic quality of the names is very probably a second- 
ary and comparatively late reading in on the part of the Miwok, since 
names of exactly the same character, so far as structure and range 
of denotation go, are prevalent over the greater part of California 
without a trace of totemism attached to them. Even the adjacent 
totemic Yokuts, whose names, when intelligible, are similar to the 
Miwok ones, do not interpret them totemically. 

Tt might be thought that the names are remnants of an older clan 
system; that what is now the land moiety was formerly an aggre- 
gation of bear, panther, dog, raven, and other clans; that for some 
reason the clans became merged in the two larger groups; that as 
their separate existence, as social units, became lost, it was preserved 
for some time longer in the names that originally belonged to the 
clans. But there is no evidence that such is the case. If a man and 
his sons and their sons all bore appellations referring to the bear— 
as among the Mohave all the women in a certain male line of descent 
are called fHipa, which connotes “coyote ””—we might justifiedly 
speak of the Miwok condition as a disguised clan system. But the 
supposition does not hold. In the majority of cases the child is not 
named after the same animal as its father; and in a line of male de- 
scent extending over several generations the proportion of instances 
in which the same totemic reference is maintained throughout. be- 
comes very small. 

By far the most commonly referred to animal in names of people 
in the land moiety is the bear. On the water side there is no such 
pronounced predominance, but the deer comes first. This fact is 
certainly of significance with reference to the bear and deer “ totems ” 
reported among the Salinan group across the Coast Range. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 455 


A number of animals or objects are referred to in names belong- 
ing to both moieties; such are the coyote, falcon, acorn, buckeye, 
seeds, and bow and arrow. This is an unexplained effacement of the. 
otherwise sharp distinction between the moieties. 

Moreover, some of the most important animals, such as the eagle, 
puma, and rattlesnake, are very rarely or not at all referred to in 
names, to judge by the available translations rendered by the na- 
tives, whereas objects of far less natural importance, such as nose 
shells, ear plugs, and ceremonial objects, are more common. A truer 
idea of the totemic classification of the world is therefore obtainable 
from general statements made by the Miwok. From these the fol- 
lowing partial alignment results: 


Land side. Water side. Land side. Water side. 
Bear. Deer. Katydid. Bee. 
Puma. Antelope. Caterpillar. 
Wildcat. Cocoon. 
Dog. Coyote. Butterfly. 
Fox. Snail. 
Raccoon. Beaver. Haliotis, and other 
Tree squirrel. Otter. shells and bead 
Badger. money. 
Jack rabbit. Sugar pine. Jimson weed. 
Eagle. Black oak. White oak. 
Condor. Buzzard. Pine nuts. fied Vetch 
Raven. Manzanita. Oak gall. 
Magpie. Tobacco. Wild ‘‘cabbage.”’ 
Hawk. Falcon (probably). Tule. 
Chicken hawk. Salmonberry. 
Great owl. Burrowing owl. (And other (And other 
Blue jay. Meadow lark. plants. ) plants. ) 
Wood pecker. Killdeer. 
Yellow-hammer. Hummingbird. Sky. Cloud. 
Goldfinch. Kingbird. Sun, sunshine, sun- Rain. 
Creeper. Bluebird. rise. Fog. 
Dove. Stars. Water, lake. 
Quail. Night. Ice. 
Goose. Fire. Mud. 
Swan. Earth. Lightning. 
Crane. Salt. Rock. 
Jacksnipe. Sand. 
Kingfisher, and no 
doubt other water Bow, arrows, quiver Nose ornament of 
birds. (probably). shell. 
Lizard. Frog. Drum. 
Salamander. Ear plug. Feather apron. 
Water snake. Feather headdress. Football. 
Turtle. Gambling bones. 


Salmon, and various 
other fishes. 
Yellow jacket. —S«- Ant. 


456 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


It is apparent that every water animal, and all phenomena asso- 
ciated with water, are on the appropriate side; but that the remainder 
of the world is divided quite arbitrarily, or perhaps according to 
some principle that is obscure to our minds. 

The briefer list of totems which the Yokuts enumerate follows 
the same lines with but few exceptions: beaver and antelope, and 
hawks and owls, are transposed to the opposite moieties by these 
southerners. 

The Miwok do not regard the totem animals as ancestors, except 
in an indirect and vague sort of way, to stress which would result 
in misconception of their attitude. According to their beliefs, as 
of those of all Indians, the bear, the coyote, and all the animals were 
once quasi human. The California belief is that they occupied the 
earth before there were true human beings. They are therefore 
predecessors of mankind. From that to ancestors is not a far leap; 
and it has perhaps been made now and then more or less randomly. 
But there is no definite theory or understanding to this effect. Least 
of all does a man with an eagle or deer name believe that he can 
trace his particular lineal descent back to the eagle or deer. 

Nor is there any connection in the native mind between a man’s 
totem and the animal guardian spirit that may reveal itself to him. 
A bear-named man may acquire the bear for his protector; but he 
is just as likely to be patronized by any other animal; and if he 
cloes secure a bear spirit, the fact seems a meaningless coincidence 
to him and his fellows. The interpretation of Miwok totemism as a 
development out of the widespread guardian spirit concept, in other 
words out of shamanism, would therefore be without warrant. 
Among other nations this interpretation may here and there have 
some support. In fact, the two sets of phenomena have enough in 
common to make it highly probable that the native mind would on 
occasion connect them secondarily and assimilate them further. And 
it is an obviously tenable idea that they may spring from a common 
root. But to derive an essentially social and classifying institution 
from a religious, inherently individual, and therefore variable one, 
is, aS a proposition of generic applicability, one of those explanations 
with which ethnological science is choked, but which would be more 
in need of being explained, if they were true, than the phenomena 
which they purport to elucidate. 

The rule of moiety exogamy is definitely formulated by the Miwok, 
but has not been very rigidly enforced for several generations. It 
is therefore doubtful whether the sentiment in favor of exogamy 
was ever more than a marked predilection. The natives say that 
marriage within the moiety evoked protest but no attempt at actual 
interference. At present one marriage out of four is endogamic in 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 457 


place of exogamic among the central Miwok. A numerical dispro- 
portion, which gives the land moiety an average excess of nearly 
20 per cent over its rival, may help to account for these lapses, 
though marriages within the smaller water moiety also occur. 

According to the limited statistical data available, the water 
moiety actually predominates in some of the higher villages, while 
nearer the plains it is much inferior in strength. As the Yokuts 
equivalent of the water moiety is called “upstream” and its an- 
tithesis “ downstream,” it is possible that the greater strength of the 
former in the Miwok highlands is more than an accident of dis- 
tribution. 

The moieties compete with each other in games, and they assist 
each other at funerals, mourning anniversaries, adolescence observ- 
ances, and the like. They do not appear to enter at all into the 
KKuksu religion. 

Thus they possess social and semiceremonial functions besides 
those concerned with marriage and descent, but no strong ritualistic 
ones. 

Many Miwok terms of relationship are applied by any given 
individual only to persons of one or the other moiety. But for 
many terms such a limitation is inevitable the moment there is any 
social grouping on hereditary lines accompanied by exogamy. The 
father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, and. other relatives 
must each be exclusively of one’s own moiety or of the opposite one. 
When it comes to relatives like our “ uncle,’ such a term, because 
it comprises the mother’s brother as well as the father’s brother, 
would in Miwok refer to persons of both moieties. As a matter 
of fact, like almost all Indians, they possess no word that means 
what our “uncle” does; but they have a considerable number of 
kinship terms—more than a fourth of the total—that designate, po- 
tentially at least, individuals of both moieties; or, after deduction 
of the above-mentioned ternis denoting the closest relatives, nearly 
one-half. The system of relationship accordingly reflects the social 
grouping much less than might be anticipated—not nearly so well 
as among most Australians, for instance. From this the inference 
may be drawn that the moiety organization is either comparatively 
recent among the Miwok or that it has failed to impress their other 
institutions and their life as a whole very deeply. 


MARRIAGE OF RELATIVES. 


There is another point which the terms of relationship clear up. 
The preferential marriage among the Miwok, the one considered 
most natural and correct, was with certain relatives of the opposite 
moiety. Now, it was long ago reported that the Miwok married 


A58 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


their cousins, which is a practice horribly repugnant to the vast 
majority of American Indians. Investigation has confirmed and 
restricted the statement. The Miwok man did often marry his first 
cousin; but only his mother’s brother’s daughter; that is, one of the 
two kinds of cross cousins, as they are called. Even these marriages 
were considered too close in some districts and were frowned upon; 
a first cousin once removed, or second cousin, or some such distant 
relative was the proper mate. 

It proves that all the female blood relatives that a man might 
marry come under the designation anisv, and all the kin that a 
woman could mate with are included in what she calls her angqs?. 
Now angst is also the word for “son” or “nephew” and anésti for 
mother’s younger sister or stepmother. It is inconceivable, from 
what we know of the Indian temper, that the Miwok ever married 
their aunts; and they indignantly deny such an imputation: it is 
only the cousin or second cousin called anésu, and not the aunt anisu, 
that one espouses. 

Further, it is remarkable that not one of the 30 or more words 
by which the Miwok designate their various blood kindred or rela- 
tives by marriage is of such denotation that it in any way reflects or 
implies cross-cousin marriage as customary. 

If to these circumstances is added the fact that a man may never 
espouse one of his two kinds of cross cousins—his father’s sister’s 
daughters—it is clear that the Miwok cross-cousin marriage is an 
isolated and anomalous institution; and the presumption is forced 
that it is neither basic nor original in their society. 

The foundation of the practice can in fact be traced. It is the almost uni- 
versal California Indian custom of marrying people who are already connected 
with one by marriage. To most civilized people such a custom seems quite 
shocking. But that is only because we introduce a false sentiment, or senti- 
mentality, based in part on confusion of thought, in part on an oversensitiveness, 
and in part en a fanatical avoidance of everything that even seems to savor of 
polygamy, whether or not it is connected with that practice. All nations abhor 
the marriage of near blood kin, but the vast majority distinguish clearly. 
between kindred in fact, such as a sister, and kindred in name, such as a 
sister-in-law ; which of course is the only /ogical procedure if blood is to mean 
anything at all. We do not make this distinction with nearly the same force 
and clearness of perception that most other peoples do. English is one of the 
few languages in the world that has no independent words for affinities by 
marriage; “ brother-in-law ” is based on “brother”; and we show the weakness 
of vocabulary, and therefore of our thinking in these matters, by not possessing 
even a Single, convenient, generic term for the clumsy ‘“ affinities” or “ relatives 
by marriage.” Other European nations approach the Anglo-Saxon condition. 
In short, for better or for worse, we have lost the keenness of a sense that not 
only primitive people but the civilized ancients possessed. The idea of blood 
means but little to us. We are given to imagining that we have developed 
home and family ties far stronger and deeper than any other people; and we 
do not know half so well as a savage or a Mohammedan what “ family ” means. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 459 


We think of association, when we believe we think of consanguinity. The 
very word “ kin,’ except as employed in ethnological literature, is nearly dead: 
it survives only in poetry and in the occasional mouths of the illiterate. There 
are people to whom the mere mention of marriage with a former brother’s wife 
or dead wife’s sister is abhorrent because the word “ sister-in-law ” reminds 
them of “ sister.” 

From this particular overrefinement the overwhelming mass of nations are 
exempt. They often have their own equivalent scruples, such as balking at 
marrying a “ clan-sister.” But in the present point they think consistently, and 
it is we who are exceptionally irrational. Not only in aboriginal America but 
all over the world people espouse what we miscall ‘ relatives by marriage.” 
Thus, all through California a man is entitled to marry his brother’s widow ; 
and among most tribes it is expected of him. So, too, if his wife dies he weds 
her sister or some other kin of hers. If he marries the sister while the wife 
is still living the objection can be only on the ground of the rule of monogamy 
being violated. If, finally, he adds to his mates his wife’s daughter by some 
other man, he is still adhering rigidly to his premises. We are revolted by a 
false impression of incestuousness as well as by the polygamy, when actually 
we might base a valid objection only on the ground of sexual delicacy. This 
particular delicacy the Indian of many tribes lacks; but he replaces it by 
another, in the total lack of which we are utter barbarians and brutes: he will 
not look his wife’s mother in the eye or give himself any opportunity to do so. 
He will marry his stepdaughter; but he will refuse ever to address a word to 
his mother-in-law. 

That, then, is the condition of marriage that underlies the practices of the 
Miwok as of the other Californian tribes. There is only one point at which 
their possession of the dual organization specializes it. If a Miwok can marry 
a woman, he can marry her sister, because she is of the same eligible moiety ; 
and for the same reason he can marry the woman that his brother was wed to. 
Both these practices are indeed followed. He can not, however, properly marry 
his wife’s daughter, as a Costanoan or Yurok is free to do, because the daughter 
is of the moiety of her father, which is also that of her stepfather. If no sister 
is available some other relative of the wife must therefore be substituted for 
her daughter as successor or cowife the moment the moiety system is operative. 
The nearest of these kin, of the same moiety as herself, is her brother’s daugh- 
ter; if the husband is Land, his wife is Water, her brother must be Water, and 
his daughter Water also, and therefore eligible. Now, the Miwok actually 
marry their wives’ brothers’ daughters, and they proclaim such marriages as 
fitting and frequent. 

One more step and we have cross-cousin marriage. Once this type of mar- 
riage is fairly frequent the husband is likely to be conceded some right to his 
wife’s niece, just as most nonmoiety tribes in California admit that he pos- 
sesses at least some preferential priority to his wife’s sister. Such a claim once 
established, no matter how irregularly exercised, would descend to the man’s 
son, who is of the man’s own moiety. The father would only have to die before 
his wife’s niece was old enough to be wed; or he might reach an age in which 
he would voluntarily transfer his claim to his son, particularly if he had bound 
it by a payment. But the son in marrying his father’s wife’s brother’s daughter 
would be marrying his mother’s brother’s daughter; that is, exactly the type 
of cross cousin whom among the Miwok he can and does marry. 

It seems rather likely that this is exactly the manner in which the curiously 
one-sided cousin marriage of the Miwok has come about: it is merely a secondary 


460 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


outgrowth of the more basic marriage to the wife’s niece, and this in turn a 
specialized form of the general ‘practice of wedding a close relative of the wife. 
This deduction is confirmed by the fact that while there are no terms of rela- 
tionship that reflect cross-cousin marriage as such, there are a dozen that sug- 
gest and agree with marriage to the wife’s niece. 

Here, too, we have an explanation of the extraordinary fact that the cousins 
who marry call each other ‘“ stepmother” and ‘ son.” If the father marries 
the girl, she becomes a second mother or stepmother to her cousin and he a sort 
of son to her. She therefore is his potential stepmother until the father va- 
cates his right; when she becomes, or can become, the son’s wife instead of his 
stepmother. 

This so exceptional marriage of a relative—quite abnormal from the generic 
American point of view—thus seems to rest upon the almost universal basis 
of marriage to an affinity by marriage, modified in detail but not in principle 
by the exogamic moiety scheme of the Miwok, and given its culmination by the 
simple transfer of a privilege from father to son. The real specialization of 
the Miwok lies in this last transfer. Natural as it may seem, it may have 
caused them a hard wrench; for after all, in spite of its plausibility, it tran- 
scended the fundamental principle that kin do not cohabit. What is legitimate 
for the father is not necessarily legitimate for the son, for after all one is not 
and the other is related by ties of blood to the Woman in question. The problem 
presented by Miwok cousin marriage is therefore reduced rather than solved: 
we still do not know what caused the son’s right to prevail over the aversion 
to kin wedlock. If the Miwok were a people with a marked interest in prop- 
erty, as Shown by numerous and refined regulations concerning ownership such 
as the Yurok have worked out, the case would be simple: but their institutions 
are not of this cast. It is even doubtful whether purchase entered very Sseri- 
ously into their marriages. Nothing to this effect has ever been reported of 
them ; and their neighbors on all sides did indeed give something for their wives, 
but guite clearly never thought of turning marriage into a wholehearted com- 
mercial transaction like the northwestern tribes. Another explanation must 
therefore be sought: and the only circumstance that appears is the moiety sys- 
tem itself. This, with its accentuation of one-sided in place of undifferen- 
tiated descent, may well have accentuated the idea of descent itself, and there- 
fore of inheritance, and thus brought about the necessary reenforcement of 
the son’s claim. A dual organization lends itself particularly to such a develop- 
ment. 

Under a multiple clan system a man’s nearer kin are overwhelmingly of only 
two social groups out of several or many, so that normally he would have 
few or no blood relatives, and those more or less remote, in whatever of the 
other groups he married into. With a dual organization, however, he must 
necessarily average as many actual kinsmen in the group into which he is 
bound to marry as in his own. Under clan organization, therefore, a distinction 
between kin groups and marriage groups tends to be kept alive; in any moiety 
scheme it is liable to effacement, at least in mental attitude. As long as a 
man must marry into a group in which he has many immediate relatives, 
the feeling that he may marry a relative can not be very remote; and now and 
then it is likely to crop out and be accepted. Such seems to be the case in 
Australia, where the dual scheme is very deeply impressed on society and. 
where kin marriage is almost normal. In fact the Australian feeling seems 
to be as much that one should marry persons standing in a certain relationship 
to oneself as that one should not marry certain others; just as the Australian 
classes are now properly recognized as not being really exogamic; one is com- 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 461 


pelled to marry into a particular group, whereas under the clan system one 
is compelled to marry out of it. That the Miwok are dualistically organized, 
therefore, makes it the more likely that it is this very social scheme of theirs 
that gave the impetus to the final step that resulted in cross-cousin marriage. 


If this argument is valid it reacts to strengthen the probability, 
already mentioned, that the Miwok moiety scheme is original and not 
a reduced survival of a former clan system. 

No communication is held between a Miwok man and his brothers 
on the one hand and his mother-in-law and her sisters on the other; 
nor between a woman and her sisters, and her father-in-law and his 
brothers. A man also does not address his mother’s brother’s wife— 
his potential mother-in-law in that she is the mother of his eligible 
cross cousin. 

It is said that when speech is urgent between such shame-faced 
relatives, and no go-between or third party to be addressed is present, 
they will communicate with each other in the plural number—‘ as 
though more than one person were there.” The feeling, perhaps, 
is that the individuality of the addressed is obscured by the plurality. 
The same custom is followed by the Pomo and Kato, 


Cuaprer 31, 
THE COSTANOANS. 


Territory, 462; divisions, 463; population, 464; settlements, 464; shell mounds, 
466; cultural status, 466; clothing, 467; food, 467; basketry, 467; houses 
and boats, 468; social institutions, 468; death, 469; games, 470; ritual, 
470; shamanism, 472; mythology, 472. 


TERRITORY. 


The designation Costanoan is from Spanish Costafios, “ coast 
people.” Its awkwardness is in some measure atoned for by its 
consistency of usage in literature. The name would be difficult 
to replace by one coined from native sources, since the words denot- 
ing “men” or “people” vary from dialect to dialect within the 
group. But the appellation Costanoan is in one respect felicitous: 
The other main divisions of the Penutian family held the great 
interior valley of California as their habitat, while with the excep- 
tion of a small branch of the Miwok, the Costanoan tribes occupied 
the whole of the shore districts to which the Penutians laid claim. 

The San Joaquin River belonged to the Yokuts, the Sacramento 
to the Maidu and Wintun. At the point where these two streams 
debouch into San Francisco Bay Costanoan territory begins. The 
winding north shores of the bay were Wintun and Coast Miwok; 
but the entire southern border, including the long arm known as 
San Francisco Bay proper, was Costanoan to the Golden Gate. 
Irom here south their range followed the coast to beyond Monterey: 
to Point Sur, to be exact. 

The Costanoan limits inland are not precisely known. They have 
sometimes been asserted, or loosely assumed, to have been formed by 
the San Joaquin River, but it is far more probable that the boundary 
was constituted by the interior chain of the coast ranges, the Mount 
Diablo Range of the maps. 

The included territory falls into two natural divisions. The north- 
ern half drains into San Francisco Bay, or by short streams into the 
adjacent ocean. The southern half includes the catchment area of 
the Pajaro River and the lower courses of the Salinas and Carmel, 
all of which flow into Monterey Bay or the ocean just below. The 
main line of dialectic cleavage within the Costanoan group appears 
to coincide with the irregular line separating these northern and 
southern areas. 


462 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 468 


DIVISIONS, 


Seven Franciscan missions were founded in Costanoan territory, 
and it was not many years before all members of the stock had been 
brought into association with these establishments. Here Indians 
not only of distinct villages, but of separate dialects, were brought 
together, and found themselves mingled with utterly alien converts 
from the north, the south, and the interior. As along the entire coast 
of the State, there was no political cohesion worth mentioning be- 
tween the little towns. Native appellations of wider applicability 
were therefore lacking; and the result was that the dialects that can 
be distinguished are known chiefly by the names of the missions at 
which each was the principal or original one. Where native terms 
have obtained a vogue in literature, they appear to be only village 
designations used in an extended sense. Of this kind are Mutsun, 
for the dialect of San Juan Bautista; Rumsen or Runsien for that 
of Monterey; and Tamien for Santa Clara. 

The records that have been preserved show one principal dialect 
for each mission. Only at the establishments of Santa Clara and 
San Jose the speech differed so slightly that the two idioms must be 
united in a single dialect group. On the other hand, in the extreme 
north, toward San Pablo and Suisun Bays, there appears to have 
prevailed a distinctive tongue—which may be named the Saklan 
after one of the principal villages—that failed to have a mission 
established within its limits. This makes the number of dialect 
groups seven, the same as the number of missions. 

It is almost certain that minor divergences of idiom occurred in 
some of these areas. This is specifically mentioned at Monterey and 
at San Juan Bautista. Nothing is known, however, beyond this bare 
fact. Our information upon Costanoan speech is restricted to some 
records, often pitiful at that, of the idiom prevailing at such and 
such points that happened to be selected by the missionaries for their. 
foundations. We can only start from these points as centers, and 
conjecture the limits of each dialect group by following the water- 
sheds on the map. 

The transition from the northern dialects to the southern seems to 
have been by way of the speech of Santa Cruz approaching that of 
San Juan Bautista. The extreme southern and northern idioms, 
those of Soledad and of Saklan, are the least known, and appear to 
have been the most specialized. The latter may be suspected of hav- 
ing shown particular affinities to Wintun, Miwok, or Yokuts. 


3625°—25 31 





464. BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 
POPULATION. 


The Costanoan group is extinct so far as all practical purposes are 
concerned. <A few scattered individuals survive, whose parents were 
attached to the missions of San Jose, San Juan Bautista, and San 
Carlos; but they are of mixed tribal ancestry and lve almost lost 
among other Indians or obscure Mexicans. At best some knowledge 
of the ancestral speech remains among them. The old habits of hfe 
have long since been abandoned. The larger part of a century has 
passed since the missions were abolished, and nearly a century and 
a half since they commenced to be founded. These periods have 
sufficed to efface even traditional recollections of the forefathers’ 
habits, except for occasional fragments of knowledge. 

The aboriginal population is also difficult to judge. Perhaps an 
average of 1,000 heads per dialect group, or 7,000 for the stock as a 
whole, is not far from the mark. The numerous mission statistics are 
of little service in this connection. The priests were saving souls 
and not writing history, and no doubt had trouble enough to estab- 
lish the exact numbers of their flocks without going accurately into 
ethnic distinctions. Indians from the lower San Joaquin Valley 
were brought to most of the Costanoan missions. San Carlos re- 
ceived the bulk of the Esselen as well as the local Costanoans. Mis- 
sion Dolores, at San Francisco, must have contained an extraordinary 
jumble. Besides natives from the east side of the bay, as well as 
the peninsula, there were Coast Miwok from the north; perhaps 
southern Pomo and Wappo; and to these were added from time to 
time groups of Wintun, Maidu, Miwok, and Yokuts. Here and there 
a “tribal” or village name, of the many that occur in the mission 
records, can be identified as belonging to one or the other of these 
stocks, but the others remain mere names. As the local or nearer 
Indians died out under the shock of contact with civilization, those 
from a greater distance were brought in in increasing numbers. The 
proportional strength of the various stocks at any one establishment 
was therefore constantly changing and their respective absolute 
numbers at any given period remain quite conjectural. 


SETTLEMENTS, 


A long series of village names has been preserved through the 
notations of the missionaries. Something like 100 such are known 
to have furnished converts to San Francisco alone. Most of these 
names are Costanoan insound. Distinctive elements of the language 
can frequently be recognized in them, but in most instances there is 
no record of the location of these villages, or of their interrelations 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 465 


as permanent towns and suburbs or summer camps. Such villages 
as can in any way be identified have been entered in Figure 42; 
though a considerable proportion of these can be but vaguely located. 











Matala-n® 





usai-ma 
Huris-tak 
Hollister 
Pn 
San Juan Bautista 
2 
Mus-tak 


Imuna-kan 
e 





Kalinta-ruk(e 


Paisi-n 
n 


oSalinas 


+SanCarlos ‘~_ 
Ln 


Soledad 


+ eWacharo-n 
Sirhin-ta-ruk 


Kakon-ta-ruk 








Fig. 42.—Costanoan dialect areas and approximate sites of some settlements. 


The ending -n that occurs in so many Costanoan village names perhaps means 
“people of.” So does -mak, -kam, or -kma, which is the plural suffix for 
persons. On the other hand, -tak, -tka, -ta, -te, -to, is the locative case: “ place 
of.” The meaning of -mo, -me is similar. Ruk, “house,” is used as an ending 
in the plural sense of “ town.’ Kalin-ta-ruk, is “‘ ocean-at-houses,’ Kakon-ta- 
ruk, ‘‘ chickenhawk-place-houses,” 


466 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The termination -2 occurs in numerous names of places or tribes that were 
outside Costanoan tervitory but probably first known to the Spaniards through 
Costanoan guides or interpreters. Such are Hssele-n, also Esle-n and Ense-n ; 
compare Hsla-n-aga-n, and, in the same territory, Ekhe-aga-n. Wintun divisions 
are: Suisu-n, Karki-n, Tole-n, Pulpe-n. Coast Miwok—Bauli-n. Yokuts— 
Choloo-n or Cholovo-n. Plains Miwok or perhaps Maidu—Hulpu-n, Olpe-n. 
Unknown, perhaps Costanoan—Umpi-n, Lama-n, Piteme-n. Often the -n has 
been added to a term from a foreign language thus: Hulpu-n or Hulpu-mni, 
Choloo-n or Chula-mni. 

Of the little wars—or village feuds—that agitated the Costa- 
noan groups from time to time, the following have been recorded: 
The Salso-n against the natives of San Francisco; the Sakla-n 
against the same, or against the Oakland tribe transplanted to the 
mission ; the Ausai-ma against the-Mutsu-n; the Wacharo-n or others 
of the Soledad region against the northern Salinans, 


SHELL MOUNDS. 


The entire Costanoan frontage on ocean and bay is lined with shell 
deposits. San Francisco Bay in particular is richer in such remains 
than any other part of the State, except perhaps the Santa Barbara 
Islands. Many of these, and probably the upper layers of nearly all, 
must accordingly be ascribed to the Costanoans. Whether their pos- 
session of the district goes back as far as the earliest period repre- 
sented by the lower levels of the largest shell mounds, a time esti- 
mated at 3,000 or more years ago, is entirely problematical. There 
is nothing to show that the Costanoan tribes were or were not then 
in their more recent seats. 


CULTURAL STATUS. 


A number of early voyagers visited the Costanoan missions, espe- 
cially those at San Francisco and Monterey. Their accounts con- 
tain much of value, but are tantalizing to the ethnologist in that they 
describe the modified life at the missions rather than aboriginal cus- 
toms. ‘The universal testimony, however, is that the Costanoan In- 
dians made an unfavorable impression. They were dark, dirty, 
squalid, and apathetic; and travelers coming from the north as well 
as those arriving from the south were struck by the obvious paucity 
and rudeness of the native culture in the Costanoan area as com- 
pared with other regions. Choris paints their temperament in two 
phrases: “TI have never seen one laugh. I have never seen one look 
one in the face.” The mission atmosphere at San Francisco may 
have accentuated these traits; but they are typical for much of cen- 
tral California. 


fom 
op 
~I 


KROKBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF GWALIFORNIA 
CLOTHING. 


The men were accustomed to go naked when the weather permitted. 
The women wore the usual two short skirts, one before and one 
behind, made either of deerskin, tule, or bark fiber. The rabbit-skin 
blanket served both as mantle and as bedding. A common custom of 
the men was to coat themselves thickly with mud in the morning 
until the sun shone warm. Whether the women wore basketry hats is 
very uncertain. Face tattooing was customary for women. It ran 
to lines or rows of dots as among all the central Californians. (Fig. 
45, b,-c.) 

FOOD. 


Mussels, whose shells constitute so large a proportion of the 
mounds of San Francisco Bay and the coast, are specifically men- 
tioned as an important food of the Costanoans. Sea lions were 
hunted, though the precise manner is not known. The tule raft 
must have been an unsatisfactory conveyance, and in most weathers 
a dangerous one, for reaching the surf-surrounded rocks on which 
the animals sun themselves. When a whale came ashore food was 
plentiful, but as there was no way of hunting these monsters the 
supply which they furnished must have been most irregular and 
undependable. Salmon begin to be numerous in the streams that 
enter the ocean in Costanoan territory, or at least were so in former 
times, though never reaching the numbers which they attained in 
more northern rivers. South of the Costanoans the salmon ceases 
as an important food. The taking of this fish, with which that of 
lampreys was associated, must, however, have been restricted to the 
winter months of high water. Seaweed replaced salt. 

The plant foods were the usual ones. On the immediate coast, 
where acorns were few or lacking, seeds seemed to have replaced 
them. Acorn meal was leached both in the southern way through 
an openwork basket and in the northern style by means of a hollow 
in the sand in which the flour was spread. The usual California 
practice was followed of burning the country over in order to clear 
out the underbrush for facilitating acorn gathering and to foster 
the growth of seed-bearing annuals. A rabbit stick is mentioned 
as used in rabbit drives. This suggests a southern Californian influ- 
ence; but the sticks are specified as straight. Mvery hunter held one 
in each hand. 

BASKBETRY., 


Costanoan basketry has perished. One or two older specimens 
that have been preserved are of little historic value, because shaped 
according to European ideas. Other pieces, not quite so old, that 


468 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


are attributed to Indians at Costanoan missions, are Yokuts or 
Miwok in style, and were probably made by members of these 
stocks that had been taken to the religious establishments. A very 
few other specimens remain, but the ethnic provenience of even 
these is clouded. It is not even known whether Costanoan basketry 
stood in specific affinities with that of the Pomo, or showed any 
of the distinct traits of Yokuts work; nor in fact how far it was 
similar to the simpler ware of the Miwok. Baskets ornamented 
with feathers, shell pendants, and beads are mentioned; but un- 
fortunately we can not be sure that these were truly of Costanoan 
origin, nor, if so, how prevalent a type they were. 

The carrying net for loads and baskets was used by the Costa- 
noans. It may be suspected that’ this was of the southern or Sho-. 
shonean rather than the northern or Pomo type. 


HOUSES AND BOATS. 


The house in which the Indians lived at the missions appears to 
have been mainly a native construction on a more or less Kuropean 
plan. The aboriginal house was primarily a structure of poles cov- 
ered with brush or tule matting. There is no reference to the earth- 
covered lodges of the interior valley, but it can hardly be imagined 
that they were entirely unknown. ‘There is some evidence of the 
existence of a high conical house of thatch. Slender poles and withes 
held the thatch together from the outside against the interior frame- 
work. A few individuals who survived until recently near Monterey 
recollect a house of redwood planks. Slabs of bark of this tree are 
much more likely to have been the aboriginal form, since there is no 
authentic report of any true wooden house south of northernmost 
California. The sweat house was an institution in daily use, but no 
details of its size or construction have been preserved. 

The tule raft was the only boat known to the Costanoans; and on 
this they crossed San Francisco Bay, which is normally a sheet of 
far from calm surface and of strong currents. The balsa was pro- 
pelled by double-bladed paddles, such as recur in the Santa Barbara 
Island region, but there in connection with well-made canoes of 
planks. 


SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. 


Chieftainship is stated to have passed by descent, which may be 
taken as meaning a succession from father to son. The influence of 
the chief is said to have been limited, but several accounts mention 
that he took a leading part in war. This, if true, would be rather 
exceptional for California. Prisoners were not taken, or, if so, dis- 
patched as soon as possible. The slain foe was mutilated or dismem- 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 469 


bered. His scalp was carried about in triumph. It seems that the 
“scalp” was of the usual Californian kind: the head, or its entire 
skin. Some parts of the enemy were eaten, it is said, by the parents 
of the slayer. Songs of insult or vengeance were common, both as 
an aftermath and as a new cause of fighting. Here again there are 
southern Californian reminiscences; as well as Miwok ones. 

Marriage was loose and divorce ready. Shell money was tendered 
for the bride, but the transaction must have been commercially in- 
formal or separations could not have taken place as readily as is 
stated. The fact that the mother retained the children is evidence 
in the same direction. Among the south Costanoans it is said mono- 
gamy was the rule except for chieftains; much as among the Salinans, 
Chumash, and Juaneho. In the north different practices prevailed, 
a man espousing his wife’s sisters, daughters, or other relatives. A 
bit of etiquette reported also from the Wintun was for a bride to 
resist the approach of her husband with her nails. He was expected 
to appear with his face scratched: if he did not, the young woman 
seems to have been thought immodest. 

Customs of birth and adolescence are undescribed, except that a 
woman after childbirth lay for a number of days with her child on 
fresh foliage that covered a pit lined with baked stones. In this 
custom again there is a suggestion of southern California, although 
in that region the practice applied primarily to adolescent girls. 

Tobacco was smoked. The eating of it with hme is not men- 
tioned. 


DEATH. 


Accounts of the native method of disposing of the dead are some- 
what in conflict, but cremation appears to have been the rule. From 
San Ifrancisco it 1s reported that poor people, or those with few or 
lazy relatives, were buried, but that if the kin or friends would gather 
wood, the corpse was burned. This is likely to have been the custom 
throughout the Costanoan area. The funeral took place soon after 
death. There is no mention in any of the sources of anniversary 
mourning ceremonies. This omission proves little, but, on the other 
hand, it is not inconceivable that the Costanoans followed the cus- 
toms of the Pomo and other tribes of the coast north of San Fran- 
cisco Bay, among none of whom such rites prevailed. The property 
of the dead was thoroughly destroyed, the reason alleged being that 
the deceased would then be no longer remembered. A1l that we know 
of other Californian Indians indicates this as a genuine motive; but 
the coexistence of other reasons is not necessarily excluded. 

The universal custom of avoidance of the name of the dead was 
rigorously adhered to. Even a reference to the deceased was the pro- 


470 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


foundest affront to his kin. At the height of a quarrel such phrases as 
“ Your father is dead” were likely to be bandied about. 

The dead were believed to go to an island across the ocean, as by 
the Yokuts and Miwok. That they were now and then thought to 
return from this abode is probable, but that there was a belief in 
literal reincarnation is a statement which must be accepted with 
caution. 

GAMES. 


The guessing game was played for 24 counters at Monterey. In 
place of one marked and one unmarked bone, each player held a single 
bit of bone or shell in one hand and left the other empty. The 
manipulating was done under a mat. Two men sat on aside. Their 
opponents did not take up the implements until the bones of both 
their opponents had been guessed. 

Shinny was the simple southern type of game, played by a dozen 
or so men on a side, with a wooden ball struck out of a hole in the 
middle of the field. Women played the same or a similar game. 

The football race of southern California and the Southwest was 
also Known. A contest is spoken of in which a pair of contestants 
ran from San Luis Obispo to San Juan Bautista, a distance of 
over 100 miles, in two days, without touching the wooden ball other 
than with the feet. In aboriginal times races of this distance could 
not have taken place; and in general it is likely that this game was 
of less importance until fostered by the settled condition and con- 
stant intercourse of the mission period. 


RITUAL. 


The proximity of the northern Costanoan area to Wintun territory 
renders it highly probable that many elements of the Sacramento 
Valley ceremonial system, if not the main part of the scheme itself, 
must have penetrated some distance south of San Francisco Bay. 
In this event it is likely that the specific feather costumes, dances, 
and songs were accompanied in their gradual migration by the foot 
drum and the earth-covered dance house. There is, however, no 
direct evidence of the existence of this cult among the Costanoan 
Indians. A few survivors in north Costanoan territory know of 
the Auksui dance with the Lole and Hiweyi as accompaniments; but 
as these individuals live with descendants of missionized Plains 
Miwok and northern Yokuts, who of late years greatly outnumber 
them, it is not altogether certain that the dances are native to the 
locality. The Auksut or HKuksuyu dancer is said to have had his 
face uncovered, and to have carried his whistle projecting horizon- 
tally from his mouth. If it were thoroughly certain that the occur- 
rence of this dance personage among the Salinan Indians to the south 


> 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA A71 


of the Costanoans was not due to involuntary importation by the 
missionaries incident to their transfer of interior tribes to the coast, 
the existence of the ceremony in this remoter region would render 
its ancient prevalence throughout Costanoan territory almost certain. 

There is no mention of the use of Jimson weed at the Costanoan 
missions, and it is likely that the cult had not penetrated the area. 
In fact, the plant seems to grow in only a few spots in Costanoan 
territory. 

Several of the older authors make specific mention of prayers and 
offerings to the sun, from which may be inferred the existence of a 
more definite form of sun worship than is usual in California, 
though al] details are lacking. At Mission San Jose a dance was 
made at the winter solstice. Whether this is to be associated with 
the supposed sun cult or was part of the Kuksu system, whose dances 
are winter rites, must be left to conjecture. 

Offerings of meal, presumably both of acorns and of seeds, are 
repeatedly referred to and must have formed a characteristic part of 
Costanoan ritual. his is a practice that seems most pronounced 
among the northern Shoshoneans of southern California, and proba- 
bly reached the Costanoans by way of the Chumash andi Salinans. 
The Yokuts most frequently offer eagle down or tobacco. The latter 
was employed by the Costanoan peoples, but apparently less exten- 
sively. 

Besides meal, arrows and lttle feathered rods were used as of- 
ferings. The latter provide an interesting suggestion of the far- 
away southwestern prayer sticks or prayer plumes; nearer parallels 
are among the Maidu and Chumash. 

Sacred objects, besides the sun, were large redwood trees; and 
Pajaro River is said to derive its name from a stuffed bird which 
the natives were found worshipping. 

There is some evidence, especially in the fragmentary myths that 
have been preserved, that the Costanoan ceremonial number was five. 
The position of the stock among groups that thought in fours or 
‘sixes renders it regrettable that this indication of distinctiveness can 
not be positively substantiated. 

Costanoan songs are unusually pleasing to civilized people; but 
this may be because more than a century of association with Span- 
iards has conformed their intervals and perhaps their rhythm to 
the wont of our ears. 

A dance song runs: 


Dancing on the brink of the world. 


Another, first sung by the wood rat: 


I dream of you, 
I dream of you jumping, 
Rabbit, jack rabbit, and quail, 


¢ 


472 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


A blind man’s charm, which, played on the flute, drew on a girl 
who became his wife: 


There goes meat. 


Another charm, to bring a man home, was first sung for Fog, who 
was thus notified that his wife was being maltreated : 
Now he beats your wife, 
Pelican is beating her. 
When the hunter wishes to charm the deer into not scenting his 
approach, he sings: 


Its nose is stopped with (fragrant) estafiarte. 


A love song, composed in or since mission times, but on aboriginal 
lines, runs: | 
Come! Come! 
I mean you 
With the brown hat. 
The character of the words recalls the type of those customary in 
Yokuts songs. 
SHAMANISM. 


Costanoan shamanism has passed away with scarcely a trace. We 
know that the doctor sang, danced, and sucked material objects out 
of the body of the sick, and that sometimes he was believed to exer- 
cise control of the weather and of the natural crops. His relation 
to his spirits, the precise manner in which disease was caused, the 
actions attending his entrance into the profession, the probable 
belief in bear shamans, are all matters on which the evidence is lost. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


Costanoan myths carry numerous suggestions of Yokuts cos- 
mogony. They commence with the world covered by water, above 
which rises a single mountain top. In the vicinity of Monterey 
this is designated as Pico Blanco; farther north, Mount Diablo.. 
The latter mountain, by the way, was so named by the Spaniards 
with reference to the Indian belief in its habitation by spirits, much 
like the Marysville Buttes of the Maidu and Doctor Rock peak of the 
Yurok and Tolowa. 

On this lonely spot are the coyote, the eagle, and the humming 
bird, the eagle being chief of the three; or, according to other 
accounts, the coyote stands alone until he is joined by the eagle, 
who arises from a feather floating on the water—like the Yuki 
Creator. After the ocean recedes the land is explored and human 
beings made by the coyote at the direction of the eagle. The coyote 
in particular marries the first woman. He and the humming bird 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 473 


come into conflict, but his smaller antagonist eludes and surpasses 
the coyote. 

The latter is tricky, gluttonous, and desirous of women. At 
times he loses his wife or otherwise comes to grief. Occasionally he 
is successful. In still other narratives he appears as the bringer of 
culture. He institutes tribes and languages, shows people how to 
secure food, and gives them houses and utensils. 

It is impossible to say from what little survives of these traditions 
whether the Costanoan tribes carried out to any considerable degree 
the animal characterization that pervades the myths of the Yokuts, 
just as it is conceivable that the associated San Joaquin Valley 
system of totemic moieties may have extended to the Costanoans, 
though we do not know such to have been the case. On the other 
hand, it is clear that they did not share to any marked degree in 
the typical Sacramento Valley mythology with its long systematized 
myths of the origin of the world, its attempts at philosophy, and its 
formulation of a wise and majestic creator, 


CHAPTER 382. 
THE YOKUTS: GEOGRAPHY. 


Tribal organization, 474; habitat, 475; classification, 477; tribes of the Buena 
Vista group of the foothill division, 478; of the Poso Creek group, 479; 
of the Tule-Kaweah group, 479; of the Kings River group, 480; of the 
northern foothill group, 481; of the southern group of the valley division, 
482; of the northern valley group, 484; speech and topography, 486; desig- 
nations of the stock, 488; Yokuts and other California population, 488. 


TRIBAL ORGANIZATION. 


The Yokuts are unique among the California natives in one re- 
spect. They are divided into true tribes. Each has a name, a 
dialect, and a territory. The first of these traits, the group name, 
is wanting in other Californians, who normally are able to designate 
themselves only by the appellation of the place they inhabit. The 
second feature, dialectic separateness, of course is an old story for 
California, but elsewhere in the State each idiom is usually common 
to a considerable number of tribelets or “ village communities.” 
Only in the third trait, their political independence and their owner- 
ship of a tract of land, are the ordinary Californian village com- 
munities and the Yokuts tribes similar. 

Forty of these tribes are sufficiently known to be locatable. In 
the northern part of the Yokuts areas the map is, however, blank 
except for a few names of groups of uncertain situation and doubt- 
ful affinities. The total number of tribes may therefore have 
reached 50. Such an array of dialects is unparalleled, and gives to 
the Yokuts alone nearly one-third of all the different forms of 
speech talked in the State. The differences of language from tribe 
to tribe were often rather limited; but they are marked enough to 
be readily perceptible to the interested Caucasian observer. Since 
the total length of the Yokuts area does not much exceed 250 miles 
and the breadth nowhere attains to 100, the individual geographical 
range of these little languages was exceedingly narrow. Their ter- 
ritory averaged perhaps 3800 square miles—say a half day’s foot 
journey in each direction from the center. 

Some of the tribes occupied a single spot with sufficient perma- 
nence to become identified with it: thus the Wowol on Atwells Island 
in Tulare Lake, the Gawia and Yokod on opposite sides of Kaweah 
River where this leaves the hills, the Choinimni at the junction of 


474 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 475 


Mill Creek and Kings River. Such groups, save for their distine 
tive speech, would be indistinguishable from the village communi- 
ties of their neighbors if the purely local designations of the latter 
were replaced by appellations for the people themselves. Still 
fainter is the line of demarcation when the Choinimni, for instance, 
are called, as occasionally happens, Tishechuchi after their town 
Tishechu; but such terms are rare among the Yokuts. 

For other tribes a principal and several subsidiary abodes are 
specified; thus the Paleuyami are identified with Altau and some- 
times called Altinin, but lived also at Bekiu, Shikidapau, Holmiu, 
and other places. The Hometwoli lived at three principal sites, and 
the Chukchansi, Tachi, Yauelmani, and others dwelt from time to 
time, and perhaps simultaneously, at a number of places scattered 
over a considerable tract. These instances confirm the Yokuts divi- 
sions as true tribes. 

Fully half the Yokuts tribal names end either in -amni, found 
also as -imni, -mina, -mani; or in -chi. The former suffix recurs added 
to place names among the Plains Miwok to designate the inhabitants 
of such and such spots, and among the Maidu as an ending of village 
names; the latter among the southern Miwok with the significance 
“people of.” But the subtraction of either of these endings from the 
names of Yokuts tribes usually leaves only meaningless syllables; 
and in general the people themselves are well content to employ their 
little national designations without inquiring what they may denote. 
The few etymologies which they have ventured in response to in- 
quiries are obviously naive and unhistorical. 


HABITAT. 


The home of the Yokuts was the San Joaquin Valley, the entire 
floor of which they held, from the mouth of the river to the foot of 
Tehachapi Pass. In addition, they occupied the adjacent lower 
slopes or foothills of the Sierra Nevada, up to an altitude of a few 
thousand feet, from Fresno River south, but nowhere to the north 
of that stream. The San Joaquin River proper flows down only the 
lower half of the length of the valley. Above it, Kings and then 
Kern River also break westward from the high mountains and 
the latter turns north into the treeless plains. Kern River drained 
into Tulare Lake, formerly a large, shallow basin of water surrounded 
by an even more extensive tract of swamp of tules, as two or three 
species of rush are locally known. The swamps are now reclaimed 
and much of the lake is normally dry and its area under cultivation. 
For most of the year, formerly, the evaporation over this immense 
sheet sufficed to equal the intake from Kern River and other streams; 
in time of flood the lake might drain north through Fish Slough 
into Kings River. This latter stream itself, though of considerable 


AT6 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


volume, was nearly lost in a lengthy area of swamp, whence its 
waters seem normally to have flowed backward into Tulare Lake. 
It seems that Kings River and Tulare Lake drained into the San 
Joaquin at no remote time, since the lake is fresh. The San Joaquin, 
from the point where it reached the central axis of the valley and 
perhaps once took in the excess discharge of Kings and Kern Rivers, 
was also bordered pretty continuously by tule swamps, though of less 
width than to the south. Hence the Spanish name “ Los Tulares” 
for the low-lying portion of the valley and “ Rio de los Tulares” for 
the stream, though by the latter term they understood the main line 
of the entire drainage system rather than its lower, more northerly 
portion alone, to which we, with greater precision but more arbitrary 
logic, restrict the name San Joaquin. Hence also the appellation 
Tularefios, under which they consistently and appropriately knew the 
Yokuts. (Pl. 47.) , 

The eastern side of the level valley is traversed by streams from 
the Sierra Nevada. A dozen or so of these merit the name “ river.” 
The west side of the valley, however, on the lee of the rather low 
and barren Mount Diablo Coast Range, is arid; and not even one 
permanent stream of any size whatsoever reaches the central river 
system from this left hand. The overwhelming bulk of the Ameri- 
can population is on the east side. The dispersion of the Yokuts was, 
if anything, even more unilateral. In the whole upper valley, in 
which the distribution of the Yokuts groups is pretty accurately 
known, there were only two tribes, the Tulamni and Tachi, in the 
large tract west of Tulare Lake and Kings River; and even of these 
two the Tachi preferred to cross to the east side when summer and 
autumn dried the overflowed lands and rendered their winter habitat 
a virtual desert. 

Along the west of the San Joaquin we have less certain knowl- 
edge. ‘This territory seems to have belonged to the Yokuts, though 
in default of precise information it has sometimes been attributed 
to the Costanoan people or to the Miwok. ‘This very doubt indicates 
an unimportant occupation; and while the area was almost certainly 
visited by the Yokuts, and probably claimed by one or more of their 
northerly tribes, the number of residents must also have been very 
few. 

The flow of Sierra rivers of approximately equal length is ever less toward 
the south, so that Yokuts streams are smaller than those in Miwok territory 


and much smaller than those occupied by the Maidu. The run-off in millions 
of acre-feet is approximately as follows. Yokuts: Kern, =; Kaweah, 4; Kings, 
2; San Joaquin, 2. Miwok: Merced, 14; Tuolumne, 2; Stanislaus, 14; Moke- 
lumne, 1. Maidu: American, 33; Yuba, 34; Feather, at Oroville, 6; the Sacra- 
mento at Red Bluff, above the Feather, 104, most of it from the Pit. Even a 
short affluent of the Pit, Fall River, the habitat of one Achomawi division, 


carries about a million acre-feet, or more than the lengthy Kern or Kaweah. 


KROBBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 477 
CLASSIFICATION, 


The classification of the Yokuts tribes must be made, like that of 
other Indians, and those of California in particular, on the basis of 
language. In spite of the number of the tribes, this it not difficult; 
for the dialects fall clearly into two great divisions, which coincide 
with the two topographic regions held by the stock: the valley 
proper and the foothills of the southern Sierra Nevada. Only in 
the extreme south were there three tribes speaking idioms of the 
foothill type but dwelling in the plains between Tulare Lake and 
the Tehachapi region. ‘These three dialects, closely similar to one 
another, are easily the most divergent of all Yokuts forms of speech, 
and thus argue an unusual and peculiar history for the little remote 
group of people whose idiom was derived from that of the mountains 
while their habitat was in the valley. 

The valley dialects are the most uniform, in fact remarkably simi- 
lar to one another. A Yokuts from Stockton must have been able 
to understand considerable of the talk of one from Bakersfield—a 
condition utterly unparalleled for any like distance elsewhere in 
California; for although the Northern Paiute and Mono afford a 
technical exception, they are mostly east of the Sierra Nevada and 
hence in the Great Basin outside the natural limits of California. 
The Yokuts Valley dialects seem to be classifiable into two groups, 
a northern along the San Joaquin and a southern from Kings River 
south; but the former is very little known, and it is possible that 
fuller information regarding it might shift the line of demarcation. 

The foothill dialects, though hardly more numerous and spoken 
over a very much smaller area, are far more diversified. This might 
be anticipated from the topography of their territory. Their variety 
may, however, also be due to the historical fortunes of the foothill 
tribes. The farther south one progresses along the lower Sierra, the 
more deviations does one encounter from the type of Yokuts speech 
which is numerically preponderant and therefore justly to be con- 
sidered the normal and presumably original form. Now the Yokuts 
as a whole constitute the southernmost branch of the great Penutian 
family, which, so to speak, radiates in five directions from the region 
of the entrance of the Sacramento and San Joaquin into the head of 
San Francisco Bay; in other words from the lowest and’ central 
point of the Great Valley of California. That the foothill dialects 
of Yokuts become more and more specialized the farther they are 
situated from this center of influence and possibly of origin is cer- 
tainly significant; though whether it is significant of successive 
migrations from the north, of longer contact with Shoshonean and 
Chumash aliens, or merely of ever reduced intercourse with kins- 
men, must as yet be left to conjecture. 


478 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


The northern group of tribes in the foothill division are those living on the 
San Joaquin where this stream still pursues a southwesterly course before 
turning into the main line of the valley. Their dialects are very similar to those 
of the adjacent northern valley tribes; so much so that they could almost be 
reckoned as of one group with them were it not that the more and more in- 
sistent divergence of all subsequent foothill dialects draws these northernmost 
idioms into the distinctive hill class. This comparative indeterminateness be- 
tween the speech of the northern hills and plains is paralleled in the topog- 
raphy. Along the San Joaquin and to the north, the perfectly flat valley shades 
imperceptibly into the gentlest undulations, which swell and magnify into long 
low hillocks, until the foothills proper are gradually reached. 

From Kings River south the transition from plain to foothills is abrupt, a 
single step often being literally sufficient to carry one from one area into the 
other. This means that the physiography is sharply distinct, and that the 
native modes of life, with their direct adaptation to the soil, can not be identical. 
It is therefore not surprising that the Kings River group of foothill dialects 
is well marked off from the adjacent southern valley group. 

The Tule-Kaweah group comprises the idioms on these two streams, with 
which the foothill portion of Deer Creek must be included. 

The Poso Creek group of dialects covers not only this stream but White 
River to the north and a section of Kern River to the south. 

With the Buena Vista group, finally, the greatest departure from average Yo- 
kuts speech is attained, but, as already mentioned, the foothill habitat of the 
remainder of the division was abandoned, at least in historic times. 


Here follow the names of the Yokuts tribes, their habitats, and 
their principal known villages. The sequence is from foothills to 
valley and from south to north, the reverse of that just pursued, in 
order to allow of procedure from the better to the less known. 


TRIBES OF THE BUENA VISTA GROUP OF THE FOOTHILL DIVISION. 


The Tulamni (plural Tulalmina) were the tribe in possession of Buena Vista 
Lake, at some point on whose western or northwestern shore where the hills 
come close to the water was their main settlement Tulamniu, “ Tulamni-place.” 
From there they ranged westward to Wogitiu in the vicinity of McKittrick. 
(Pl. 47.) 

On Kern Lake were the Hometwoli or Humetwadi. This name means 
“ southerners ” and is a variant of the common term Homtinin applied by any 
Yokuts to those of their neighbors who live to the south. The true tribal designa- 
tion of the Hometwoli has been forgotten. They inhabited at least three princi- 
pal sites: Halau near the entrance of Kern River into the channel connecting 
Kern and Buena Vista Lakes; Loasau, somewhere on the north side of Kern 
Lake; and Pohalin Tinliu (meaning “ ground squirrels’ hole”) in Yauelmani, or 
Sihetal Daal in the Hometwoli dialect itself, on the south shore. 

The Tuhohi, Tohohai, or Tuhohayi (the ¢ is almost like English tr) are 
extinct. They are said to have spoken a dialect similar to Tulamni and Home- 
twoli, and to have lived among the channels and tule-lined sloughs of lower 
Kern River where these became lost in Tulare Lake. They may have ranged 
as far as Goose Lake. Their principal habitation is spoken of as Tahayu, 
“ Tuhohi-place.” 

A little mystery may be dispelled here. Stephen Powers found among the 
Yauelmani one old man, the survivor of a tribe that had once lived on Kern 


K ROBBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 479 


Lake, and whose numerals, and therefore speech, he recognized as distinctively 
non-Yokuts. Inquiry proves that the survivor had been at one of the missions, 
had there learned more or less Salinan, and that some of its vocables sug- 
gested to him Yokuts words of entirely different meaning. He used to regale 
his friends with accounts of his travels; and his rattling off the Salinan count 
us a meaningless string of Yokuts words became a well-known entertainment ; 
much as we might amuse a child with a tale of a strange people called the 
Spanish who counted “ You-know, toes, tray, quarrel.” Here are the Salinan 
originals and his puns: 


BLO, KI sillier ee ene kile. 

ICON, eee eee a eS ce choyochi. 

Ey 028 pod 4 Sige roan eal AU i a il uyatsi. 

Ed EES at ar tl Da ian ana hl lle aa A Sah chuichau (a place name). 
olchat, ulchao_____ ee ee Meee lopechin-tinliu (at the fish hole). 
ALLAN OTe L ego fs tig 2 Beet aoe bik NO aed Se ee al pokoichin-tinliu. 

1S ET 8 a aca aa ig age te tuhtu 

LAR 2) Weyl lag one ca tal ape Red Nil res pusin-tinliu (at the dog’s hole). 
OLED 0) baie pt 2 aes oat Gad hosche. 

[BINS Corp Lely ade kok A ail ay teh poem al | chiwa 


TRIBES OF THE POSO CREEK GROUP OF THE FOOTHILL DIVISION. 


The Paleuyami, Padeuyami, Peleuyi, or, as they were called by their Shoshon- 
ean neighbors, Paluyam, had their headquarters in the hills beside Poso Creek, 
especially at Altau (‘‘salt-grass place”), which lay just south of this stream 
about as far up in the hills as K’ono-ilkin or Kern Falls, to which place, and 
adjacent sites on Kern River, they, as well as the Yauelmani of the valley, 
appear to have come. They had also Bekiu and Shikidapau (shikid, “arrow ’’) 
in Poso Flat, and Holmiu in Linn’s Valley. 

The Kumachisi, Komechesi, Kometsiosi, or Kumachesi (plural Kumach- 
wadi) centered about Hoschiu on White River. They were sometimes known 
as the Small Paleuyami, the Altinin of Altau being the Great Paleuyami. 
Some informants identify them with the obscure Shoshonean tribe called the 
Giamina, whose habitat is said to have been in or near the Paleuyami terri- 
tory. The majority of the Kumachisi probably knew more than one language ; 
as to whether their native dialect was of the Paleuyami type, or of the valley 
division, or indeed not Yokuts at all but Shoshonean, there is no certain 
evidence. 


TRIBES OF THE TULE-KAWEAH GROUP OF THE FOOTHILL DIVISION. 


The Yaudanchi or Yaulanchi (plural Yauedchani or Yawilchini), also called 
Nutaa (plural Nuchawayi), “easterners, uplanders ”’—whence Garcés’s generic 
designation of the Yokuts as Noche—held Tule River in the foothills, especially 
the North and Middle Forks. One of their principal winter quarters was 
Shawahtau, above Springville. Near by was Ukunui (“drink”); and house 
pits at Uchiyingetau (‘‘ markings’) at the painted rocks, and at Tungoshud 
(“gate”) near the agency, on Tule River Reservation, hark back to either 
Yaudanchi or Bokninuwad occupancy. In spring and early summer they gath- 
ered seeds in the vicinity of Lindsay; in late summer or fall they met with 
other tribes in Koyeti territory about Porterville for fishing and elk hunting. 
In dry and hungry seasons the southern end of Tulare Lake would be fre- 
quented in search of tule roots. All the Yokuts tribes from the Kaweah River 


3625 °—25 52 





480 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


south, except perhaps the Wowol and Chunut of Tulare Lake, and at least most 
of the adjacent Shoshoneans, were friendly and appear to have ranged over one 
another’s territory amicably and almost at will. The northern Yokuts were 
more divided by distrusts and hostilities; definite intertribal boundaries are 
known in several cases; and southern tradition speaks of invading war parties 
from the north. 

The Bokninuwad or Bokninwal (plural Bokenwadi), Garcés’s Pagninoas, 
are in native opinion so named because they had a habit of not returning to 
their owners lost articles that they encountered (bok, “ find”). They appear 
to have been a smaller tribe than the neighboring and similar Yaudanchi. 
Deer Creek, in the foothills, was their habitat. Here they lived at K’eyau, near 
the valley, and perhaps at Hoin.Tinliu (“ deer’s hole”), farther up, not far from 
Deer Creek Hot Springs, though the Shoshonean Bankalachi seem also to have 
frequented the region of the latter. The southern forks of Tule River, includ- 
ing the present reservation, were in customary Bokninuwad range. 

The Wiikehamni, Wikchamni, or Wikchomni (plural Witikachmina or Wikats- 
mina), whose name was a byword for “ gluttons,” and who may be the Buesanet 
of Garcés, wintered on Kaweah River near Lemon Cove and Iron Bridge and 
frequented the adjacent hills in summer, 

The Yokod or Yokol (plural Yuwekadi) had their principal village a dozen 
miles below the Wiikchamni, on a flat near Kaweah railroad station, on the 
south side of Kaweah River, north of Exeter. Their summer range met that 
of the Yaudanchi about Lindsay. . 

The Gawia or Kawia (plural Gaweyayi or Kaweyayi), from whom Kaweah 
River takes its name, lived at a hill on the north side of the stream, opposite the 
Yokod. Their recognized northward range included Chidepuish, Calvin Hill, on 
Big Dry or Rattlesnake Creek. They seem to be the people whom Garcés calls 
Coguifa. 


TRIBES OF THE KINGS RIVER GROUP OF THE FOOTHILL DIVISION. 


In this coterie the Choinimni survive to-day in the greatest, although much 
reduced, numbers. They were perhaps also the most populous before the white 
man came, Their village was the before-mentioned Tishechu, said to mean 
“at the gate,” a place of some importance on the south side of Kings River 
at the mouth of Mill Creek. 

The Choinimni were the Yokuts farthest up Kings River proper, Mono terri- 
tory beginning some miles beyond Tishechu. Next up Mill Creek were the 
Michahai (plural Michahaisha or Michayisa), at Hehshinau, on the north side 
of the stream, on a flat at the foot of the pine-covered ridge. 

Up a small affluent of Mill Creek from the south, in Squaw Valley, some 
6 miles from Hehshinau, were the Chukaimina (plural Chokoyemi). These 
lived at Dochiu and Mashtinau, at the north and east sides of the circular valley. 

Up Mill Creek, at Kicheyu near Dunlap, and at another site Known as Chit’- 
atichi (“clover”), were the Entimbich or Indimbich (plural Enatbicha or 
Inadbicha). These, neighbors of the Shoshonean Wobonuch, have sometimes 
also been classed as Monos; but a vocabulary of their dialect establishes them 
as Yokuts. ws 

Below the Choinimni on Kings River, but on the opposite side, were the 
Toihicha (plural Toyehachi). They lived at Tanaiu (‘‘ Jimson weed place’’), 
at Hughes Creek, and at Bochiptau. 

Still farther down Kings River, but this time on the south side, were the 
Aiticha, Aitecha, Aititsa, Aigicha, or Ai’kicha (plural Aiyetatsi or Aiyekachi). 
Their village was K’ipayu, somewhat nearer to Centerville than to Tishechu. 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 481 


Kocheyali is mentioned by some of the Yokuts as another name for the 
Aiticha. This is not, however, their unanimous verdict. Two designations 
for a single tribe are also without parallel, apart from duplicate appellations 
based on names of places or terms of direction. There may therefore have 
been a distinct Kocheyali tribe in this vicinity. 

With the Gashowu (plural Gashwusha) Big Dry Creek, losing itself in the 
plain near Fresno, and Little Dry Creek. draining into the San Joaquin, are 
reached. The Gashowu dialect also differs somewhat from the idioms of the 
Kings River group and approaches correspondingly to those of the northern 
foothill or San Joaquin group; but its general affinities are still with the former. 
The Chukehansi, for instance, complain of difficulty in understanding Gashowu, 
which fact, since their own idiom is very similar to Dumna, which in turn 
was spoken only a few miles from the Gashowu of Little Dry Creek, is signifi- 
‘ant. The Gashowu ranged’ to Fresno to gather seeds in spring or summer. 
Old maps show two Indian rancherias. One of these can be identified with 
Pohoniu, below Letcher on Big Dry Creek. On Little Dry Creek were Yokau 
in Auberry Valley, near Opnoniu, and Ochopou, the latter attributed also to 
the Kechayi. 


TRIBES OF THE NORTHERN GROUP OF THE FOOTHILL DIVISION. 


The Toltichi (plural Toletachi), the ‘‘ stream people,’ were the Yokuts tribe 
farthest up the San Joaquin and neighbors of the Mono, They are extinct. 
The recorded fragments of their speech show many distortions, not only from 
northern foothill but from all forms of Yokuts. It is doubtful whether these 
divergencies are due to faulty recollection or are real modications caused by 
prolonged contact of a small and remote mountain group with people of alien 
language, as in the case of the Paleuyami. It is even conceivable that the 
Toltichi were Monos, who mispronounced the Yokuts which many of them had 
partly learned. Tsopotipau, at the electric power site on the large bend of the 
river below the entrance of the North Fork, was Toltichi. 

The Kechayi (plural Keche’wali or Kichainawi) had the south bank of the 
San Joaquin for some miles above Millerton. <A settlement of theirs upstream 
from this abandoned town and fort was Kochoyu, which seems to mean nothing 
more than “ Kechayi place.” Farther up they lived at Kowichkowicho. Below 
the Kechayi were the Wakichi, a tribe of the valley division. 

The Dumna (plural Dumanisha) were on the north side of the San Joaquin, 
about opposite the Kechayvi. Their range took in the country opposite Miller- 
ton; Table Mountain; the mouth of Fine Gold Creek; and Bellevue, which 
they called Dinishneu. 

The Dalinchi (plural Da’elnashi) were a little off the San Joaquin. Fine 
Gold Creek was their territory. Here they inhabited Moloneu; also O’Neals, 
Dalinau, ‘“ Dalinchi place,’ was over the divide in the Coarse Gold Creek 
drainage. 

The Chukchansi, Shukshansi, or Shukshanchi (plural Chukadnisha) held 
Coarse Gold Creek, an affluent of Fresno River, and the head of Cottonwood 
Creek. They are the northernmost of all the foothill tribes, and their border, 
Fresno River, where they adjoined the Miwok, was the farthest limit of all the 
hill Yokuts. They appear to have moved and scattered considerably, and, 
being on friendly terms with their Miwok neighbors, to have had no hesitation 
in entering their territory. This is probably the reason why the modern 
Chukehansi list among their settlements certain places across the Fresno 
River, such as Aplau and Yiwisniu, whereas actually it was the Miwok who 


482 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLt. 78 


seem to have owned a small tract on the south side of the stream. Hapasau, 
near Fresno Flats, was, however, Chukchansi. Also well up on Fresno River 
was Chukchanau or Suksanau, ‘“‘ Chukchansi place.” On Coarse Gold Creek 
they inhabited Tsuloniu, near the headwaters; Kowoniu or Kohoniu, on 
Pieayune Creek; Kataniu, the present Picayune rancheria, where the majority 
of the survivors dwell; and, on Cottonwood Creek, they lived at Ch’eyau, ‘‘ bone 
place,’ near Bates. 

It is possible that place names like Kochoy-u, Dalin-au, Chukehan-au are 
original and that the tribal names Kechayi, Dalinchi, and Chukchanchi are de- 
rived from them. However, none of these place names yield to etymology, 
whereas many that are not related to tribal names do have meanings. 


TRIBES OF THE SOUTHERN GROUP OF THE VALLEY DIVISION. 


The Yauelmani, Ya’welmani, Yowelmani, Yowenmani, Yowedmani, which 
forms appear to be the plural of Yaulanmi or Yaudimni, perhaps number more 
survivors to-day than any other Yokuts tribe. Their ancient range was ex- 
tensive. They held Tinliu (“at the hole’’) on Pasco Creek below the Tejon 
ranch house—perhaps the most southerly of all Yokuts settlements. This must 
have been a favorite abode, since it gave them the appellation Tinlinin, which, 
together with “‘ Tejonenos,” is still used as a synonym of Yauelmani. With this 
spot went ownership of the lower courses of Tejon and other near-by streams. 
Thirty or more miles to the north they held Woilo (“ planting place,” “sowing 
place ’—the name was given after mission influences began to reach them), on 
the site of the town of Bakersfield. Up Kern River they lived at times at 
K’ono-ilkin (‘‘ water’s fall”) and at Shoko (“ wind place,’ in a gorge), above 
which began the territory of the Tiibatulabal, whom they knew as Pitanisha. 
These spots were also frequented by the Paleuyami across the divide on near-by 
Poso Creek, and it is not certain which tribe laid claim of ownership to them. 
A short distance above Bakersfield in the first foothills was Tsineuhiu (“‘ at the 
shades” or “‘ramada place”), not permanently inhabited, but a favorite day 
resting place between night journeys in the summer; while below the city, on 
one of the channels of the river draining toward Kern Lake, was Kuyo. The 
Yauelmani are also mentioned as at Altau with the Paleuyami, at Hoschiu on 
White River with the Kumachisi, and at Chididiknawasi in the Deer Creek 
country—all places above the valley. It is therefore not surprising that there 
are old Indians, born, before the coming of the Americans, of a Yauelmani 
parent married to a Yaudanchi or Wowol partner. Unions with the Shoshonean 
Kitanemuk to the south and Bankalachi to the north also occurred. 

The Koyeti or Kuyeti (plural Koyetati or Kuyetwadi), now extinct, seem to 
have been a smaller tribe of almost identical speech with the Yauelmani. They 
held the swampy sloughs of Tule River from Cbhokowisho, Porterville, down; 
this tract being known as Kiawitnau. 

The Choinok (plural Choyenaki), the Choinoc of Garcés and Cabot, another 
small group, were the southernmost of three tribes in the flaring, slough- 
intersected delta of the Kaweah. They lived south of Tulare City and below 
Farmersville, probably on Deep and Outside Channels, in which region their 
town of Cl’iuta may be looked for. 

The Wo’lasi or Wo’ladji (plural Wowulasi, Wowelasi, Wowlasi) were north 
of the Choinok, at and below Farmersville, perhaps on Cameron Channel. This 
small tribe must not be confused with the more prominent Wowol (plural 
Wowowoli) of Tulare Lake. 

The Telamni, Telomni, Tedamni (plural Tielami, Tielamni, Tiedami, Tie- 
damni, or Teyelamni), the “‘Telam or Torim” of Garcés and Telame of the 


KROHBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 483 


missions, were northwest of the Wo’lasi, at Visalia and Goshen. Among their 
settlements was Waitatshulul, some 7 miles north of Tulare City. Here for the 
first time we hear of fixed tribal boundaries. The Telamni, Wo’lasi, and 
Choinok did not pass over Cross Creek, the northernmost slough fed from the 
Kaweah, without encountering the hostility of the Nutunutu. 

The valley tribes on Kings River appear to have been at least as large as 
those on the Kaweah, but they have died out almost as completely. At Cen- 
terville, also known as King River, at Sanger, and toward Reedley, were the 
Wechihit, Wechahet, or Wetehit (plural Wichehati). At Musahau, in the 
low bottoms, between the middle and east channels opposite Sanger, one or 
two survive near an ancient village site. Wewayo, on Wahtoke Creek, seems 
to have been a no-man’s-land so far as tribal ownership went, but was at 
uny rate visited by the Wechihit. A Wahtoke “tribe,” formerly mentioned in 
this vicinity, was given that designation, which means ‘pine nut.” by the 
Americans from the name of the chief of the band. 

The Nutunutu or Nutuntu (plural Nutantisha) were south of lower Kings 
River, in a country formerly a mass of sloughs and swamps. Armona, Han- 
ford, and Kingston were their territory; a little south of the latter was their 
village Chiau. Hibek’ia, where they also lived, can not be exactly located. 
Their name is puzzling. It probably goes back to the root not, upstream (com- 
pare the Nuta’a, or uplanders, the mountain Mono or hill Yokuts in general) ; 
yet the Nutunutu were certainly a downstream people, if there were any, to 
all their neighbors except possibly the Tachi. 

The Wimilchi (plural Wimelachi) were separated by Kings River from the 
Nutunutu—and apparently without friendship—much as these kept Cross 
Creek as a barrier against the Telamni. The Wimilchi in turn observed Fish 
Slough, connecting Kings River and Tulare Lake, as a boundary against the 
Tachi. They had Lillis and Laton, and Cold and Murphy Sloughs; and in gen- 
eral seem to have occupied the whole of the Laguna de Tache land grant, though 
this was named after their better known western neighbors. Ugona was a 
Wimilchi town. 

Tulare Lake and its shores are stated by all the Yokuts to have belonged 
to three tribes and three only, all of them large and warlike, though not 
always friendly to one another. These were, in order from south to north, 
the Wowol, Chunut, and Tachi. 

The Wowol, Wowod, Wowal, or Wo’wal (plural Wowowoli, Wowowadi, 
Wowowali, or Wu’wo’wali) are the Bubol, Hubol, and perhaps Tuohuala of 
the Spaniards. They are not to be confounded with the Wo’lasi (plural 
Wowulasi) of Kaweah River. They are said, in a characteristically pic- 
turesque but probably unreliable native explanation, to have derived their 
name from standing (‘“wowul”) in rows and lousing each other. Of more 
intrinsic interest is the fact that they lived on an island off the east shore of 
the lake, from which they had to cross on their tule rafts to the timbered or 
brushy stream outlets on the mainland to obtain firewood. This island is 
said to have been due west of the present Delano, which identifies it with 
Atwells Island, where old maps show an Indian rancheria on the lake shore, 
This settlement was called Sukuwutnu, Shukwatnau, or Shugudnu; the name 
Dulau has also been given it. 

The settlement or settlements Miketsiu and Chuntau of the Chunut (plural 
Chunotachi or Chunotati) can be less exactly located, but the tribal range 
was the Tulare Lake shore in the Kaweah Delta region. Spanish sources 
refer to them as Sumtache and Tunctache. These people seem to have pene- 
trated freely up the sloughs. Cross Creek was their northern boundary, as of 


484 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


the Telamni, against the Tachi and Nutunutu, a fact that argues close asso- 
ciation between them and their upstream neighbors of the Iaweah. 

The Tachi, Tadji, or Dachi (plural Tachechayi, Tadjedjayi, Dachechayl, 
Tatsetsai, or Tatetayi), the northernmost of the three Tulare Lake tribes, ap- 
pear to have been one of the largest of all Yokuts divisions, and still survive 
to the number of some dozens. The Spaniards frequently referred to the 
Tache, and a Laguna de Tache land grant survives on our maps. Their coun- 
try was the tract from northern Tulare Lake and its inlet or outlet, Fish 
Slough, west to the Mount Diablo chain of the Coast Range, where they bor- 
dered the Salinan Indians. Here they wintered at Udjiu, downstream from 
Coalinga, and at Walna, where the western hills approach the lake. Golon 
(Huron) was theirs. In summer they crossed to the east of the outlet and 
gathered seeds in the neighborhood of Lemoore. Chi, west of Heinlen, and 
Waiu, Mussel Slough, on which stands their present rancheria of Santa Rosa, 
were in this tract. The various delimitations cited by older Indians as having 
formerly existed make it seem that the Tachi and Nutunutu were friendly to 
each other, but suspicious and probably hostile at times toward the Wimilchi 
on the one side and the Chunut, Temlani, Wo’lasi, and Choinok on the other. 

The Apiachi are an obscure anGd extinct tribelet, living with the lower Kings 
River tribes, but somehow associated with the Tachi, from whom some of the 
older Indians now refuse to Separate them. They lived north of Kings River 
and east of its outlet slough, at Wobui, beyond Telweyit or Summit Lake, in 
the direction of Elkhorn. 


TRIBES OF THE NORTHERN GROUP OF THE VALLEY DIVISION. 


The Pitkachi, perhaps more accurately Pitkati (plural Pitakati or Pidekati) 
are said to have received their appellation from an evil-smelling salt or alkali 
of the same name, which they used to gather or prepare. This in turn is 
named after feces, pidik. They held the south side of the San Joaquin, living 
at Kohuou, near Herndon or Sycamore; at Weshiu, on a slough; and at 
Gewachiu, still farther downstream. 

The Wakichi or Wa’kichi, plural Wakeyachi, were on the same side of the 
river but farther up, not quite opposite the Dumna, and just below the Kechayi. 
Holowichniu, near Millerton, was in their territory. This location would sug- 
gest that the Wakichi were part of, the northern foothill group, but a few 
preserved phrases of their dialect indicate that it belonged to the valley 
division. 

The Hoyima, Hoyim’a, or Hoyimha (plural Hoyeyami) were also on the 
San Joaquin where it still flows west, but opposite the Pitkachi; in other 
words, on the north side. They may have ranged as far as Fresno River. 
They had settlements at K’eliutanau, on a creek entering the San Joaquin from 
the north, and at Moyoliu above the mouth of Little Dry Creek. They were 
not without fighting proclivities, and at times engaged the Chauchila of the 
plains and the Chukehansi of the hills. 

The Heuchi, Heuche, or Heutsi (plural Hewachinawi) had a large settle- 
ment at Ch’ekayu, on Fresno River 4 miles below Madera. They were cer- 
tainly on the north side of this stream and may have had both its lower banks. 

The Chauchila or Chauchili, more correctly Chaushila or Chaushilha (plural 
Chaweshali), sometimes also called Toholo, “ lowlanders, westerners,” by the 
hill tribes, were in the plains along the several channels of Chowchilla River, 
in whose name their appellation is perpetuated. They lived at Shehamniu on 
this stream, apparently at the eastern edge of the plains, some miles below 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 485 


Buchanan. Halau, “ cane,” near Berenda, which may have been in their range 
or that of the Heuchi, recalls a town of the same name on far distant Kern 
Lake. The Chauchila may have been a populous tribe; they were certainly a 
warlike one, for their name is a byword for bravery to the southernmost end 
of Yokuts territory among tribes ignorant of the nearer Heuchi and Hoyima. 
It is frequently translated as ‘‘ murderous,” “cruel,” or “aggressive ’”’; but 
the nearest roots known are not very similar: Yaudanchi tawidj, taudj, to 
die or kill, and taw (¢ alomst like ch), to overcome. Two mythical traditions 
told by the Yauelmani begin at Kamupau in Chumash territory beyond San 
Kmigdio at the extreme head of the San Joaquin Valley, and progress, one to 
the ocean on the south, the other north to the Chauchila. Such a range of 
geographical knowledge, however vague, is quite unparalleled in California, 
except among the inquisitive and far-traveled Mohave, who, by the way, 
were also known to the Yokuts through visiting parties from across the desert 
and by reputation as a fighting people, and who quite correctly termed the 
Yokuts Kwalinyokosmachi, ‘‘ tule sleepers.” 

The Chauchila are the first Yokuts tribe to have no upland neighbors of their 
own stock, the southern Miwok now being the easterners. They are also the 
last tribe, until Stockton is reached, concerning whom anything definite is 
known. In the plains along the Merced, Tuolumne, Stanislaus, and Calaveras 
Rivers, on the east bank of the lower San Joaquin, and perhaps on its west side 
also, were Yokuts. There are some names extant; but whether of tribes or 
towns, or where these were located, is doubtful. Some fragments of language, 
transmitted from several independent sources, show that there existed a 
variety of northern valley speech distinguished by a frequent change of m and 
n to b and d; but again there is no certainty where these dialects were spoken. 
There are known in this region the Nupchinche or Noptinte, not located; the 
Tawalimni, presumably on Tuolumne River, which appears to be named from 
them; the Lakisamni, perhaps to be connected with Takin (for Lakiu?) 
rancheria at Dents or Knights Ferry on the Stanislaus; the Siakumne; and 
Hannesuk, which sounds like a Miwok place name, but is given as a tribe and 
placed in territory that was probably Yokuts. Some names can be identified 
as generically denoting any inhabitants in certain directions, such as Nutu- 
tamne and Kosmitas or Xosmitamne, Yokuts for ‘‘ upstream people” and 
“northern people,” respectively; and Tammukamne, Miwok for ‘ northern- 
ers.” Others, like Yachik, Yachikamne, or Yachimesi, refer only to village 
sites or the inhabitants of particular places, instead of being tribal names. 
And still others, like Coconoon, an anciently mentioned group on Merced 
River, whom a vocabulary proves to have been Yokuts, are utterly hopeless, 
unless one is ready to take such random shots as to identify this term with 
Gogoni, a spot said to have marked the extreme northern or upland range of 
the Chauchila. The early travelers often encountered these northernmost 
Yokuts far from their homes or at the missions, and rarely cared or were able 
to record their exact habitat. At the present time, when an old Indian can be 
found who remembers a few words of the Yokuts speech of his father or 
grandfather, he has usually forgotten the name of the tribe, or, if he remembers 
this, is in ignorance or in patent error of its former location. A similar dark- 
ness reigns concerning the Wintun, Maidu, Miwok, and Costanoan groups once 
on or near San Francisco Bay. In short, regrettable as the fact is, we can 
scarcely hope ever to have wholly accurate or full information concerning these 
tribes. 

Conditions are a little better for knowledge of the last and probably most 
northerly Yokuts tribe, the Chulamni, who apparently are the group that fre- 


486 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLt. 78 


quents the older sources under the designations of Techolovone and Cholo- 
vomne. Fortune preserved until recently a few individuals of this tribe, who 
retained a reasonable command of their forefathers’ speech. This, on compari- 
son with the Chauchila dialect, has proved to be typical Yokuts of the northern 
valley group, making the appurtenance of the intervening tribes to the same 
group substantially certain. The Chulamni inhabited Yachik and Wana near 
Stockton, the latter just below the landing. Their territory extended at least 


rere 
OO? 
R55 


KOOL? } 
, ene CoS 2) 


R280 
SOILS 
SSeS rbes 





Vie. 438.—Yokuts topography, distribution, and neighbors. The heavy line marks 
the San Joaquin-Tulare drainage; the broken line, the level San Joaquin Valley. 
Territory of Yokuts of valley division in hatching; of foothill division in cross- 
hatching. ; 


some miles down the San Joaquin and up the Calaveras; probably also across 
the former stream, possibly as far west as Mount Diablo. 


SPEECH AND TOPOGRAPHY. 


The very remarkable relation of the Yokuts habitat and of their 
speech divisions to topography is shown in Figure 48. It 1s clear that 
they are essentially a valley people. Not only do they hold the whole 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 487 


of the San Joaquin Valley floor but their extension into the hills is of 
the slightest. The higher Sierra Nevada everywhere, and the lower 
slopes in the north, are in the possession of alien nations. 

Equally significant is the almost perfect correspondence between 
topography and speech. The valley dialects are absolutely confined 
to the plains, except for a small part of the range of the Yauelmani 
in the extreme south. The foothill group of dialects is restricted 
with equal exactness to the hills, except where the three southwestern 
tribes, finding the lee side of the Coast Range too barren for their 
subsistence, appear to have come down into the adjacent tule 
swamps. The correlation between speech and soil surface is so rigid 
that causes of such potency must be inferred to have been operative 
as could scarcely have prevailed to this extent among the Yokuts 
without being of some influence elsewhere. Indeed it seems, as already 
pointed out, that lines of dialectic cleavage followed the edge of the 
plains in the Sacramento Valley, among Miwok, Maidu, and Wintun. 
On the other hand, it is dangerous to reason from the mass conditions 
of the great valley, flanked by the massive, unbroken wall of the 
Sierra, to circumstances obtaining in regions of more irregular topog- 
raphy. Several Pomo dialects, for instance, extend practically un- 
changed over -belts of coast, timber, valley, mountain, and inland 
waters. 

It is also clear from Figure 48 how much more diversified the foot- 
hill tribes were than those of the valley. Holding barely a fifth of 
the area of the stock, they comprised about one-half of the tribes, and 
five out of seven of its dialect groups. The diversity of surface in 
the hill country is only partially responsible. Of more moment, 
probably, is the fact that the foothill tribes, happening to constitute 
a fringe, were thrown into more intimate contact with their alien 
neighbors dwelling higher on the same slope of the Sierra Nevada, 
and thus had stimulated in them those unconscious influences toward 
change of language that only association with the foreigner seems 
to bring. 

It is difficult to look at this map, with its enormous solid nucleus 
of valley, and defend oneself from the impression that this is the 
original home of the Yokuts group, and that the border foothill 
tribes represent an upland spilling over. This would be contrary 
to the view sometimes entertained that the Yokuts once occupied the 
entire basin to its summit, and were in process of being gradually 
driven to the center by Shoshonean pressure. From the Yokuts side 
the appearance is rather of an expansion of this stock and a push- 
ing back of Shoshoneans who previously might have held all of the 
mountains and perhaps the southern end of the valley. 

As a matter of fact, it is impossible to decide. Either alternative 
looks plausible as the evidence is approached from one aspect or the 


488 * BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


other. What is most likely is that a condition nearly of equilibrium 

between the two stocks has been maintained for a long time. The 

four or five Shoshonean divisions of quite diversified speech did 

not all crowd westward over the watershed in any short period; nor 

did the specialized Yokuts foothill dialects, no matter how much 

effect we allow to topography and foreign association, spring up in 
two or three centuries. | 


DESIGNATIONS OF THE STOCK, 


The name “ Yokuts” is taken from a native word for person or 


people, appearing as yokoch and in similar forms in a number of the 
dialects of the stock. The Spanish Tularenos, “ people of the rush 
marshes,” coincides very closely with modern Yokuts in its ethnic 
application. Mariposan is a book name, happily moribund, since 
it is equally arbitrary and erroneous. The Indians of Mariposa 
County are Miwok, not Yokuts. Foreign Indian names are few. 
The Costanoans at San Juan Bautista called the Yokuts Yawisun; 
the Chumash of Ventura, Chminimolich, “ northerners”’; the Mohave, 
Kwalinyo-kosmachi, “tule sleep.” 


YOKUTS AND OTHER CALIFORNIA POPULATION. 


The problem of the size of Yokuts’ population is crucial for the 
question of what the number of California Indians may have been, 
but unfortunately it seems impossible of entirely accurate solution. 

The prime factor of uncertainty is the size of the tribe. Two 
hundred and fifty souls seems an overconservative estimate. ‘There 
may have been tribes that surpassed 500. On the other hand, this 
latter figure appears to be excessive as an average. It is difficult to 
say why, in the absence of any evidence bearing directly on the 
point; but the nature of the country, the descriptions of travelers, 
and the Indians’ statements as to their great-grandfathers’ customs, 
somehow leave the impression that the Yokuts tribe did not so 
very much exceed the usual California village community in popula- 
tional strength. But again, the consistent adherence to the principle 
that each tribe possessed its peculiar dialect warns against setting the 
figure very low. Three to four hundred persons is perhaps the sound- 
est estimate that can be made, and with 50 or nearly 50 tribes, this 
would yield from 15,000 to 20,000 souls for the entire group. 

Mission records are of little aid, for although there were Yokuts 
at nearly all of the church establishments from San Luis Obispo 
to San Francisco, and a number of tribal names can be recognized, 
statistics are for the total at one mission at one time. San Antonio 
may have harbored more Yokuts than Salinan neophytes when 
secularization came, but the proportions of the two national ele- 
ments are obscure. It also seems impossible to ascertain how ex- 
haustively the Franciscans drew upon the tribes that they tapped, 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 489 


or how long certain of these were under mission influence. There 
were Tachi brought across the mountains, but whether the whole 
tribe was moved or only a fraction, whether it remained a genera- 
tion or only a few years, no one seems able to say. It is only known 
that the valley tribes from about the Iresno River northward were 
removed and missionized almost completely, and that their early 
virtual extinction was due to the effects of this process. 

Nor do figures for the twentieth century population of the stock 
yield any approach to fixed conclusions for the eighteenth. The 
Federal census.of 1910, the first that attempted to concern itself with 
such matters, reports only 533 Yokuts. The most widely spread 
stock in California, after the Shoshonean, to-day ranks twelfth in 
numbers. Not only Miwok, Maidu, and Wintun, but small localized 
groups like the Yurok, Karok, and Washo surpass the Yokuts. 
However much the estimate of original population be scaled down, 
it is evident that factors of most unfortunate potency have been at 
work. One such, and of proved fatality, is the concentration of 
mission life; but it is insufficient, for the southern and eastern 
Yokuts escaped it. It was apparently their open valley habitat, or 
at best hill abode, that crushed the Yokuts, through making them 
more readily and, unmitigatedly accessible to the white man. In the 
mountains, civilization advanced slowly, or receded after the first 
rush of miners. The Indian shrank back, but had numberless cor- 
ners left to himself. In the plains, the farmer followed hard on the 
pioneer, the soil was broken, fences began to stretch, and before long 
railroads ran their course and cities flourished. There was no way 
for the native to escape the full brunt of civilization; and it melted 
him away. In the Sacramento Valley the Plains Maidu and Wintun 
have vanished, compared with their fellows in the hills. Against 
600 Sierra Miwok there are not two dozen of the plains division. 
More distinctively a lowland people than any of these, the Yokuts as 
a whole have been more reduced. All they have preserved better 
is the purity of their blood. The infrequency of half-breeds among 
them is noticeable; and the census that mawes one-half or more of 
the Wintun, Maidu, and Miwok population mixed blood, credits at 
least three-fourths of the Yokuts with purity of strain. 

If any doubt remains as to the strength of the factor of proximity 
to centers of Caucasian population, in rapidly diminishing Indian 
numbers, the Mono clinch the argument. Eastern neighbors of the 
Yokuts in the higher Sierra and the desert beyond it, they numbered 
at most a quarter or a third, perhaps not a fifth as many. To-day 
they are the largest group in California, and total nearly three souls 
for every living Yokuts. 

The survivors, then, tell us nothing of the strength of their ances- 
tors, because the wastage has been too excessive. The fragments are 


490 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


too small for an estimate of the original block. The remnant may 
be 2 per cent or 5. It does not help to answer the question. 

This uncertainty weakens one of the potentially strongest lines of 
evidence that might bear on the problem of the ancient population 
of California. The Yokuts held a full tenth, possibly an eighth, of 
the area of the State. If we knew their numbers, a simple multipli- 
cation, corrected by an allowance for productivity of the soil under 
native exploitation, would yield a total that would be of value for 
controlling estimates derived by other methods. Groups of narrower 
range or numbers do not justify the application of such procedure; 
vant are too unrepresentative. The Yurok, for instance, owned 
barely one-half of 1 per cent of the area of Galitorniah the Cheme- 
huevi perhaps 5 per cent: ratios that, with what is known of their 
numbers, would give in the one case well over half a million and in 
the other much less than 50,000 for the State. 

However, the almost lost opportunity may be essayed. Say 18,000 
Yokuts in a ninth of California: 162,000 Indians once in the State. 
Or, taking the highest possible figures, 25,000 in a tenth, gives 
250,000 as a maximum limit. 

Then comes the correction. There undoubtedly were areas more 
densely populated than the average of the Yokuts habitat: the Santa 
Barbara Islands, stretches of the shore fronting them, certain val- 
leys in the coast region, the district of the lower Klamath. There 
were probably as many Pomo on Clear Lake as Yokuts on much 
larger Tulare Lake. But these areas of concentration were small. 
It was apparently precisely the fact of their confinement that brought 
about the density. The additions to be made to the total on account 
of distinctly heavier population are therefore not very great in the 
ageregate. 

The deductions to be made for a sinking of the Yokuts ratio in 
less favorable regions are more considerable. A full third of the 
State is thorough desert, substantially desert, high mountains, bare 
lava flow, or dense timber. In all these environments the population 
was of the slenderest. Generally such regions were not even inhab- 
ited except in oasislike spots; and that the maps in the present and 
other volumes show continuous territories rather than these signifi- 
cant oases is not because the entire areas have been thought to be 
inhabited, but because ignorance of precise conditions of habitation 
has rendered other delineation impracticable for most of the State. 
Everything east of the Sierra, its entire upper portion, a solid 
three-fourths of southern California, most of the northeastern angle 
of the State, and a number of tracts in the coast ranges, belong to 
these thinly populated regions, which loom broadly enough to bring 
down by at least a fourth any total computed from the rate prevail- 
ing in more favored regions, 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 491 


Let us balance this reduction by the smaller additions and say 
that not a fourth but a fifth must be taken from the multiplhcative 
total. That diminishes by 32,000 our apparently soundest estimate 
of 162,000 and gives for the native population of the State 130,000, 
or about eight times the present number of full bloods and mixed 
bloods combined. At any rate, there is a high degree of probability 
that the actual figure fell between 100,000 and 150,000. The maxi- 
mum limit under the same process falls from 250,000 to 200,000, or 
less than almost all published estimates. 

We have one. check on the estimate of 300 to 400 souls per Yokuts 
tribe that underlies this total. In 1806 Moraga marched up half the 
length of the San Joaquin Valley and returned with the names of 
more than 20 groups and estimates of their numbers. Most of these 
must have been Yokuts, and about half of them can be identified. 




















YOKUTS. YOKUTS OR OTHER. 

Nupchenche (Noptinte) ---_---- 200 

Oa awha regret bea BOG A Se ad 250 

VUUALCHe ayn th ese ee Le eee: 250 

Col AS) Gs eee ee ere 250 

Hie TOLa LORS. 22" eae ee oe A 200 

AeIuo! V2 EY ST a er a eee 200 
Pigeache (Pitkachi ju. 4 200 
AVeUyCUe GAILICDA }o.20 c3 60 

Neri be Stateless hy Be ie ee Relea le 2 a 100 

hia jae eS 5 eee Pye 100 

MaViasexie? et “layer Reg eae 100 

Capatau TeeilAl a cih tte atid 10 

ERT E ee es ee ae ee 400 
Tunctache (Chunotachi) _______ 250 
Nobonto: (Nutunutw) [lowe 300 
Doss ae Fe Be Le 100 
(elniie {Pele mn) es toe 5 see of 600 
1B) ics Spee a aoe) 
UTnolasi( Wowulast) 23 5 100 
HazuevatGawia) ese. 8 eee 300 
chs | VOKOM, \jecltr sek torre 100 
Choynogue (Choinok)___-_-____ 300 

Cutuehay (Colteche sc 22423 242-2 400 
Tahualamne (Yauelmani?)_____ 200 
Coyenete (Koyeti) 22. 400 

3, 560 2, 260 

AG) 22) ee ei ee 5, 620 


Five thousand six hundred and twenty people in 23 groups yield 
an average of less than 250; or, if we divide the 3,360 known to have 
been Yokuts by 12, the result is 280 per tribe. The earliest ob- 
server’s estimate is a fifth less than the figure of 300 to 400—say, 
350—assumed above. There is thus every reason to believe that the 
total computed for California does not err on the side of parsimony. 


CHAPTER 33. 
THE YOKUTS: SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. 


Culture, 492; marriage, 492; moieties and totems, 498; chiefs and officials, 496; 
war, 497; money, 498; greetings, 498; birth, 498; names, 499; death and 
mourning observances, 499. 


CULTURE. 


The extinction of the northern valley tribes prevents their being 
included in the following account of Yokuts life, which is accord- 
ingly confined to those members of the family who live south of the 
Miwok, or approximately those shown in Plate 47. When such and 
such customs are ascribed to “the northern Yokuts,” the tribes of 
the upper San Joaquin region are therefore referred to, notably the 
Chukchansi, who survive in the greatest numbers. Under “ southern 
Yokuts” all the tribes from Kaweah River south may generally be 
understood, although most of the information relates to the Yaudan- 
chi and Yauelmani. For the “ central” tribes of the lake region and 
the sloughs of lower Kings River the Tachi may be taken as typical. 
It is regrettable that so little knowledge survives concerning the 
Yokuts of the lower San Joaquin, as their practices must have been 
different from those of their southerly kinsmen at many points. 
Living almost in contact with the Wintun and Maidu, and between 
the Miwok and Costanoans, it is practically certain that they shared 
the Kuksu and other ceremonies of the ritual system which is com- 
mon to these groups and centered in the first-named stock. The 
Yokuts south of the San Joaquin performed ceremonies of entirely 
different type. This lack of similarity is probably typical of many 
other distinctions which can only be suspected. 


MARRIAGE. 


Marriage was a comparatively informal affair all the way from the 
Chukchansi to the Yauelmani, though payment was always made for 
the bride, sometimes by as high as a hundred chok measures of beads. 
A father might send his son to a prospective son-in-law of his choice, 
with instructions to address him as his brother-in-law. Or a man 
might suggest to a friend that they be maksi—parents of a married 
couple. The bridegroom would then appear, but if the girl remon- 


492 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 493 


strated vigorously, would probably soon depart of his own accord. 
Tf a marriage took place, the husband lived with his wife’s people. 
This is rather remarkable in view of the fact that most and probably 
all the Yokuts reckoned descent paternally with reference to exog- 
amy and totemism. As usual in loosely organized society, polygamy 
was not considered objectionable, but was not the common fortune of 
men and women, probably because there was no noteworthy excess of 
females. A man with several wives seems normally to have been 
married in as many villages, dividing his time between his various 
households. Kindred of any known degree of relationship, except 
perhaps one class of cousins, were ineligible to marriage; and, what is 
more interesting, accidental namesakes as well. The Yokuts state 
that people of the same tribe and town could marry, and this is con- 
firmed by the parentage of old living Indians; but the vast majority 
of such specific records reveal marriages between people not of the 
same tribe. This habit is the more peculiar because the dialects of 
the tribes always differed somewhat; at the same time, the practice 
must have been a factor of some influence in preventing the rapid 
drifting apart of the idioms. Naturally, many of the Yokuts were 
bilingual; and persons knowing three or four dialects, or even dis- 
tinct languages, are not rare. 

Children-in-law and parents-in-law exhibit mutual shame. They 
avoid speaking, though inmates of the samé house; walk apart; and 
do not even approach each other unless it is absolutely necessary. 


MOIETIES AND TOTEMS. 


In addition to the politically exogamic tendency, there was a strict 
rule requiring a man to marry outside his own inherited social divi- 
sion. These divisions were two, and certain animals were symbolically 
associated with each and transmitted from father to child and son’s 
child. In other words, the totemic moiety system of the Miwok ex- 
tends also to the Yokuts. It has been found among hill and valley 
tribes from the Chukchansi to the Wowol. Only the Yaudanchi and 
Yauelmani, and with them no doubt some of their immediate neigh- 
bors, did not possess the organization. For the extinct valley tribes 
north of the Fresno River there are no data, but their associations 
with their own kinsmen to the south, as well as with the upland Mi- 
wok, render it extremely probable that the same scheme prevailed 
among most if not all of them. In fact, the existence of a similar 
organization among the Mono on the east and probably among the 
Salinan Indians to the west, together with the reappearance of exoga- 
mous moieties in southern California, place the Yokuts more cen- 
trally than the Miwok as regards the known distribution of this so- 


494 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [RULL, 78 


cial trait. It is therefore remarkable that their southern tribes 
know nothing of the scheme. 

This seems the more probable from the forms of the system. ‘The 
Miwok divide all nature into two halves. Every individual’s name 
has some expressed or connoted reference to one of the infinitely 
numerous animals or objects of the world’s moiety that corresponds 
to his own social moiety. With the Yokuts only a limited number 
of animals are associated with each division. One of these is held 
as hereditary totem by every paternally descended family. The 
names of the people in such a line of descent have no connection 
with the totem animal, but every individual in the family regards 
his inherited animal as his “ dog ”—the one word which the Indian 
possesses for the idea of “ domestic animal” or “ pet captive.” The 
Yokuts totemism is thus more direct and emphatic than that of the 
Miwok, and to this degree may priority in its formulation be at- 
tributed to them. 

The Yokuts lines of male descent with the same totem obviously 
resemble clans. They fall short, however, of being clans in that 
they are not involved in marriage or exogamy, the moiety being the 
sole regulating factor in these matters, and in that they bear no 
group names. 

This plan of social duality runs at right angles across the many 
lines of tribal cleavage.: The halves are the same, or are equated, 
everywhere; and a man marrying outside of his tribe confines him- 
self to the opposite moiety exactly as if he chose his spouse at home. 

The names of the moieties are the same in all the Yokuts tribes 
among which they have been recorded: Zohelyuwish and Nutuwish. 
Tohu signifies “ downstream,” which varies locally from south to 
west and northwest; not, the opposite direction ; -w-wish is a reflexive 
ending forming abstract nouns and names of practices and institu- 
tions. 

The border Yokuts identify their moieties with the Miwok ones, 
and in case of intermarriage between the two peoples there 1s never a 
question about the proper correspondence of the divisions. The 
names, too, are similar, but, strangely, rather opposite. The Yokuts 
“upstream ” is the Miwok “water” half, and “ downstream ” is the 
equivalent of “ land.” 

The wide-range cleavage implied by this terminology, with its 
essential polarity, confirms the impression which is given by other 
features of the Miwok-Yokuts system, that it inherently has a dual 
ground plan, with the animal totems as an auxiliary development, 
and that it is not an organization of decayed clans secondarily 
erouped into moieties. 

The representative animal of the Zohelyuwish division is the eagle. 
Of birds, there further belong the raven and crow, blue jay, road run- 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 495 


ner, and killdeer. Of quadrupeds, the bear is most prominent. Fox, 
wild cat, jack rabbit, beaver, and antelope are of the same group. 

Coyote is the most conspicuous-animal on the Vutuwish side. As- 
sociated with him are the /imik or falcon, the buzzard, several species 
of hawks and owls, the quail, and the skunk. 

In Yokuts legendary traditions tales of contests and competitions 
for superiority abound, which may in many ¢ases reflect this totemic 
duality. Of this sort are struggles between the falcon and raven, 
coyote and eagle, condor and eagle, and between the deer of the up- 
stream hills and the antelope of the downstream plains. In all these 
cases, except where the falcon is involved, the downstream animal 
triumphs. Only in a war of the uplanders against the lake people is 
coyote successful. In certain other tales the personages are not in 
opposition, but are all or nearly all of one division. Thus one tale 
tells of the deeds of coyote, falcon, and white owl; another of coyote, 
hawk, condor, and owl; a third of eagle, crow, road runner, and fox, 
with the lone coyote as a disturbing coadjutor; and so on. 

It is even possible that the totemic affiliation of certain animals 
that are as yet unplaced in the social organization of the modern 
Yokuts can be reasonably predicted from the mythology. This ap- 
plies not only to the deer and condor, but to the dog, the wood rat, 
the humming bird, the mountain quail, the woodpecker, and the 
spider on the Vutuwish side; while it seems almost as if in the 
legends of the southern Yokuts—although the institution itself is 
lacking—the falcon had been transferred from this to the 7ohelyu- 
wish division. 

A Yokuts does not ask a stranger whether he is Vutwwish or 
Tohelyuwish, nor what his moiety may be, but: “ What is your 
dog?” 

As bear doctors speak of the grizzly bear as their “ dog,” a con- 
nection between the moiety animals and the guardian spirits of 
shamans might be imagined. The Yokuts, however, specifically 
distinguish between their inherited totemic animals, which they 
sometimes keep in captivity but which confer no distinctive powers 
on their persons, and the animals, spirits, or monsters that the im- 
pending shaman dreams of or encounters in a trance. 

The balance of opposition between animals of the two moieties 
that runs through the legends has institutional parallels among the 
Yokuts themselves. Thus, formal games were between moieties. 
Each moiety had a distinctive style of body paint. In mourning 
rites the divisions acted reciprocally. From the Chukchansi to the 
Tachi, and perhaps farther, there was an eagle ceremony. The bird 
was killed by the coyote division, redeemed and received with mani- 
festations of grief by the moiety of which it was representative. 


8625 °——-25-———-83 


496 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


This rite suggests the eagle-killing mourning ceremony of the 
Luiseho, among whose neighbors moieties recur. Among the 
Yokuts the eagle rite may not have stood alone. Other animals, 
of the NMutuwish as well as Tohelywwish division, were killed, 
redeemed, and bewailed, it seems. So far as can be judged, this 
intrusion of the moieties into religious activities is spans among 
the Yokuts than with the Miwok. 

As descent was reckoned from the father only, the children of 
brother and sister were of opposite moieties. Among the Miwok 
this at least contributed to the permissibility of the marriage of such 
children—cross cousins they are often called. The similar social 
organization and kinship nomenclature of the Yokuts suggests that 
they, too, may have married their ¢ross cousins. 


CHIEFS AND OFFICIALS. 


The chief, as so often among the Pacific coast natives, was the 
rich man. A myth tells how Coyote, to avenge his attempted de- 
struction ordered by Eagle, the chief, causes a six months’ night to 
the distress of every one. Eagle sends him three sacks of beads to 
bring back the sun. Coyote sends back six sacks, restores day- 
light, and thus wins not only fame for magical power but prestige 
at outdoing the chief in lberality. Chiefs were also expected to 
know more, especially regarding religion, than common men. The 
son succeeded the father. As women occasionally became chiefs, 
if is evident that inheritance was an important factor, and that 
chieftainship was a regulated and established institution. 

There were chiefs who headed tribes and were influential for 
several days’ journey about. This is only natural under the superior 
soldarity of Yokuts organization. In addition, it is likely that 
there were lesser chiefs or headmen for the separate settlements in 
each tribe. Reports of confederacies of villages and bands formed 
by powerful chiefs probably rest on misinterpretation of the primacy 
of the tribal group over the village. The tribes had their chiefs born 
into them: they were not created by the chiefs. A chief of per- 
sonality and judgment, especially if supported by wealth, would 
undoubtedly command attention and respect among his neighbors. 
But there is nothing to show that in the most favorable case he ever 
headed a formal league of tribes. 

While chieftainship has been spoken of as if it were of the usual 
single-headed type, it was acually dual in tribes like the Tachi. 
There was a chief for each exogamic moiety. Whether this polarity 
applied to the tribal or the settlement heads is not clear. The 
authority of the pair was reckoned substantially equal; at least, they 
were expected to exercise it in cooperation, But the Tohelywwish 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 497 


chief was accorded a certain precedence. It is possible that the 
head of every tribe was always of this division, and that the polarity 
of authority was more of a formal or ceremonial nature, a half- 
conscious reflection of the social bifurcation. At any rate, all his- 
torical and biographic accounts mention only one chief for each 
group. 

Another position that was hereditary was that of the winatum, 
the messenger or herald. In a typical village the chief was sup- 
posed to have his house in the middle, a winatwm at each end. 
When one of these heralds was sent to announce a festival he was 
paid by the invited guests. A chief in need of shell money for any 
purpose might send his winatum to chiefs elsewhere. ‘These would 
gather their tribes, who would contribute what they thought proper 
to the occasion. 

Two other offices were, if not hereditary, at least held for life. 
One of these was the clown, Yaudanchi heauta, Yauelmani hiletits, | 
Tachi hohotich, whose business it was to mock sacred ceremonies, 
speak contradictorily, be indecent, and act nonsensically. The 
tongochim or tunosim were the transvestite sexual perverts recog- 
nized by all North American tribes. Among the Yokuts-they pos- 
sessed one unusual privilege and obligation: they alone handled 
corpses and prepared the dead for burial or cremation, but were 
entitled to keep for themselves any part of the property placed with 
the body. Both at the immediate and the annual mourning cere- 
monies they conducted the singing and led in the dancing. It is 
clear, once the character of these persons’ peculiarity is understood, 
that they were not delegated to their status, but entered it, from 
childhood on, by choice or in response to an irresistible call of 
their natures. 

WAR. 


Very little is known of Yokuts warfare. The tribes seem generally 
to have acted as units when conflicts arose. This should have given 
them some advantage of solidarity and numbers over most of their 
neighbors; but there is nothing to show that they were specially 
feared. Conflicts between tribes were apparently about as frequent 
as with aliens; and with many of their neighbors they were on 
friendly and even intimate terms. The Yokuts were evidently on 
the whole a peaceable people. 

It has been said that they did not scalp. As an absolute statement, 
this is surely incorrect, for a myth tells how the prairie falcon after 
a battle hung the hair of his slain foes on trees, where it can be 
seen to-day as moss. But this is certainly a strange use to which 
to put trophies, and one arguing a lack of the usual Indian sense of 
such matters. There also appears to be no record of any Yokuts 


498 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


scalp celebration or victory dance. It can accordingly be con- 
cluded that scalping customs were of relatively little moment in 
Yokuts life. 


MONEY. 


Ordinary money consisted of strings of shell disks, of the wam- 
pum type, “eha. During the past hundred years the Yokuts de- 
rived at least part of their supply of this currency through visits 
to the ocean. It is uncertain whether such trips were made in purely 
aboriginal times. The unit of measurement in the north was the 
chok, one and a half times the circumference of the hand. In the 
south the chok was somewhat shorter, and was reckoned as half the 
hista, two times the circumference of the hand. 

Long perforated cylinders, perhaps made from the columelle of 
univalves or from clams of unusual size, were called Awmna or 
humana, and were exceedingly valuable. They came from the south, 
probably from the Chumash. 


GREETINGS. 


There was little or no handshaking before the white man intro- 
duced the custom. Kissing was another undeveloped greeting. 
Mothers kissed their children, and lovers each other in seclusion; 
but no cne else. The usual greeting is hileu ma tanin, “ where are 
you going?” An old form, now less used, is, in foothill dialect, 
ma-wit hide, “ you, hello”; more literally, “ you, where? ” 

Like some other Californians, the Yokuts call the years “ worlds.” 
P’wan tanzhi, “ world went,” denotes the lapse of a year. 


BIRTH. 


A woman about to give birth sat on the ground grasping a stake 
set up before her. At the moment of parturition she was raised by 
an assistant who grasped her from behind. The umbilical cord was 
tied with one of the mother’s hairs, and severed with a knife of cane 
or elder wood, according to locality. The Chukchansi buried the 
cord; the Tachi preserved it by having the child wear it over its 
abdomen. 

Husband and wife were under equal restrictions after the birth of 
a child. They ate no meat or hard food, and did not cook, hunt, 
work, or touch tools. The Yokuts attached the greatest importance 
to these observances, some of which were continued until the rem- 
nant of the cord dropped from the child’s navel. and others for 
several months. 

The monthly condition of women—which was thought to be con- 
nected with the dark period of the moon—was viewed with less 
scrupulous abhorrence by the Yokuts than among many tribes. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 499 


There was no separate menstrual hut, nor any dance nor public cere- 
mony ata girl’s adolescence. For six days a woman took no meat, 
fish, or cold water. Some tribes allowed her to cook, work, and stay 
by the sick; others forbade her to prepare food or to leave the house. 
The additional observances at puberty were unusually slight, the 
most regular being the prohibition against the head being scratched 
with anything but a stick—a peculiarly deep-seated bit of taboo, 
encountered among Pacific coast tribes as far as Alaska. 


NAMES. 


The name of the dead could under no circumstances be spoken. 
For this reason a new appellation was assumed on the death of any 
namesake. Among the southerly tribes the inconvenience caused by 
this practice was guarded against by the custom of each child re- 
ceiving two names, one to be used as a reserve in emergency, as it 
were. If nevertheless both namesakes died, the person deprived of 
his designations was spoken of and addressed as °amun hoyowosh, 
“No-name.” Many names are meaningless; some denote animals or 
objects, such as “ Buzzard,” “ Otter,” “ Pine nut”; a few are names 
of tribes, as Pitkachi, Yaudach; many are verbs: “ Tap,” “ See,” 
“ Make-fire,’ ‘“ Dead,’ to which may be added the curious one of 
“Seven.” Almost all names were those of ancestors or older rela- 


tives. 
DEATH AND MOURNING OBSERVANCES. 


The Yaudanchi and Yauelmani buried their dead unless they died 
at a distance, when they were cremated and the ashes interred in the 
graveyard of their home town. The underlying idea seems to have 
been to deposit the remains where the person had lived. All Cali- 
fornia Indians have strong sentiments on this point; old people will 
express satisfaction at the prospect of being buried adjacent to the 
house in which they were born. The Tachi, like some Costanoan 
groups, burned every one of any account, believing that burial gave 
wizards an opportunity to steal the hair of the deceased and thus 
evoke their ghosts; but they also buried the ashes. A group of 
ancient bodies discovered in the Buena Vista hills, in Tulamni ter- 
ritory, included some skeletons painstakingly wrapped in strings or 
tules (Pl..41), and others incompletely cremated before burial. 
Perhaps they perished in an attacked and burning house. The Chuk- 
chansi left the body one night; then four men carried it on a litter 


to the funeral pyre. 
The favorite of Yokuts ritual impositions, the abstention from 


meat, applied also to mourners for a period of a month. The alleged 
reasons are that one would be eating the flesh of his child, or kill his 
second wife. The Yaudanchi absolved the mourner only after he 
bad paid a friend for the privilege; the friend, if the same occasion 


500 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY fpuur. 78 


came to him, would buy himself free with a larger amount. Among 
all the Yokuts, parents and spouses were subject to this fast, and 
sons, daughters, and grandparents exempt; some tribes extended the 
practice also to brothers, sisters, or near relatives by marriage. 
Burning the hair short in mourning is a practice which the Yokuts 
share with all Californian and many other American peoples. As 
is also usual, men sacrificed less of this adornment than women. 
The central Californian custom which required a wife to pitch her 
face and not remove same for a year or until the next annual mourn- 
ing ceremony, has been reported only from the Chukchansi. The 
Yaudanchi mourners merely refrained from washing or scraping 
their face during the briefer period in which they ate no meat. 

The body of nhe dead was not only bewailed but sung over and 
danced for by the bereaved and the professional mourners or tongo- 
chim. After each song the latter clapped their hands and the rela- 
tives, still standing up, resumed their crying. | 

The Tachi held a more elaborate ceremony, known as tonochmin 
hatim, “'Tonochims’ dance,” on the occasion of the first gathering 
after a death. In this the performers wear long false hair, made to 
project over the forehead like a beak. They represent long-billed 
birds called yakeyaknan, perhaps loons. They have the privilege 
of taking for themselves any property, which must be redeemed by 
the owners after the dance. They draw a mark on the ground; who- 
ever crosses this is captured by them and thought to be unable to 
leave his imaginary inclosure. Even should he escape his watchers, 
it is believed some mysterious force would compel him to return 
against his will. Such a person must have his liberty redeemed by 
payment, else he is kept in confinement until the conclusion of the 
ceremony. ‘This ritual would appear to have been a local custom. 

Toward the end of summer an annual public mourning ceremony 
was held, called lakinan, lakinanit, or Lana Pae ae. This undoubt- 
edly had the greatest Hold on the aale of the Yokuts of any of their 
rituals. It continued for several nights on lines similar to the 
crying, dancing, and singing over the Haines dead, the tongochim 
taking the same part. The last night ended in a spectacular climax 
with a destruction of property in honor of the departed, plus special 
features that varied from tribe to tribe. 

Among the Yaudanchi, the mourners, who have been indoors or 
under a shade while the tongochim have been dancing, notify the lat- 
ter, through the official herald, of their coming. They then approach 
carrying frames or figures dressed to represent the dead. Standing 
inside the circle of singing tongochim, they sway the images as if to 
thrust them into the fire that burns in the middle. At the end of 
each song the tongochim clap and the mourners burst into wails. 
After daybreak the figures are finally burned, and beads, baskets. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 5O1 


and other property are tossed to the tongochim, who though already 
liberally paid, are entitled to keep all that they secure in the scramble. 
Other valuables are burned with the images. 

The use of effigies is of interest because duplicated among many 
remote groups, but appears not to be participated in by such Yokuts 
tribes as the Chukchansi or Tachi. Among the latter, after dancing 
until morning, property is given to visitors through the medium of 
a sham fight in which they despoil the owners. After this the chief 
mourner, who has arranged the ceremony and provided food for 
the guests, wanders through the village crying. 

Among the Chukchansi the ritual of the final night takes on many 
features of the corresponding practices of the neighboring Miwok, 
whose yalaka ceremony they identify with their own lakinan. There 
are two fires, one for the men, the other for the women. The chief 
is posted at the latter, whence he delivers loud orations, in a peculiar 
abrupt enunciation. Such “ preaching,” as the Indians now term 
it, is indulged in on ceremonial occasions also by the Pomo, the 
Patwin, the Maidu, the Mohave, the Luisefo, and no doubt most 
other tribes in the State. Around each fire dancing goes on in a 
contraclockwise circle, the men holding poles from which hang 
valuables, the women baskets, and the singers standing outside the 
circles. Once during the night, and again toward morning, the 
men and women change to each others’ fires. Finally the displayed 
property is burned in the men’s fire. This act is called tulo or 
yuyahin, and marks the end of the ceremony. After this the visit- 
ors are paid by the residents of the town for purifying them by wash- 
ing them with water in which a scented plant, mechini, has been 
steeped. 

A joyous aftermath during the ensuing day marks the definite 
cessation of mourning. This is the ka’m or wotii, meaning simply 
dance. The step of this, indeed, is the same as that practiced by 
the tongochim during the preceding funerary ritual, and in fact 
over the unburied dead. It consists of an alternate high lifting of 
each leg at intervals of a second or less and stamping it down with 
violence, the performers meanwhile standing still or traveling in a 
circle. On this occasion of pleasurable reaction the dancers are for 
the first time painted—the men black, the women red, among the 
Yaudanchi—and they wear, so far as they possess them, the most 
elaborate and distinctive of Yokuts regalia: high crowns of crow and 
long magpie feathers, and skirts of strings of eagle down. Among 
the Chukchansi the men line up in a row, the women behind them, 
both facing north. Man after man then pays a woman for taking her 
from her place, and the couple dance before the double row. 


CHAPTER 34, 
THE YORWILS “CuUIEES: 


The Jimson weed initiation, 502; the rattlesnake ceremony, 504; other cere- 
monies, 506; ceremonial paraphernalia, 508; prayers, 509; mythology, 510; 
shamanism, 511; Mana, 512; source of the shaman’s power, 5138; disease 
and cure, 515; bear shamans, 516; rattlesnake shamans, 517; weather 
shamans, 518. 

THE JIMSON WEED INITIATION. 


Next to the great mourning ceremony of the Yokuts is to be ranked 
a boy’s initiation, which centered around the narcotic, and therefore 
supernatural, effects of a drug pervading the roots of the Jimson 
weed, Datura meteloides, commonly known in California by its 
Mexican name, toloache.t The Yokuts called the plant fanai and 
the rite tanyuwish, which might be translated as “ Jimson weeding.” 

The initiation was into manhood and tribal status, rather than to 
membership in any organization. It was therefore in a sense a boy’s 
puberty ceremony, which was given a distinctive character by in- 
toxication. The same type of ritual prevailed among all the Sho- 
shoneans, and perhaps the Chumash, of southern California. Its 
occurrence among the Yokuts is only one of several instances of 
customs shared by them with the groups to the south. 

To the west there are reports that the Salinan villages followed the 
cult, although it is unfortunately not wholly certain that they pos- 
sessed the custom before the missionaries introduced Yokuts among 
them. To the north the Miwok did not drink Jimson weed: in fact, 
it probably grows httle in their habitat. The northernmost Yokuts 
hill tribes, such as the Chukchansi, practiced the rite feebly, if at all, 
and the Chauchila are said to have refrained from it altogether. On 
the other hand, the Miwok declare that their Yokuts neighbors of 
the plains of Stanislaus River had a Jimson weed ceremony. ‘The 
cult may have gone farther north than this, to the extreme tribes of 
the lowest San Joaquin, since the plant occurs as far north as Stock- 











1W. EH. Safford, Daturas: of the Old World and New, Smithsonian Report for 1920, 
537-567, 1922, gives the following Daturas: D. meteloides, Mexico, Utah, California, 
used by the Zuni, Walapai, Luisefio, Yokuts; Aztec name, coatlroruhqui, ‘‘ green snake 
weed,” ololiuhqui, its seed. D. discclor, closely allied to D. meteloides, Mexico and 
southwestern U. 8.; toloache ; more common at Yuma than D. meteloides (and therefore 
probably the species employed by the Yuma and Mohave). D. innogxia, Mexico; Aztec 
name, nacazcul and toloatzin, D,. stramonium, Jamestown weed, Mexico and eastern 
U. S.; Aztec name tlapatl, 


502 


KRORBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 508 


ton in the hot plains. Among Maidu and Wintun there is a com- 
plete lack of reference to the plant, its use, or any similar ritual. 
The Yokuts thus were the only Penutians, and virtually the only 
central Californians, to adhere to the custom. It is hard to believe 
that they acquired it otherwise than from the south, and that it can 
be anything but a form of the religion which had its presumable 
origin among the Gabrielino, among whom its manifestations are 
most elaborate. 

Indians find it difficult to fix the age of the participants, but these 
are always described as boys, except among the Dumna, and San 
Joaquin tribes, where young men and middle-aged men are specifi- 
cally mentioned. The estimate of 12 to 15 years, or before sexual 
intercourse, made by one ancient southern Yokuts is therefore likely 
to be correct. It is of interest that this man himself never took the 
drug until in manhood he broke his arm. He then drank the decoc- 
tion 12 times on alternate nights, remaining throughout in a stupor. 
The advantage of such a period of quiet during the setting of a bone 
must have been great. Evidently, however, the intoxication as a 
pure rite was not considered so overwhelmingly essential as to be 
enforced on every individual. On, the other hand, another old 
southern Yokuts took the plant ritually three times, his father speak- 
ing the requisite prayer before the drinking. On the first occasion the 
boy was stupefied for six days; the second time three days; the third 
time he did not “sleep” at all, but walked about as if drunk. 

The drug is not only a narcotic but produces visions. This is un- 
questionably the cause of the tremendous supernatural power ascribed 
to it, and of its selection as the foundation of an important 
public ritual. The vision producing effect must also have been en- 
hanced by the preceding period of fasting. Expectation, based on 
current folkways, would lead the novices to see even inanimate objects 
as persons, as is said to have happened. 

There was no formal structure erected for the ceremony. ‘The 
root extract was drunk outdoors. During the period of fasting the 
participants were withdrawn from the public, usually remaining in 
a separate house or booth. They ate, in conformity with usual Yo- 
kuts ceremonial practice, no meat or solid food, and drank no pure 
or cold water, subsisting on thin acorn soup. The duration of the 
fast seems to have varied; six days may have been a common period, 
six being the number most frequently employed by these people in 
ritual connection. During this time the old man in charge of the 
ceremony directed the boys’ actions, spoke to them of the origin of the 
world, and preached to them regarding their own future. He him- 
self was expected to sleep little, but to go out at night, deposit eagle 
down on the ground, and pray. 


504 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Runt 78 


The Jimson weed roots were crushed and soaked for some days. 
When the time for drinking came, the old man took the basket of 
liquid and said: 

Drink this water for Ttitisiut ; 
Drink this water for that Pamasiut3; 
Drink this water for that Yuhahait. 


Twice he moved the basket toward the novice; the third time he 
held it toward the novice’s mouth. When all the boys had drunk, 
they were taken away from the village, to places where they would 
be undisturbed, by older men who watched over them. The boys 
seem to have slept off their intoxication outdoors; as an open-air 
affair, the ceremony was made seus the dry season, apparently 
in spring. 

The participants underwent the rite for their own good. The 
Jimson weed would give them health, long life, ability to dodge 
arrows in battle, and general prosperity. 

If a boy vomited his dose of drug, it was taken as a sign that he 
would die, and his relatives paid the old master of ceremonies for 
praying to avert this threatening fate. | 

Such was the ritual among the southern Yokuts. The Dumna, 
among whom the participants were men, practiced it somewhat dif- 
ferently. The roots were shaved instead of pounded. The master 
of ceremonies is mentioned not as having prayed, but as singing, 
before giving the liquid. The drinking took place in the sweat 
house and was followed, before the intoxication took effect, by a 
brief dance of the participants. Men would experience or obtain 
what they saw in their visions; the sight of beads would make the 
dreamer wealthy. 


THE RATTLESNAKE CEREMONY. 


Other public céremonials of the Yokuts were in the hands of medi- 
cine men. They were not performed by participants following an 
anciently established ritual learned from preceding generations, nor 
by initiates into an esoteric cult or priesthood, but by shamans who, 
in their own persons, held communication with the source of the 
supernatural. The ceremonies were in essence a demonstration of 
the tipni, the magic power, possessed by these men—sometimes. for 
the public good, at others merely as exhibitions. 

The most spectacular of these shaman’s performances was a rattle- 
snake ceremony, somewhat suggesting the famous snake dance of 
the Arizona Hopi. The Yokuts called this institution, according 
to dialect, Daidangich, Datela, or Datlawash, namely, “ stepping on.” 

Karly in spring, before the snakes had come out, the tiitidum or 
men to whom a rattlesnake had spoken in their dreams, executed 


KROUBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 505 


the rite in order that none of the people might be bitten during 
the ensuing year. Proceeding in a procession to a rattlesnake den, 
they stamped and whistled before it, the head shaman directly facing 
the hole, the others on the sides to cut off the return of such snakes 
as might falter at the impending ordeal. 

Soon, it is said, the snakes would emerge, usually preceded, it 
was believed, by a large lizard, and, drawn on by the leading shaman, 
they crawled straight to his feet, where they buried themselves in 
a winnowing basket filled with eagle down. Each medicine man 
in turn pointed out the snake he considered his, distracted its atten- 
tion by swinging his wacham or hand-feathers, seized it, and car- 
ried it off in a sack. The worst snake of the lot was left for the 
head “ doctor.” 

In the evening the tribe gathered under the inevitable shade. 
While the singers chanted particular melodies to the accompani- 
ment of cocoon rattles the snake shamans walked about whistling, 
each with his death-bearing sack. They wore down-filled head nets 
and were painted in alternate horizontal stripes of white and red 
drawn across the body and limbs. From time to time they placed 
their bags on the heads of spectators, declaring that thus they deter- 
mined who was subject to snake bite during the year. 

On the following day these prospective victims of the serpents 
are cured in anticipation in order to prevent their being bitten. 
Although their infection is entirely imaginary and future, it is 
treated by the snake shamans by their usual medical means of suck- 
ing. The doctors even profess to extract from the not yet existing 
wound the actual poison—usually a rat’s tail or tooth or a small 
snake—which has already been injected into the body by the future 
piercing of the skin by the rattlesnake’s fangs. This is certainly 
magic with a vengeance; and it is difficult to imagine a logic of 
causality more in conflict with our own. 

This precaution for the health of the community having been 
taken, the snake shamans display their powers to the multitude. 
They play with the snakes, throw them about, tease them to anger, 
allow them to bite themselves, and even hold them out hanging by 
their fangs from the thumb or hand. 

The kuyohoch or “shaman killers”’—in California the doc- 
tor is also potentially a nefarious wizard—then appear. Pretending 
to be trying to shoot the rattlesnake shamans, they make these beg 
for their lives and pay ransom for being spared. 

The last act of the ceremony, the “stepping” itself, is also costly 
to the shamans, who, far from exploiting the community through 
their powers, as we might anticipate, are forced to accumulate much 
property in order to pass through the rite. The rattlesnakes are now 


506 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


in a small hole outdoors. The people come with sticks from which 
hang crude imitations of shell money; the chiefs’ prerogative is to 
bear poles of such length that they can be made only by splicing. 
Kveryone professes a strong wish to prod the snakes in the pit. 
The shamans feel equal alarm for the safety of their darlings, and 
purchase the lives of them by paying each man the equivalent 
in real money of the length of bark or rag on his stick. 

Finally the entire community files past the hole, each man, woman, 
or child placing the right foot into or over it. This insures that 
for a year every approached snake will rattle in warning instead 
of striking blindly; and with this act the ceremony ends. 

A rattlesnake ceremony song: 

The king snake said to the rattlesnake: 
Do not touch me! 

You can do nothing with me. 

Lying with your belly full, 

Rattlesnake of the rock pile, 

Do not touch me! 

There is nothing you can do, 

You rattlesnake with your belly full, 
Lying where the ground-squirrel holes are thick. 
Do not touch me! 

What can you do to me? 

Rattlesnake in the tree clump, 
Stretched in the shade, 

You can do nothing; 

Do not touch me! 

Rattlesnake of the plains, 

You whose white eye 

The sun shines on, 

Do not touch me! 


The implied idea probably is that the repetition of the words used 
by the king snake when he successfully defied and evaded his venom- 
ous opponent will bring about a recurrence of his safety for the 
human being who in his turn encounters a rattlesnake. 

Such was the Yaudanchi practice, which the Yauelmani, Tachi, 
and Kashowu approximated. Only the Chukchansi are again un- 
Yokuts-like and dispense with the ceremony. 


OTHER CEREMONIES. 


The Heshwash, or “hiding” ceremony, is a public intertribal con- 
test of medicine men, who test their superiority in bewitching one 
another. The shamans dress as for a dance. In the evening they 
seat themselves in two parties under a shade, while special heshwash 
songs are sung to cocoon rattling and the expectant multitude 
watches. The performers try to inject their disease objects or “ poi- 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 507 


son” into their opponents, and strike at each other with winnowing 


baskets. Often, when struck, they are able to extract the magic 
missile, but sometimes fail, whereupon the victors shout “ Wwuewwoeu- 
wuuul” and receive pay for withdrawing their paralyzing power. 
On the first evening the performance is brief, a sort of warming up. 
The next night the shamans go at each other in earnest, and contend 
‘until morning. Although no public benefit whatever results, this 
rite appears to be rated more highly than the rattlesnake ceremony, 
on the ground that a greater number of medicine men participate. 
Shamans of special powers as opposed to bewitching and curative 
abilities do not enter the heshwash: rain, bear, and snake “ doctors” 
stay out. 

This contest of supernatural abilities has northern parallels; as 
among the Yuki in their hudk’t/a/ ceremonies. But the setting, mean- 
ing, and organization of the performances are different. In the one 
case there is a secret society of initiated impersonators; in the other 
an assembly of shamans with personally acquired powers. A nearer 
parallel is found among the Maidu shamans’ competitions. 

The Ohowish or “ wishing” ceremony is also a pure demonstration 
of supernatural power. Sleight of hand is the central feature, as 
suggestion is in the heshwash. Several shamans gather in a specially 
made house or booth, behind a screen of tules, and perform to songs 
appropriate to the occasion. The skins of beavers and otters hang 
about the walls. These animals are the personal spirits of the 9ho- 
wich medicine men, the “ wishers” or “ willers,” whose power seems 
connected with water, as among their achievements mentioned is 
that of making fish in a vessel of water. Such displays appear to be 
the kernel of the ceremony, which ends toward morning by the per- 
forming shamans “ fighting ” one another magically. 

The medicine bags here referred to savor of Plains Indian ideas 
more than of native Californian practices; although there is Pomo 
parallel. 

The Meshwash and Ohowish extend from the southernmost tribes 
at least to the Tachi and Gashown; the habits of the Chukchansi are 
not known. 

The HTa%shat is a nonshamanistic dance, whose relation to other 
ceremonies, or purpose other than pleasure, has not become clear. 
A place and time, perhaps 12 days ahead, are appointed. The in- 
vitees then busy themselves securing quantities of food, laden with 
which they start out, and make camp for the night a mile or more 
away from the designated spot. In the morning the entire tribe, 
men, women, and children, every one carrying his pack of provisions, 
dance in a long single file, to the usual Yokuts “ piston-rod step,” 
all the way in to the meeting place. This must have been a most pic- 


5OS | BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 73 | 


turesque spectacle when several tribes gathered at once; but it has 
the appearance of being only a prelude. 


CEREMONIAL PARAPHERNALIA, 


The eternal yellow-hammer forehead bands of the California In- 
dians are not lacking among the Yokuts; but the characteristic dance 
costume of these tribes comprised the chohun, a skirt of strings of 
eagle down, and the djuh, a tall headdress of tail plumes of magpies, 
encircled at the base by crow feathers (Fig. 44). The eagle-down 
skirt extends across the Sierra to the Shoshonean tribes as far east as 
Death Valley (PI. 42). It has not been reported from any part 
of interior California other than the Yokuts, and in southern Cali- 
fornia its place is taken by a skirt of 
large eagle feathers. In this garment 












—_— gee 

BP LL 
Se aaa 
a 
—e 

=—=: > 


4 Z sa = 
ZS ; 
ee er a 
he ep ll OE a 
oS a 
SG aA? 
pig 
=. ee 
Lg SR SS a 
ES ACen oe > 


eel a 
“SSS —< 
ie a 
ZS ~~ 


Wy A ly 
7 a, 
VAL ak 
A WIT iN f 
! v Nay Paws \ pet 
\ a » Pere, 2 
a Sos ‘ > Gee YG) 
we . see ee gi 
ore YS ntig ee 
af is 
MMe ‘ 
a ae K 


we have thus to recognize either a local 
development or an influence from the 
Great Basin. The magpie and crow 
headdress 1s found, with some slight 
variation, among the Maidu and Pat- 
win; and it may accordingly be as- 
sumed for the intervening Miwok also, 
though not yet reported from them. 
With the Maidu, this ornament is part 
of the apparel of god impersonators, 
such as the S2d2 and Bear spirit; among 





the Yokuts, who do not indulge in such 

Fie. 44.Yokuts dance headdress of esoteric representations, 1t 1s worn In 
magpie and crow feathers. : , 

the mourning dance, in the comple- 
mentary dance of rejoicing, and by shamans. It is a familiar fact 
that the same article or element of civilization is frequently utilized 
for widely different purposes, and in quite diverse connections or 
ineanings, by distinct nations. 

The djuh was held in place by a stick jammed through its base 
and the hair as bunched under a tightly drawn head net—the usual 
central Californian device for fastening large feather ornaments 
to the head. The chohun was made from the down of a large water 
bird, called goldat by the valley tribes, when they experienced diffi- 
culty in securing a sufficient supply of eagles. Sticks tipped with the 
showy crest feathers of the mountain quail were passed through the 
pierced ear lobes. 

Two other ornaments were much used by the Yokuts: the wacham 
and the notanat. The former was a loose bunch of feathers carried 
in the hand and swinging with every motion; the latter, a belt, also 
worn as leg band, of strings of twisted hair cut off by mourners. This 


BUREAU OF:-AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETINS -PUATE 41 





CORD-WRAPPED LEG REMAINS, BUENA VISTA LAKE 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN °78: 4PLAT Ba42 





FEATHER DANCE SKIRTS 


a, Koso; 6, Yokuts; c, Luisefio 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 43 





FEUTES 


a, Yuma; b, Yokuts; c, Miwok; d, Pomo; e, Karok 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 44 





IEEE NESE OEE SLOG SE ALS 7} 





SS ela BaBS conse eine 





iOS REELS BONE BLEE IIRL LLG LEANDER EEL LL LCE SEN ELE LE LE LLL IE 





a, Kitanemuk mortar hopper. Acorn gruel stirrers: 6, Dieguefio; 
c, Northern Wintun. Bull-roarers: d, Yokuts; e, Luisefio; 
J, Pomo 


KROEBRR | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 509 


hair belt recurs as far to the north as the Shastan tribes. Its dis- 
tribution is likely to have been continuous over a wide area, but there 
are reports of its use from only a few points. 

The dance rattle was the same cleft stick as prevails over all of 
central California; likewise, the cocoon implement was associated 
with the shaman. The deer-hoof rattle of parts of northern Cali- 
fornia and the turtle shell and gourd instruments of the south were 
unknown. ‘The flute was the usual tube, blown from the end over its 
edge; the holes were commonly four, grouped in pairs, but without 
definite rule as to relations of distance. (Pl. 48, 5.) It was thought 
to have been invented by the falcon. Drums were not employed by 
the Yokuts: the foot drum of the Sacramento drainage appears to be 
part of the dance house. The bull roarer was called himhimna, 
huhuudech, or hmhm’udech. It was a toy; but whether it had other 
purpose and potency is not known. (PI. 44.) 


PRAYERS. 


Short prayers in fixed form are spoken on a variety of occasions 
and are evidently a definite element of Yokuts culture. 
When there is an eclipse, this is said: 
Leave me a little of the sun! 
Do not devour it altogether from me! 
Leave me a little! 
If one wishes to drink of a strange body of water, he says: 
Let us live long in this world! 
This is our water! 


The dead are addressed thus by the Tachi: 


You are going to another land. 
You will like that land. 
You shall not stay here. 

There is here an expression of the world-wide sentiment that the 
career of the departed in this world is finished, that the break is 
final, and that any attempt at return can only be disastrous to the 
living and is not desired. 

As the language knows no exhortative of the second person, nor 
any form corresponding to our precative “may,” these speeches are 
either in the unvarnished command of the imperative or direct 
statements in the indicative mode. 

One of the most usual Yokuts offerings is tobacco; another, at least 
among the hill tribes and those of the south, is eagle down. 

The ritualistic number of the Yokuts is most often 6, sometimes 12, 
not infrequently 7; 3 occurs occasionally, but it is not certain 
whether with any sense of significance. The universal 4 of the 
north central tribes, and the 5 and 10 of the northwestern Indians 
appear to be meaningless to the Yokuts, 


510 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 
MYTHOLOGY. 


Yokuts mythology lacks the organization and leaning toward 
spirituality that characterize native beliefs in the region of the 
Sacramento Valley. Traditions are not built into a system, and 
speculation as to the mystery of the world and life is not even 
naively profound. The creators are all animals, with the Eagle 
at their head as wise and dignified chief. The Coyote is his pre- 
suming assistant, often ridiculous, at times inefficient; on other 
occasions, when not in direct competition with his chief, possessed 
of strange powers. He brings disaster into the world only rarely; 
death is the result of the Meadowlark’s folly, or the desire of the 
insect Kokwiteit; but Coyote assents. He aids in securing fire, in 
stealing the sun for the future world, and advises the Eagle to send 
the Duck to dive for the earth from the primeval stump which 
alone projects from the universal first water. A favorite figure is 
Limik, the swiftly swooping Falcon, silent, determined, wise, a 
warrior, whose only food is tobacco, and whose supernatural abili- 
ties are great; but a victim in gambling. His coadjutor is his friend 
the Raven. The Condor is a plotter, a cannibal and robber, but he 
is overcome by the Falcon, and by the Eagle when he threatens the 
latter’s supremacy. The Owl is a powerful shaman, the Antelope 
the swift runner who wins from Deer and helps to steal fire. The 
Hummingbird is Coyote’s son, who excels his makeshift father. 

This animal pantheon, varied and distinctive as it is, seems strange 
as set against the more abstract deities of the Maidu, the Wintun, 
and the Yuki; or had this aspect as long as it was believed that the 
Miwok alone observed totemism. Now that it is known that this set 
of beliefs extends to most of the Yokuts also, their traditions, unco- 
ordinated as they remain on the surface, are perhaps more than 
mere fanciful beast fables, and may fit into a scheme more or less 
allied to the totemic classification and its connected dualistic plan 
of chieftainship, marriage, and ritual. 

The southern Californian concepts of the god that dies—Whiyot, 
Matavilya, Tuchaipa—of the first Sky father and Earth mother; and 
of the birth and wanderings of mankind; together with many associ- 
ated episodic incidents, are all lacking among the Yokuts—totally, 
it would appear. It is clear that mythically a sharp cleavage sepa- 
rates the San Joaquin Valley from the southern end of the State, and 
that the southwestern influences which have so profoundly permeated 
the tribes of the latter region, both in traditions and ritual, have not 
transcended the barrier of the Tehachapi. 

The Yokuts Jimson weed puberty rite has already been referred 
to as of southern origin. The most specific development of this re- 
ligion, however, a later cult developed by the Gabrielino and spread 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 511 


out from them, failed to reach the Yokuts. This is clear both from 
their nonuse of sand paintings and their ignorance of the great deity 
Chungichnish or any equivalent. 

On the other hand, the Yauelmani, and perhaps other southern 
Yokuts tribes, appear to have borrowed from the nearer Shoshoneans 
or southern Californians, probably the Kitanemuk, the concept of a 
group of gods, apparently anthropomorphic, and associated with 
ritual rather than myth. Three of these, who have no exact Sho- 
shonean counterpart, have already been mentioned in the Jimson 
weed rite; but the full number is seven, of whom four correspond in 
name to the first four among six Serrano deities. As referred to in 
an intoned prayer, recited not so much for the achievement of any 
specific wish as for the general fulfillment of good fortune, these 
deities are the following: 

Do you see me! 

See me, Tititishiut ! 

See me, Pamashiut! 

See me, Yuhahait! 

See me, Echepat! 

See me, Pitsuriut ! 

See me, Tsukit! 

See me, Ukat! 

Do you all help me! 

My words are tied in one 
With the great mountains, 
With the great rocks, 
With the great trees, 

In one with my body 
And my heart. 

Do you all help me 
With supernatural power, 
And you, day, 

And you, night! 

All of you see me 

One with this world! 

A certain vastness of conception and profoundness of feeling, ris- 
ing above any petty concrete desire, can not be denied this petition, 
crude though the undeveloped vocabulary of its speech leaves its 
wording. — 

SHAMANISM. 


The Yokuts shaman is called antu or angtu—with a reference to 
poisoning—by the southern tribes; tuponot by the Tachi; tezsh, 
“maker,” by the Chukchansi. The latter word reappears in the 
south as tesh and with the Tachi as teshich gonom as the designation 
of the “rain doctors” or weather shamans. //opodno, sometimes 


3625°—25 34 





512 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


used as if a synonym, seems to have been the name of an individual 
of unusual repute in these matters who lived at or near Tejon about 
two generations »go. Perhaps his appellation too was at bottom a 
generic one. 

The ohowich, the “ willing” or “ seeking ” doctor, has already been 
mentioned. The bear doctor is called simply “ grizzly bear,” noho’o 
or ngoho’o, according to dialect. 


MANA. 


Supernatural power, beings, or things are called by all the Yokuts 
tipne or chipni: a word from which Tachi tuponot is probably de- 
rived by one of the vowel mutations characteristic of the language. 
Lhe word tpn itself is likely to be connected with tipin, “ above,” 
in a spatial sense, or “top, high, sky, up.” It is the obvious equiva- 
lent of mana, orenda, wakanda, and manitou. In some usages the 
term clearly refers to beings, monsters, or spirits. In other con- 
nections it is said that a man, say a shaman, is ¢7pné or possibly that 
he has tepne. In the above prayer to the seven gods, the word seems 
to mean “ with supernatural power”; but a translation by “ super- 
natural ones” is also possible. Altogether, it is clear that tipné is 
used indifferently as a noun and as an adjective; and that it is em- 
ployed, according to circumstance, to denote spirits, supernatural 
or monstrous beings of any sort, men who possess spiritual or magi- 
cal power, and, if indications are not deceiving the essence or power 
or quality itself. | 

This diversity of usage seems to be as characteristic of the more 
familiar synonyms in other languages as of Yokuts tipi, and it fol- 
lows, therefore, that the question of whether these words denote 
rather an essence or a definite personalized spirit in the literal sense 
is not a problem to be settled by psychological interpretation, but 
one for which the tools and knowledge of the philologist are indis- 
pensable, and that the latter’s answer is likely to be that the terms 
are used with both meanings and adjectively as well as substan- 
tively; with reference on one occasion to quality, on others, to per- 
sonality. There must have been a time when our own word “spirit ” 
was capable of denoting in one sentence the breath itself, the physi- 
cal flow of air from the lungs, and in the next an immaterial thing 
resembling the entire body of a man but possessed of faculties that 
do not belong to the body. Just so, to-day and among ourselves, 
“ spirit ” at times indubitably denotes such an anthropomorphic but 
intangible personality, and nothing else; at others, an abstract and 
impersonal essence or quality or force. It would be rash to main- 
tain that its real meaning in our minds and in our civilization was 
only one of these two aspects and that when used in the other sense 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 518 


it was so used as a conscious metaphor or from deliberate desire to 
present as personal something known to be impersonal, or as general 
something known to be specifically limited. It is just as strained, 
or more so, to force this alternative on the less developed and sim- 
pler terminology of uncivilized people. 

The choice that has been made between the understanding of 
mana, orenda, or manitou as denotive of an essence, or of a particu- 
larized ghostlike personality, has done violence to a distinctive 
quality of the concepts residing in these words, namely, their un- 
differentiated poise between our two extreme formulations. A na- 
tive who has learned the significance of our phrases “ essence,” “ per- 
vading quality,’ “intangible diffused power,” will of his own ac- 
cord give these definitions for his own concept; but at other times 
he will as blithely render it by “spirit” in the sense of something 
limited, personal, and spatial. 

With the Chukchansi, deniti means clairvoyant, and among the 
Yauelmani swhua denotes the faculty of magical creation out of 
nothing by means of blowing. 

A ghost is hichwaiu or hitwaia to the Yokuts. The soul is called 
ilit by the Tachi. The word for heart, honhon or honghong, is not 
used. in this sense. 

There is bare possibility that shamanism, the individual relation 
of persons to what is ¢ipni, is distantly related to the totemic obsery- 
ances and beliefs of the Yokuts, but specific evidences of direct con- 
nections are rare. One of the few is the coincidence that both the 
“pet ” or captive or totemic animal, and the doctor’s guardian spirit 
from whom his tépni power emanates, are called puus or cheshesh, 
“dog”; cheshesh nim ngohoo, “my dog is the grizzly bear,” a 
Yaudanchi bear shaman says. But again, poverty of vocabulary 
can not be relied upon to prove a common growth of institutions. 


SOURCE OF THE SHAMAN’S POWER. 


The northern California idea of shamanistic power is bound up 
with the notion of control over small, animate, disease-bearing ob- 
jects, these material “ pains ” having many of the faculties of spirits. 
This special form of the nearly universal concept that sickness is 
produced by an injected substance is not even in rudiment a part of 
the San Joaquin Valley culture. The Yokuts shaman owns a spirit. 
This may be a monster, or an animal that turns into a man, or pos- 
sibly a permanently disembodied spirit. It is certainly most often 
one of the two former. It may be met in actuality, or dreamed of, 
or both. But it is a being, with an independent existence, and with 
a defined relation between it and the medicine man; not a little 
noxious thing, a sort of animated fetish or amulet, that he swallows 
and keeps inside his body. 


514 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY puts. 78 


Shamanistic power among the Yokuts comes both unsought and 
to men desirous of acquiring it. It is most commonly derived from 
animals or monsters inhabiting the water, or. from their appearances 
in dreams after their haunts have been frequented ; but visits by dead 
relatives, which are so frequent a stimulus among the northern Cali- 
fornia tribes, are also mentioned as a source of the conferment. The 
bear doctor, of course, has bears as his spirit; the rattlesnake shaman, 
the sun, as with the Yuki. The rain doctor alone has his power 
associated more directly with an amulet than with any spirit. 

The prospective Tachi doctor bathes nightly for a winter in 
pools, springs, or water holes, until the inhabiting being meets and 
instructs him, or comes to him in his sleep. In one such hole lives 
a six-mouthed rattlesnake; in another, a white water snake; in a 
third, a hawk which can occasionally be seen flying into or out of 
its home below the surface. A Yaudanchi, with two boy compan- 
ions, caught a wetapkul, a long, large-eyed fish, which makes doc- 
tors by swallowing them. At once a great whirlwind circled, the 
trees broke, the water rose, and the three persons fled for their lives. 
That night in his sleep the monster came to the young man and 
gave him this song: 

Whose is this fish to shoot? 
Your hand feathers are panting! 


The hand feathers are the wacham. dance ornament used by doc- 
tors; they seem to symbolize the moving gills of the water monster. 

Another southern Yokuts at dusk met two strangers, who took 
him with them into the stream, through two doors, one formed of 
a snake, one of a turtle. He had become unconscious. Inside their 
house the otters, for such they had become, resumed human shape. 
They offered t2pni power to their guest, with the threat that he 
could not live if he refused. He took the gift, but asked for in- 
structions concerning it. “ You shall cure the sick, not kill human 
beings,” was the naive order he received with his song. When the 
man awoke he was on land once more, and dry as if he had never 
left the earth. ‘This is his song: 


The other says: Run in the brush; 
Run in the brush, I hear continually. 


Two instances of the genesis of bear doctors: 


A Yaudanchi hunter was taken by a grizzly into its hidden house inside the 
rock, where it drew off its skin and became human. Others joined the circle, 
and a dance began. Suddenly a dog barked and the dance stopped. The man 
remained with his hosts several days. 

A Tachi bathed at night. At last a bear appeared in his dreams and in- 
structed him. After many years, not before middle life, he reached the power 
of becoming a bear at will. He swam in a pool, emerged as the animal, and 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 515 


went on his errand. To resume human shape a plunge into the same pool was 
necessary. 


The long period of training before full power is attained seems 
characteristic for Yokuts bear shamans, as for Yula. 
A bear doctor’s song: 


Again he comes, 
Again the grizzly bear comes to me. 


A shaman named Mayemai dreamed that his father sang to him: 


Listen to me, 
Mayemai! 

There in the east 
I shall emerge 
Twirling 

My hand feathers. 


An eagle dance song, originally dreamed: 


The earth quakes. 
See my eagle 
Emerging at the open place! 


Coyote songs, dreamed, and perhaps also of moiety totemic refer- 
ence:: 
Whirling in front of you, 


It is mourned for, 
The rope of our world 


I am coyote, 

We are coyotes. 

The earth told them, 

The earth said: 

You shall not continually scratch me. 


Coyote said: 
What am I? 
I am coyote. 
I am of the water. 
What am I? 
IT am coyote. 


The frankness of these songs in allusions to the supernatural 
experience and mention of the guardian, and that in words which 
are far less altered to fit the rhythm than is customary in California, 
is remarkable. 

The doctor’s initiation dance of northern California has not been 
referred to among the Yokuts and seems not to have been practiced. 


DISEASE AND CURE. 


Three principal methods of curing disease are followed, besides 
the administration of herbs and parts of animals. Sucking the dis- 
ease object, a pebble or bit of something, is universal. This is linked 


516 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY IBULL. 78 


with bloodletting and singing. The Tachi class themselves with the 
northern tribes as addicted to the former, the southerners as special- 
ists in the latter. A good southern doctor can even kill by his song 
or restore the dead to life, provided he is summoned in time. Blood- 
letting was often joined with sucking. The skin was cut, and first 
blood and then the disease object drawn out. Among the Chuk- 
chansi, who have women practitioners as well as men, the inferior 
shamans sucked only blood. Cuts between the eyes were commonly 
made for headache, sleepwalking, and other chronic but light ail- 
ments. Most of the Chukchansi even to-day carry several such scars. 

The use of irritants was not unknown. for stomach ache ants 
were applied to the abdomen; if the pain did not yield, the insects 
were wrapped in eagle down and swallowed. 

His pipe was one of the resources of a doctor; he could cause sick- 
ness by blowing tobacco smoke, and perhaps cure by the same method. 

The shaman’s rattle was the usual California one, but was a little 
thing with but one or two cocoons. (Fig. 37, a.) Occasionally a 
larger number of cocoons were tied up in a mass of feathers. (Fig. 
37, 7.) A favorite habit was for the doctor to sing softly to himself 
before lying down to sleep. 

The repeatedly unsuccessful medicine man stood in danger of his 
own life, and it appears that violence was the end of members of the 
profession as often as among most California tribes. Even to- 
day American law has not entirely extirpated this system of re- 
prisal. In the early reservation days at Tejon a Yauelmani shaman 
bewitched a Yaudanchi so that he awoke crazed and soon died. 
When the Yaudanchi slew the poisoner the Yauelmani were incensed 
at the summary fate of their compatriot. But one of their chiefs 
restrained them and they laid down their bows, which seems to have 
been the end of the matter except for talk. 


BEAR SHAMANS. 


The bear doctor did not cure disease, though there is a recorded 
instance of one who eased his daughter’s childbirth by giving her 
bear’s hair to drink. On the other hand, the Chukchansi accused 
bear doctors of making their private enemies ill by shooting little 
stones into them. Only the Tachi attributed particular curative 
powers to the song and dancing of the bear doctor. In fact the 
function of this class of shamans, other than as exhibitors of their 
powers, 1s not clear. They were difficult to keep killed; but they 
seem not to have been dreaded marauders or ferocious fighters as 
among the Pomo and Yuki. In the hunt, a shaman of this class 
might enter the retreat of a skulking bear to rout him out. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 517 


The Chukchansi know of a female shaman who on being killed 
and buried emerged from the ground in the shape of a bear and 
walked off unmolested. The Tachi ascribe to their bear doctors, and 
of course especially to those of their neighbors, the faculty of surviv- 
ing repeated killings in their bear shape: the medicine man merely 
returns to his home the next night as if nothing had happened. <A 
famous shaman of this kind was at San Luis Obispo in mission times, 
they declare. Once he was trapped or roped, in his animal form, and 
had the misadventure of being dragged in to fight a bull. This tale 
seems to include the Chumash among the tribes that believed in 
bear doctors. 

While the valley Tachi bear doctor might dance over a patient, the 
Choinimni and Yaudanchi had a public dance of such personages, 
held outdoors. The exhibition is described as harmless in effect, 
and the dancers were paid, but the purpose of the demonstration, ex- 
cept as a demonstration, is obscure. Obviously the ceremony falls 
into the same class as the Ohowish, Heshwash, and rattlesnake step- 
ping rites already mentioned. The two or three participants were 
painted entirely black, and were naked save for a headband of eagle 
down and a claw necklace, or skin around the loins, that had been 
taken from the animal they controlled. The dance was clearly 
mimetic. The feet were held together, the body leaned forward, the 
hands hung down. The step was a short stiff leap with a heavy 
land. Gradually the doctors jumped to their song, growled, spread 
their fingers like claws, and leaped forward as if to seize a foe. 


RATTLESNAKE SHAMANS. 


The Chukchansi, among whom the public stepping ceremony was 
lacking or slenderly developed, nevertheless had shamans who cured 
rattlesnake bites. The poison was sucked out with a bone whistle, 
pointed, however, at the sun, and not at the bitten part. The poison 
was then displayed as a salivalike string—no doubt from the shaman’s 
own mouth—and put away in a basket to be kept by him. The con- 
nection of rattlesnake and sun has already been alluded to as regards 
the shaman’s spirit. The Yaudanchi rattlesnake doctor extracted 
gopher teeth by direct sucking: as the snake feeds on gophers, it 
retains their teeth to inject as poison. 

Rattlesnake doctors are said to have received only moderate fees, 
as contrasted with the bankrupting payment to the Yuki shaman; and 
rattlesnakes are declared to have been killed, though reluctance to 
do this is so great among most other California Indians that it may 
be supposed that even among the Yokuts a common man would not 
hghtly perform the act. 


518 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (porn. 78 
WEATHER SHAMANS, 


The weather doctor chiefly brought on rain, perhaps when it was 
needed, more often, it appears, like Samuel before the people, to prove 
his power. Again the national inclination toward public recognition 
of shamanistic displays is manifest. The famous Hopodno at Tejon, 
who was half Yauelmani and half Shoshonean Kawaiisu, staked the 
rain in a game, and when he lost promptly delivered it to the winners. 

The Chukchansi mention only blowing and the dipping of fingers 
into water as means of making rain; but the Tachi and southern 
tribes describe cylindrical stones, 6 to 8 inches long, pointed at one 
end, as the necessary apparatus. Moistened or dipped a little into 
water, the amulet produced a shower; but if the doctor was angered, 
he plunged the whole stone in and a violent storm followed. These 
objects, which suggest the well-known “charm stones” of the Cali- 
fornia archaeologist, but were probably a distinct though similar 
type, were inherited from father to son; and the Tachi go so far as 
to say that the theft of his amulet would deprive the owner of his 
power. Spirits are nowhere mentioned directly in connection with 
the rain-making faculty. 


CHAPTER 35. 
THE YOKUTS: THE CONCRETE BASIS OF LIFE. 


Dress and bodily habits, 519; houses, 521; the food problem in California, 523; 
Yokuts plant foods and their preparation, 527; the mortar, 527; the taking 
of game and fish, 528; the bow, 530; boats, 531; textiles, 531; cradles of 
the Yokuts and other Californians, 5384; pottery, 5387; pipes and tobacco, 
5388; games, 538; zesthetics, 540; the type of Yokuts civilization, 542. 


DRESS AND BODILY HABITS. 


Clothing sufficed only for the very limits of decency, as we see 
them. Men wrapped a deerskin, sep, around the loins, or went naked. 
Old men in particular were wont to go without even this covering. 
Boys and little girls also were nude; but from the time of puberty 
on women wore a two-piece fringed skirt of the usual Californian 
type, the hind part larger. With the Yaudanchi, both portions 
were made of willow bark, as among the Mohave. The Chukchansi 
made the back piece of buckskin, the front of pounded masses of a 
long grass called chulochul. The well-known rabbit-fur blanket 
protected against cold and rain on occasion, and was excellent to 
sleep in. Moccasins of deer and elk skin were worn only as there 
was special need. Rude sandals of bear fur have been reported as 
worn in winter. 

Women’s hair was worn long, but for men the custom was more 
variable. Both sexes were wont to gather it under a string when at 
work. In mourning, men burned their hair off to the neck, women, 
for a near relative, close to the head. A glowing stick was used, 
and the Chukchansi controlled the singeing with a natural comb of 
tumu, which has close-set parallel branches. 

Women, but not men, had their nose septum pierced for ornaments 
of bone. 

Tattooing was more practiced in the north than in the south, and 
more extensively by women than by men. It ran in lines, zigzags, 
and rows of dots, chiefly down the chin and across from the corners 
of the mouth; the Mono style of marking the upper cheeks was not 
followed. The general type of women’s face pattern tolerated infi- 
pite individual variety, as in the Yuki region; the Yurok and their 
neighbors clung strictly to a tribal style. Chukchansi women might 
be tattooed across breast, abdomen, arms, and legs also. The method 
followed was to rub charcoal dust into cuts made with flint or 


O19 


520 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


obsidian. Chukchansi face patterns are shown in Figures 45 A-1, 
46 m-0. 

Men frequently squatted rather than sat. For longer periods 
they sat on their heels, with toes turned together and hands on knees. 
The cross-legged position, the most common of all the world over, 
was not used, except perhaps on special occasions like gambling. 
Women stretched one leg out and folded the other back; or, at rest, 





SSS HM ey, 





(ae 
g 4 
(ae aes 





J t 


Fic. 45.—Women’s tattoo. a, Yurok and northwestern tribes; 6, c, San Francisco, 
probably Costanoan; d, Sinkyone; e, northwestern valley Maidu; f, northeastern and 
southern Maidu; g, Yuki; h—l, Chukchansi Yokuts. Compare the Wailaki, Yuki, 
Huchnom, and northern Pomo tattoos shown in Powers, Tribes of California, pages 
116, 180, 140, 142, 144, 158. 


drew the knees up and joined the hands in front of them. The 
Plains Indian woman’s attitude, with both legs to one side, was not 
adopted. The habits of all the California Indians in these interest- 
ing matters are little known, but it ig clear that custom and not 
inherited nature is the chief determinant. As at so many other points, 
nature seems at once to have furnished us a structure that permits 
a surprising variety of sustained positions, and to have deprived us 
of instincts favoring one rather than the other; so that culture has a 
clear opportunity to evolve the most diverse habits. 


KROBBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 521 


HOUSES, 


The Yokuts built at least five kinds of dwellings. 

1. Most distinctive was the mat-covered, gabled, communal /awi 
of the Tulamni, Hometwoli, Wowol, Chunut, and perhaps Tachi. 
The roof pitch was steep. Probably each family constructed its 
own portion, with door to front and back, closed at night with tule 
mats. Each household had its own space and fireplace, but there 
were no partitions, and one could look through from end to end. 





(—_-) (_) 
™m a) 
_) 
LU 
Pp 
SS 
(_-) (_-) 
ae 
8 uw 





_-, 


0 w 





Fic. 46.—Women’s and men’s tattoo. Women: m-o, Chukchansi Yokuts; p—u, Mohave. 
Men: v—«2, Mohave. 


These houses sometimes ran to a size where they accommodated a 
little more than 10 families. A shade porch extended along the 
front. The tule stalks were sewn together with an eyed bone needle 
and string of tule fiber. 

2. The Yauelmani and their neighbors of the southern plains off 
the lake approached this long structure in aligning their wedge- 
shaped tule houses or dwmlus. but kept each contiguous family 
clomicile separate. 

3. The middle plains tribes, such as the Wechihit and Tachi, 
to-day build small tule houses of another type, elliptical or oblong 


522 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


with rounded but vertical ends. There may be a ridgepole on two 
posts, with perhaps five poles planted along each side and bent over 
to the ridgepole. In this case the door is on one side of the front 
post. Or the ridgepole may be dispensed with and the poles bent 
all the way over or lashed together. The total length is only a 
dozen feet or so. The covering is of loose tule mats, each stalk 
wrapped to the next by a hitch in a single strand of string. Floor 
mats and bedding are sewn through. The Wechihit use'a Pectin: 
of tall mohya stems, reaching from the ground to the ridge, and held 
in place outside by several horizontal poles lashed to the framework. 
This type of house was called ¢e or chi. 

4. The Yaudanchi, though a hill tribe, built their principal 
winter houses or te of tule, of which a species called shuyo grows 
along streams to the very limit of the plains. This was a conical 
dwelling, and its most distinctive feature was a hoop at top to attach 
and at the same time separate the leaning poles of the framework, 
and leave a smoke hole. The tule mat covering was sewn as by the 
lake tribes. The houses were placed in rows. 

A larger, ridged house, with two fireplaces and a door at each 
end, was also built by the Yaudanchi. In this a valley influence can 
tale be questioned. 

When camping well up in the hills in summer, or traveling, the 
Yokuts built small structures, apparently conical, covered with 
brush or bark. 

Among the northern hill tribes, such as the Chukchansi and 
Gashowu, the house is also conical with a ring at the top, but usually 
thatched. The floor is lowered perhaps a foot with the digging stick. 
The door faces south, the diameter is 12 to 15 feet, the height not 
quite as much. Allowing for the lack of tule, this is the same house 
as that of the Yaudanchi, but it is called ho, literally “live,” “sit.” 

5. A bark house of similar type is called samish. Sometimes bark 
is first leaned against the framework as a partial covering, then 
brush thatch added, and the whole held fast by bands of phan 
poles or withes tied nin 

It is interesting that there is no reference anywhere to tule thatch- 
ing. The thickness of this rush may make its sewing or binding 
into mats more practicable than bundling it into thatch. The Ser- 
rano and other southern Californians also built tule mat houses, but 
the Pomo employed tule thatch. 

The ch’intu or shade, a flat roof on posts, was used by all the 
Yokuts. It must have been almost indispensable in the intensely 
hot summers of the plains. 

The sweat house, mosh or mos, is a true sudatory, oblong, dug 
down several feet, with a ridge log resting on two posts at the ends, 


KROBBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 523 


and dirt covered. It was small, not over 15 feet in length, and in 
no sense a dance house or assembly chamber. Women never en- 
tered it. It was the regular sleeping place of the older men during 
the winter when they were at the home village. The door faced the 
creek, or south, and was sometimes sheltered by parallel wind- 
breaks. Often on retiring, the inmates sang and sweated, perhaps 
in competition along the two sides, the fire being added to to make 
the opposite row cry out first that they had enough. Then came a 
plunge into the stream, and a return to dry and sleep. In the morn- 
ing they ran shouting to the water again. 

There is no house for dances and rituals. The rattlesnake “ step- 
ping,” the mourning ceremony, and perhaps other rites were held in 
large roofless inclosures of brush, a sort of fence. This is the south- 
ern California form of ceremonial structure. North of the Yokuts 
it reaches to the Maidu as an adjunct of the mourning ceremony. 


THE FOOD PROBLEM IN CALIFORNIA. 


The California Indians are perhaps the most omnivorous group of 
tribes on the continent. The corn, salmon, buffalo, reindeer, or 
seal which formed the predominant staple in other regions, did in- 
deed have a parallel in the acorn of California; but the parallel is 
striking rather than intrinsic. 

To begin with, the oak is absent from many tracts. It does not 
grow in the higher mountains, in the desert, on most of the immediate 
coast; and it is at best rare in districts like the baked plains in- 
habited by the southern Yokuts valley tribes, a fact that may help 
to explain the permanent association and commingling of the ma- 
jority of these tribes with their foothill neighbors. It is true that 
at worst it is rarely a far journey to an abundant growth of bearing 
acorns anywhere in California; but the availability of such supplies 
was greatly diminished by the habits of intense adherence to their 
limited soil followed by the great majority of divisions. 

Then, where the acorn abounded, the practices both of collecting 
and of treating it led directly to the utilization also of other sources 
of nourishment. The farmer may and does hunt, or fish, or gather 
wild growths; but these activities, being of a different order, are a 
distraction from his regular pursuits, and an adjustment is necessary. 
Either the pursuit of wild foods becomes a subsidiary activity, in- 
dulged in intermittently as leisure affords, and from the motive of 
variety rather than need, or a sexual or seasonal division becomes 
established, which makes the same people in part, or for part of the 
year, farmers and in part hunters. An inclination of this sort is 
not wanting in many districts of California. The dry and hot sum- 
mer makes an outdoor life in the hills, near the heads of the vanish- 


524 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


ing streams, a convenience and a pleasure which coincide almost 
exactly with the opportunity to hunt and to gather the various 
natural crops as they become available from month to month. The 
wet winter renders house life in the permanent settlement in a 
valley or on a river correspondingly attractive, and combines resi- 
dence there with the easiest chance to fish the now enlarged streams 
on an extensive scale, or to pursue the swarms of arrived water fowl. 

But this division was not momentous. The distances ranged over 
were minute. Fishing was not excluded among the hills. Deer, 
rabbits, and gophers could be hunted in the mild winter as well as 
in summer. And while acorns and other plant foods might be 
garnered each only over a brief season, it was an essential part of 
their use that much of their preparation as well as consumption 
should be spread through the cycle of the calendar. 

Further, the food resources of California were bountiful in their 
variety rather than in their overwhelming abundance along special 
lines. If one supply failed, there were a hundred others to fall back 
upon. If a drought withered the corn shoots, if the buffalo un- 
accountably shifted, or the salmon failed to run, the very existence 
of peoples in other regions was shaken to its foundations. But the 
manifold distribution of available foods in California and the work- 
ing out of corresponding means of reclaiming them prevented a 
failure of the acorn crop from producing similar effects. It might 
produce short rations and racking hunger, but scarcely starvation. 
It may be that it is chiefly our astounding ignorance of all the more 
intimate and basal phases of their lives that makes it seem as if 
downright mortal famine had been less often the portion of the 
Californian tribes than of those in most other regions of the conti- 
nent. Yet, with all allowance for this potential factor of ignorance 
in our understanding, it does appear that such catastrophes were less 
deep and less regularly recurring. Both formulated and experien- 
tial tradition are nearly silent on actual famines, or refer to them 
with rationalizing abstraction. The only definite cases that have 
come to cognizance, other than for a few truly desert hordes whose 
slender subsistence permanently hung by a thread, are among the 
Mohave, an agricultural community in an oasis, and among the 
Indians of the lower Klamath, whose habits, in their primal de- 
pendence on the salmon, approximated those of the tribes of the 
coasts north of California. 

The gathering of the acorn is like that of the pine nut; its leach- 
ing has led to the recognition of the serviceability of the buckeye 
once its poison is dissolved out; the grinding has stimulated the 
use of small hard seeds, which become edible only in pulverized 
form. The securing of plant foods in general is not separated by 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLEDIN 78> PLATE: 45 





MIWOK MORTAR HOLES IN BEDROCK AND BOWLDER 
PESTLES 





VALLEY YOKUTS MORTAR OF OAK 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETING/3 3 PEAR EE 4G 





DESERT CAHUILLA THATCHED HOUSE 





SOUTHERN FOOTHILL YOKUTS PLATFORM 
AND BOOTH FOR SNARING PIGEONS 


KRORBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 525 


any gap of distinctive process from that, of obtaining grasshoppers, 
caterpillars, maggots, snails, mollusks, crawfish, or turtles, which 
can be got in masses or are practically immobile: a woman’s dig- 
ging stick will procure worms as readily as bulbs. Again, it is only 
a step to the taking of minnows in brooks, of gophers, or lizards, 
or small birds: the simplest of snares, a long stick, a thrown stone 
even, suffice with patience, and a boy can help out his grandmother. 
The fish pot is not very different from the acorn receptacle, and 
weirs, traps, stiff nets, and other devices for capturing fish are made 
in the same technique of basketry as the beaters, carriers, and 
winnowers for seeds. Even hunting was but occasionally the open, 
outright affair we are likely to think. Ducks were snared and 
netted, rabbits driven into nets, even deer caught in nooses and 
with similar devices. There is nothing in all this like the differ- 
ence between riding down buffalo and gathering wild rice, like the 
break from whale hunting to berry picking, from farming to stalk- 
ing deer. | 

The California Indian, then, secured his variety of foods by 
techniques that were closely interrelated, or, where diverse, con- 
nected by innumerable transitions. Few of the processes involved 
high skill or long experience for their successful application; none 
entailed serious danger, material exposure, or even strenuous effort. 
A. little modification, and each process was capable of successful 
employment on some other class of food objects. Thus the ac- 
tivities called upon were distinguished by patience, simplicity, and 
crude adaptability rather than by intense endeavor and accurate 
specialization; and their outcome tended to manifold distribution 
and approximate balance in place of high yields or concentration 
along particular but detached lines. 

The human food production of aboriginal California will ac- 
cordingly not be well understood until a really thorough study has 
been made of all the activities of this kind among at least one people. 
The substances and the means are both so numerous that a recapitu- 
lation of such data as are available is always only a random, scatter- 
ing selection. | 

Observers have mentioned what appealed to their sense of novelty 
or ingenuity, what they happened to see at a given moment, or 
what their native informants were ‘interested in. But we rarely 
know whether such and such a device is peculiar to a locality or 
widespread, and if the former, why; whether it was a sporadic means 
or one that was seriously depended on; and what analogous ones 
it replaced. Statements that this tribe used a salmon harpoon, an- 
other a scoop net, a third a seine, a fourth poison, and that another 


526 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


built weirs, give us in their totality some approximation to a picture 
of the set of activities that underlie fishing in California as a whole: 
but for each individual group the statement is of little significance, 
for it is hkely that those who used the nets used the spear and poison 
also, but under distinctive conditions; and when they did not, the 
question is whether the lack of one device is due to a more productive 
specialization of another, or to natural circumstances which made 
the employment of this or that method from the common stock of 
knowledge impracticable for certain localities. 

There is, however, one point where neither experience nor en- 
vironment is a factor, and in which pure custom reigns supreme: the 
animals chosen for the list of those not eaten. Myth, magic, totem- 
ism, or other beliefs may be at the bottom; but every tribe has such 
an index, which is totally unconnected with its abilities, cultural or 
physical, to take food. 

Among the Yokuts, one animal stands out as edible that every- 
where in northern California is absolute taboo and deadly poison: 
the dog. The Yurok give as their forma] reason for not drinking 
river water that a large stream might contain human foetuses or 
a dead dog. The Yokuts did not shrink from eating dogs. 

Coyote flesh was generally avoided, whether from religious rever- 
ence or magical fear is not clear. Grizzly bear meat was also 
viewed askance. The bear might have devoured human flesh, which 
would be near to making its eater a cannibal. Besides, in all prob- 
ability, there was a lurking suspicion that a grizzly might not be 
a real one, but a transformed bear doctor. The disposition of the 
animal showed itself in the muscular fibers bristling erect when the 
flesh was cut, the Yokuts say. Brown bears had fewer plays of the 
imagination directed upon them, but even their meat was some- 
times avoided. Birds of prey and carrion from the eagle down to 
the crow were not eaten. Their flesh, of course, is far from palat- 
able; but it is these very birds that are central in Yokuts totemism, 
and the rigid abstinence may have this religious motivation. All 
reptiles were unclean to the southern Yokuts, as to the Tiibatulabal ; 
but the northern tribes exercised a peculiar discrimination. The 
gopher snake, water snakes, and frogs were rejected, but lizards, 
turtles, and, what is strangest of all, the rattlesnake, were fit food 
to the Chukchansi. There is a‘ likely alien influence in this, for the 
neighboring Miwok probably, and the Salinans to the west certainly, 
ate snakes, lizards, and even frogs. On the other hand, the southern 
Yokuts relished the skunk, which when smoked to death in its hole 
was without offensive odor; while to the Miwok and Salinans it 
was abomination. f 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 47 








resno 
Tsuloniu 







i= ° 
“NRtven \$ 
Q 


/ 
Inde 


MIGHAHAN, 4% + \ 
penen au FShohonto ‘ 




















SU pe Ke 
Re Sewachiu | v ~ "Timsicn %., 
> 1% p vi 4 a —_—_—. 
Sangeng (4 y / 
Musahaus % (nae H 
my @ AB er arty, fia Lonepine 
Ye / | ~Amr Whitney “ 
vy e 
/ \S, 
/ So 
/ \ 
/ ! 
/ i 
rf i 
/ i 
/ . BN 
Mineral King ss 






op Exeter 7 


























nessville CH x 
a = 
< oS, 
y Huron oQ \ 
BGolo 4 \ 
=) a 
udjiu > \ 
G - | 
Coaynga Pp : < \ 
ss \ 
é a 
Ay “ rs 4 1 
Vlulare Lake NY A 
Warne 5 (27-1880) € \ 
) sy 
) x \ 
A < € J * 
> <= ! 
ScaNE © / 
I Ip 
cH s fs 
oDudley » S 
< S eee 
eak ' 
s, \ 
ON SSY: Kernville \ 
= Hulmiu ulonoya ke : 
oy Pitnaniu Ia, 
. as <I Isabella = /9 
CA peepee Poso Flat heyes oO Weldon ( KG 
s Beki 8(e a eet 
et aukani Tumoyo oe oe F 
O oe o 
os of Vaughn - Walker's 
Goose La PSoa kj i = Pass 
ae RK / 
boxe Vi. 
pS Havilah / 
ee ie / 
rs bs i 
‘ . / 
4 Aste Walkef’s fe 
1 Gla Basin / 
re) ot nor S / 
0 e pes / 
per? ® psf 
& > Oe 
» ~ eS 
Me Kitrri Xe Calients i 
¢ Kittric "3 
Wogitia ® umoyo QF ‘e 
is s 
8 Tulam nig A re 
Z ———~Bear Mt ee 
a a Loe: + BN Ke 
The Southern and Central => Aear ee 
Valley o\ ‘Tehachapi 
YOKUTS b. OF: ber *Tahichpiu 
ev Pohalin Tehachapi Mt~ _/ 
Yokuts Territory-------- — Poe coe co - tx ~ 
; Bitt®, / District ~ PusinTinliu 7S -~ 
Yokuts Dialects... ---- ee —"Nosehia pres) Tejon is 
Alien Divisions.--.-- a e sLaPalet by [hs ‘3 et N et : «cemont pe 
; wow : isi&u a 6 i ees Thies 
Tr/6e@s--.------------ de TO Y, Tasplibunauls’ y es if P18 te, Ss <4 Pott 
Civlacae en: " (OHUMASH) § idioP /& \S Takuyo /* (& \®\ Xe, sw ON .Y 
wid Be Seca S Tecuya ALapa z cr |} ae? \ 
Alien Villages are given with their Yoxut3 names a ek amupau S iS § one ie Avr 
Lh + \ a => 
ce oe) Ft Tejo e tees RAG 
eee Sa AMEFinog = wen es Prataaeke 
af ae oe a 


10 20 30 miles 


& 





BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 


| 
| 
| 
| 


Pt Sal 


Pr Arguello 


BULLETIN 78 PLATE 48 









































‘S * 
RY <3: 18) é Tashlinunau ° 
N Cuyama ik N ¢ : &. 
; 7 eee eee s) $ a : : : 
N 
Ys o> 
Tep¥squet S $ - Fe ot” 
Pipa * Oo) Ee 7415 \, | IdFort Tejon ye 
ee C Ye San Emigdio Mt ae 1, & Y 
& (as) ; Canyon : ecuye Mt th 
Tinaquai tg Ques ; ; 
quaic g oe Mt Pinos Tejon Pass 
. 8826 | 
iva) Frazier Mt, 2 
Los Alamos A 8026 a 
rMasiwitk © Sy 
oO 8 ¥ 5791 
a ® P 
Surf site ainin x Big Pine Mt a P Liebre 
#Purisima 6589 : =, 3 3 
Amuwu . olos Olivos y 4( 2 
Lompoc ¢ 2 
a d 5 
< 
SantaYnez & ge 
Missio rk 
taAla-hul iy 3 
~ cr a < 
— Sespe = _ 
o: HD s 
& Kuvung Ps Ro 
n Huyang > 
Painted Cave Nahayalewas-<> Ma’tilha 
Ushtahash s 2 Ke Etseng 
. pKashwa Chismahoo Mt 5)> > 
Humkakala ® _aHanaya a Sitoptopo Xe 
Pt Concepcion ” Goleta Migsion. ry a Sis’ Akavavi 
» ' Kuyamuu~, =“ Helo ~ Aiineks o}e PpAwai Sone Kashtu 
vet Sanhpilil yoy 2 Sparbare @ a -SElhele! a RB ¥ Oj Ai ire Sek’ spe Pridhuku Kamulus 
fe) . i.) pars 4 a 3 
weg?” Mish Beige” Tene “fcarpivteria " Se Sespe Piru 
p : ew ost” Mi shSpshne huku 3 & - a ° 
art of the Habitat of the £ re Aalst oc SantaPaula). Rive? Newhall 
CHUMASH ey es) Mupu 
aia Chwayak & gt Kashiwea,% 
Kohso ou Ta’apu ¢ 
ALLI KLIK ‘ Sati * y, 
Sinncnica Ro Ventura” ~°% P koi Simi re 
CHP ASD ITM AG ES. 0.5 3s Gee ae eee = Salted eases sds a a Kaen rao Nanfission t ati’ koi pMah’auh ne a oSahta Susana 
; ; R imlyi ¢ 
Chumash villages approximately focatred........ Pa) ha ow S’ohmis g Y 3 7 
. , . (3 < . 
AHTATET EOS «..... i Shwa G ; FERNANDENO 
: 2 a / aa 
Spanish grants with Chumash names....Sisquoc | oOxnard  skayewish ;  (GABRIELINO) 
: : ’ 
Names presumably sf Chumash origin...Cachiumea & oSanhtruui ; 
i cane qiueneme \y ; : 
. . . ‘ ~ s Ny Triton, 1 
Limits OF FACEAIITA ee eee —_- Wene’m ,. es "yo Hipuk ‘ 
o’mo < 2 
Chumash—Fernandeno boundary........-77 ~~ aSMuwa IS eX Bee 
= 2 ox aw 
Vaka’amu Wihache of . - aS & 
“ at 3 
Ch’oloshush’a, . Valalu upsh Shusahaaas st 7 3 \ g 
\ of * ha ¥ - \ °o 
Y Sa, Crane a wahul Anyapah 0? < Maliwus i = 
2 eae Shaway, ey AnaCapaIs\® E 
Kichuwun ( op Crus at Santa Monic# 
shiu “Mash Pt Dume 





oN 
A aaa u 








KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 527 


YOKUTS PLANT FOODS AND THEIR PREPARATION, 


The buckeye process, which was probably similar to usages else- 
where in the State, was the following: The nuts were broken with 
a stone and soaked in water for a day. Next, the kernels were 
crushed to powder with the pestle. The last step was the extraction 
of the poison, which was done in the acorn-leaching place by the 
creek. Each time the flour dried a stick was laid aside; the pour- 
ings were so timed that the tenth stick was taken as the sun was 
nearly setting. The woman then cooked the flourlike acorn mush, 
and it was usually consumed on the spot. 

The digger pine nut was not only eaten whole and raw but often 
treated like small seeds, being winnowed in a scoop-shaped basket, 
pounded into flour, and cooked. 

Acorn granaries were of Miwok and Maidu type. There is no 
record of their occurrence south of the Yokuts. 

Small shallow cook pots of soft stone, perhaps steatite, though de- 
scribed as reddish, were used by the Chukchansi and no doubt irregu- 
larly by other tribes who had access to a suitable supply of material. 
They were dug out with quartz. Auwyati and kulosun grubs, and 
angleworms, were perhaps stewed in these vessels, or more likely 
fried in their own fat at the edge of the fire. 

The paddle for stirring boiling acorn mush is not a Yokuts imple- 
ment, the central Miwok being the most southerly group among 
whom it makes its regular appearance until southern California is 
reached. The Yokuts substitute a stick looped on itself, a less effi- 
cient stirrer but more serviceable for removing the cooking stones, 
and far more readily made. (Fig. 38.) 


THE MORTAR. 


The mortar was a pit in an outcrop of granite, used until the depth 
of the hole became inconvenient. A convenient exposure of bedrock 
near a village often contains dozens of holes in all stages of wear 
within a few yards. (Pl. 45.) Poles leaned together with brush 
thrown on made an arbor under which a group of women would work 
for hours, gossiping or singing. Their pestles were often left on the 
spot; they are rude, irregular, with little taper, and somewhat oval 
in cross section, even with one or two sides flat or concave; in fact, 
little more than longish river bowlders, somewhat shaped, partly by 
pecking with the edge of a flat cobble, and in part by continued 
usage. 

On the alluvial plains portable mortars were necessary. The most 
common form of these among the Tachi was one of white oak. The 
flat-bottomed wooden block was little more than a foot high, half 


8625°—25——35 


528 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY ‘[BuLL. 78 


as much again in diameter. Except for a narrow rim, the whole 
upper surface was excavated a few inches, chiefly by fire; but the 
actual pounding was done in a smaller doubly sunk pit in the center. 
The pestle was the same as on bedrock. Even the hill Chukchansi 
knew the wooden mortar, which they called kowish; and the 
Choinimni used it. It is a type that has rarely been observed north 
of Tehachapi outside the San Joaquin Valley: there are attributions 
to the Konomihu and the Patwin. (PI. 45.) 

Loose mortars of stone were found and used on occasion by all 
the tribes, but the universal testimony is that they were not made. 
In fact, the Chukchansi declare their inability to do so, and attribute 
all stone mortar holes, in situ as well as portable, to the coyote, who 
employed an agency of manufacture that shies debars from 
mention. 

It is reported that the Yokuts sometimes fastened a hopper of 
basketry to the edge of a stone mortar; but this practice is estab- 
lished only for the southern California tribes, and needs confirma- 
tion. There is no Yokuts mortar basket, and the few available 
specimens of the combination suggest that an American may have 
cut the bottom out of a cooking basket and asphalted it to the stone. 

Small stone mortars were probably used for special purposes quite 
different from those usually assumed. A toothless woman, for in- 
stance, was lkely to keep such a one for pounding up the whole 
gophers or ground squirrels that younger relatives might from time 
to time toss her. Others may have been used for tobacco or 
medicines. 

THE TAKING OF GAME AND FISH. 


One hears less of deer snaring among the Yokuts than in the 
north; but they knew the device. Only, instead of setting the loop 
in a runway so as to encircle the neck, they laid it in a small concealed 
pit and fastened the end to a log. 

Deer stalking with a deer’s head as a decoy was shared with all 
the tribes of the north and central parts of the State. The Yokuts 
add that they painted their arms and breasts white like a deer’s 
underside, and aided their traveling on all fours by holding a stick 
in each hand. When an animal was approached from the leeward, 
these sticks were rubbed together to produce the sound of a buck 
scraping his antlers. 

Elk were too large to be snared, and in the open plains impossible 
to approach within bow range. They were chiefly secured in long- 
distance surrounds and drives called tadwwush. 

Antelope were similarly hunted, the valley groups uniting for 
intertribal drives, in circles that must often have been many miles 
in diameter at the start. When the ring had narrowed down so 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 529 


that a shout could be heard across it, two warriors famous for 
dodging stepped forward from each tribe, and each shot one flint- 
tipped deer arrow from fully bent bow at his companion. Then 
these men, and they only, shot the crazed antelopes as they circled 
about within the human inclosure, or sometimes ran until they 
dropped from fear and exhaustion. Certain of the antelopes with 
peculiar horns were believed to sing as they ran, with ground owls 
sitting on their heads. These individuals were spared. The mimic 
warfare no doubt had magic intent; but the delegation of the shoot- 
ing to select men served to keep the circle intact, which would cer- 
tainly have broken under the excitement of every man aiming his 
arrow at his own quarry. 

A safe though far from certain way of hunting bears was to shoot 
them on moonlight nights from a sort of nest constructed in a tree 
in their acorn feeding grounds. 

When the geese traveled, inflammable brush was piled up, and 
when the birds were heard approaching on dark, still nights these 
were suddenly lit. The birds swooped down to the flare, and in their 
bewilderment were easily killed. 

Pigeons were snared in the earliest morning from a comfortable 
brush booth with a grass window looking out on a leveled platform 
on which a live decoy was staked and bait scattered. The running 
noose was on a stick that was slowly shoved through the curtain 
until a bird stepped within. The victim was smothered with the 
knee, and the flock soon returned to feed. (PI. 46.) The decoy was 
carried in a spindle-shaped cage. 

The Yaudanchi capture of eagles was modeled on the principle of 
their pigeon taking. The hunter lay in a concealed hut of brush. 
He did not look at his quarry until it was caught, fearing that it 
flee his glance. Outside were placed a stuffed animal skin as bait 
and a live hawk as decoy. The trap was a noose fastened to a bent- 
over pole sprung from a trigger. Before the eagle was killed by 
being trod on, it was addressed: “ Do not think I shall harm you. 
You will have a new body. Now turn your head to the north and 
he flat!” Only men who knew this prayer and the necessary ob- 
servances undertook to kill eagles. 

Of the many ways of capturing fish, a few more unusual ways 
may be mentioned. Completely darkened booths were built, in which 
a man lay to spear the fish passing beneath. This device suggests 
the pigeon snaring and eagle taking arbor. Small fish could some- 
times be taken with the scoop-shaped openwork baskets of the 
women. Poisons were two: ground buckeye nuts with earth stamped 
into them and crushed nademe leaves. Soon after these prepara- 
tions were thrown into a small stream the fish began to float on the 


530 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


surface. The #wnoz net was fastened to a circular frame on a pole, 
held vertically, and raised. The more usual Californian net of this 
type is on a half hoop, and is used rather for scooping or horizontal 
hfting. 

Salt may have been obtained at springs, but the reported cases are 
from the Pitkachi, whose “salt” stank; from the Chukchansi, who 
went to the plains to scrape a sort of alkali off the ground; and from 
the Yaudanchi, who, with other southern tribes, gathered a salty 
grass known as alit and beat it on stones to extract the juice; which 
was particularly favored with green clover. 


THE BOW. 


Common bows for small game were little more than a shaped 
stick; good bows were carefully smoothed of large mountain cedar 
wood and sinew backed. The commonest type, primarily for the 
hunt, was nearly as long as a man, of about two fingers’ width and 
the thickness of one. The ends were recurved, probably through a 
curling back of the thickened sinew. Bows made specifically for 
fighting were shorter, broader, and flatter, and pinched in the 
middle. Except for being unpainted and probably not quite so ex- 
treme in form, this type appears to have been the same as the north- 
ern California one. 

Mention of the right and left end of the bow makes it seem to 
have been held horizontally, or at least diagonally, as by most Cali- 
fornia tribes. 

The arrow, shzkid generically, had three forms among the Yau- 
danchi, known as ?uyosh, djibaku, and wuk’ud. The war arrow had 
no foreshatt, but a rather long wooden point, notched. It measured 
from the finger tip nearly to the opposite shoulder or a trifle more 
than the possible pull of the bow. The Mohave also fought with 
arrows lacking flint tips. The ordinary hunting arrow had a long 
sharpened foreshaft, but no real head. ‘The deer arrow had foreshaft 
and flint head, but the foreshaft was socketed without glue or tie, 
so that the main shaft would disengage after hitting. 

The prevailing arrow straightener among the Yokuts is the south- 
ern California form: a well-shaped rectangular block of soft stone, 
often rounded or ridged on top, and invariably with a polished trans- 
verse groove. (PI. 49, ¢.) This implement is undoubtedly associated 
with the employment of cane for arrows: the Yokuts are known to 
have used this plant, though not exclusively. The joints were warmed 
in the groove and bent by hand or on the ridge after the stone had 
been heated; the groove was also used for smoothing. The holed | 
straightener of wood or horn for wooden shafts, as employed all 
over northern California, has not been reported from the Yokuts. 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY Ses ulIN ee, Gen ole Asie es 





ARROW STRAIGHTENERS 


a, b, Mono; c, Yokuts; d, Cahuilla; e, Dieguefio; f, Mohave (pottery) 


49 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 2\PEATES50 





d € 
YOKUTS BASKETRY 


a, Yokuts shouldered baskets with fringe of mountain quail plumes; b, tray for suspension; c, soft 
basket of tules; d, seed beater or tray; e, diagonally twined winnower or tray 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLE RINA78 2 PEA jee | 





VOW Tos POLE RY: 





KRORBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 531 


The sling was used only by boys, but the hill tribes report the 
Mono to have employed it in war. In the high Sierra it might 
often be more effective than an arrow. 


BOATS, 


Boats of bundled tule must have been in use among nearly all 
the valley tribes. On the tumbling streams in the hills these heavy 
rafts would have been utterly unmanageable. The northernmost 
Yokuts, below the Miwok of the hills, must have employed these 
craft constantly in their broad, sluggish streams and multitudinous 
still sloughs. They remained longest in service on Tulare Lake. Re- 
constructed models reveal only a cigar-shaped aggregation of bundles 
of rush, but the best specimens of old days may have approximated 
real boats in having raised edges. It can scarcely be presumed that 
the tule stalks could be bundled or beaten together so tight as to 
exclude the water; rather their lightness raised the whole mass so 
high that even the bottom of the hollow was above the water line, 
the gunwales serving only the convenience of preventing wave wash 
from entering and load or killed game from slipping overboard. Some 
of these lake boats carried three or four men in comfort, and could 
bear a small fire on an earth hearth. In maneuvering among the 
tules the entire vessel and occupants were often covered over with 
tules, forming a movable blind for the pursuit of waterfowl. 


TEXTILES. 


Yokuts baskets are distinguished by one special type, a coiled jar- 
like vessel with flat shoulder°and constricted though sometimes re- 
flaring neck. ‘The pattern is one or more bands in red and black, 
either diamonds or hexagons or alternate trapezoids. The shoulder 
was often ornamented with a horizontally projecting fringe of quail 
erests (P]. 50), for which red worsted is a modern substitute. These 
“Tulare bottlenecks,” as they have come to be known in the curiosity 
and antique trade, as well as the quail plume decoration, are not 
found among the Miwok on one side of the Yokuts nor among the 
true southern Californians on the other. The two-color pattern is 
also rare if not lacking among the tribes to the north and south, 
except among the Chumash. The western Mono, Tiibatulabal, Koso, 
Kawausu, and Kitanemuk worked according to Yokuts type, but as 
they form a fringe of Shoshoneans they have probably derived the 
art from their lowland neighbors. Kawatisu technique is, however, 
as fine as Yokuts. The Chumash also did beautiful work, but the 
shapes which they gave to their incurved baskets are perhaps less 
specialized. At least they lack the sharp shoulder and distinct neck 
which the Yokuts fancied; but their baskets are very small-mouthed. 


532 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULL. 78 


Chemehuevi forms are rounder, while the farthest traceable affinity 
is the small spherical basket of the Luisefo and Cahuilla. It is 
therefore possible to set the focus of the constricted neck forms 
among the southern Yokuts or the Chumash. As between these two 
groups, general grade of culture favors the Chumash, while the 
Yokuts are more central in the distribution of the type. The north- 
ern Yokuts, on and near the San Joaquin, do a much poorer grade 
of work than their southerly kinsmen, as do the Mono. But the 
Tiibatulabal approximate the Tulare-drainage Yokuts in fineness of 
execution. 

The woman’s basket cap was probably Yokuts. At least the 
southern Yokuts seem to have shared it with their southern and 
eastern Shoshonean neighbors. This hat was, however, worn only 
with a load on the back, not habitually. It is curious that the range 
of the southern California cap coincides with that of the carrying 
net; of the northern form, with the technique of exclusive twining. 

The pattern scheme of Yokuts baskets varies from the prevailing 
horizontal banding of southern California to the diagonal, vertical, 
and broken effects of Miwok basketry—largely according to locality. 
Materials and technique are also intermediate. The sewing is close, 
as in the north; in the Shoshonean area to the south, wider spaced. 
The foundation is a bundle of /'picampes grass, as in southern Cali- 
fornia; the wrapping, however, is not Juncus, as there, but more 
woody materials: root fibers of sedge (Carex or Cladium?) for the 
ground color, Pteridiwm fern root for black, bark of Cercis or redbud 
for red. 

Very flat trays were made in coiling. The banded decoration of 
these brings them nearer Cahuilla and Luisefo ware than Maidu, 
where radiating designs prevail in flat work. Miwok coiled trays 
have gone out of use, if they were ever made. Yokuts women em- 
ployed the finest of their trays for dice throwing; but of course the 
type was also put to more lowly and daily service. 

Twined baskets were more poorly made, but filled a greater variety 
of needs and perhaps outnumbered coiled pieces in the normal 
household. The carrying basket was loose enough in texture to be 
describable as openwork. The interstices were filled with a muci- 
laginous smear. The commonest of all receptacles is an oval or ovate 
tray, with a rounding bottom. The term “winnower” describes 
only one of its manifold uses. The seed beater was but such a 
tray, one end of which was continued to a handle. Another form 
of tray was rounded triangular, nearly flat, and wholly or partly in 
diagonal twining. This has almost certainly been borrowed by the 
Yokuts from the Shoshoneans on their east. The Tulare Lake tribes 
must once have possessed a considerable array of special ware in 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 5338 


tule, both coiled and twined; but as it made no decorative endeavor 
it has passed away with the disintegration of the culture of these 
tribes almost without preservation. (PI. 50.) 

The Yaudanchi affirm that they knew the pitched water bottle of 
the desert and southern California; but no specimens have survived. 

Large baskets were used by the men to ferry women and children 
across rivers, as by the Yuki. The Mohave employed pots for the 
same purpose. 

Basket patterns had more or less aptly descriptive names, but these 
were ordinarily without symbolic or religious reference. Some of 


the names were adjec- -_s 

tival, like “zigzag” and / 

“crooked”; others de- ,o8 iN 1S 
noted parts of animals, ce 

whole small animals, or 3 3h, date 


familiar objects. The sig- ) X 
nificance might be in the 4 


pattern as a whole or in , 
the design element. (Fig. + ENS | WH 
14 


47.) The number of names 


YUVYAV 

was not over a few dozen. « ’“%% om 

The pattern designa- 
tions of the Yokuts, like...”7. 7“ “YVV\ a 
most of the patterns, are OXOYoY 

& A A A % 

generally confined to J Y(Z4CIG4AG 
themselves or their imme- w..v.Vv 
diate neighbors; but their ° ar at CAS AROS 

: 5 ’ , BaD kd 
range im- V.VV~.V 
range, character, and lim- nD rei a as 
itation of meaning are Fig. 47—Yokuts basket designs. Yaudanchi: 1, 2, 
typical for all the Cal- flies; 3, 4, deer foot; 5, arrow points; 6, 7, 

; < crooked; 8, 9, rattlesnake markings; 10, king 

fornia Indians, whatever snake markings; 11, water snake; 12, chok, wood- 

] = ae Be ;: gathering crook; 13, tied in the middle. Chuk- 
the E varieties of tech chansi: 14, arrow point; 15, crooked; 16, milli- 
niques, materials, and pede; 17, king snake markings; 18, rattlesnake 

markings. 


forms of basketry. Where 
the matter has been most fully inquired into, as among the Pomo, it is 
found that design names are often combined, or modified by stand- 
ardized epithets, which allow of the accurate description of even a 
complex pattern. It is not unlikely that the Yokuts may prove to 
have followed a similar system. 

The carrying net, chutia, into which either a conical basket or a 
less shapely load could be set, reappears with the Yokuts. It 
seems to have been of southern California type, light and with de- 
tachable supporting band or rope. Pack straps of braided string 
were also slung around the load and forehead. 


534 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULL, 78 


The commonest string material was milkweed, Asclepias, called 
shah or chaka. The stems were collected in early winter, the bark 
or covering peeled off, and shredded by rubbing between the hands. 
The thin epidermis was then removed by drawing the mass of fibers 
over a stick. The fibers were not separately disentangled, but 
loosely rolled together as they adhered. Two of these rolls were 
then twisted tight, on themselves as well as on each other, by roll- 
ing on the thigh with the spit-into hand, the other hand holding and 
feeding the loose ends. The exact process of adding further ma- 
terial is not known; it consisted probably of rubbing together the 
ends of a mass of fibers, perhaps with some twist. String was two- 
ply. This is a practically universal rule for California. Except for 
a few ancient fragments, every piece of three-ply rope or twine in 
the State is of American provenience or obviously modern. 

The other great string material of the bulk of the Californians, 
wild hemp, Apocynum, has not been reported from the Yokuts; but 
this is likely to be only an oversight. The inner bark of a large 
shrub called hoh was made by the Yokuts into rough rope for withes, 
pigeon cages, and similar bound articles. 


CRADLES OF THE YOKUTS AND OTHER CALIFORNIANS, 


The Yokuts cradle shows three types. The first is a flat rectangle 
or trapezoid of twined basketry with a curved hood. The hood is 
loosely or not at all attached to the top edge of the base, and is car- 
ried by a basketry hoop or side supports. (PI. 40, 2,7,7.) This type 
is found also among the western Mono, and, with some modification, 
among the eastern Mono. (PI. 40, %.) The latter run the rods of 
their base across instead of lengthwise, and set a smaller and rounder 
hood on more snugly. The Miwok (Pl. 39, a, c, d, e) and western 
Mono (Pl. 40, 7) sometimes use the base of the Yokuts, without the 
hood. The Washo cradle is substantially that of the Yokuts. 

The second type is built up on half a dozen sticks lashed across 
a large wooden fork. A layer of string-twined tules is put over 
the sticks. (Pl. 40, m.) 

The third form is a mat of twined tules, with loops at the edges to 
pull the lashings through. (PI. 40, .) 

The hooded basketry cradle seems to predominate in the north, 
the forked stick type in the south, and the soft frameless tule form 
on Tulare Lake; but this distribution is not altogether certain, and 
it is possible that the age of the child, or the season of the year, may 
have been of influence. 

The Maidu cradle is often made on a forked framework, and in 
summer carries a basketry hood. It differs, however, in carrying 
numerous light transverse rods, in having the ends of the fork united 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 5385 


by a stick loop, and in often lacking the point of the fork. (PI. 40, 
n, 0.) None of the Yokuts cradles, clearly, is made for hanging, 
except perhaps by a strap. The Maidu cradle may be described as a 
combination of the Yokuts first and second types; among the latter 
people no such combination or transitional type has been found. 

The southern California cradle, so far as known, has a ladderlike 
foundation of a few short sticks on two long ones. The two long 
rods are, however, joined at the top instead of at the bottom: that 
is, there is a loop at the top instead of a fork below. ‘The hood is 
also a separate hoop of wickerwork. (PI. 39, 0.) 

The cradle of northeastern California, northwestern California, 
and the Pomo region is, in spite of much local variation, uniformly 
of a different order. It is of basketry, not of sticks; it is hollow 
instead of flat; and a rounded bottom is an integral part of the 
structure, while the hood is clearly a subsidiary feature. This 
northern cradle is built essentially for sitting (Pl. 35); that of cen- 


tral and southern 
a e f 





eat 


California only for , 
lying. 
The stiff cradles of 
a b 


central and southern 


Cc 
California may be Fig. 48.—Cradle types of central and southern Cali- 


g 


schematized as in Fig- fornia. a, Dieguefio, Mohave; b, c, Maidu; d, Yokuts, 
4 48 b é HH Kitanemuk; e, northern Miwok; f, Yokuts, Miwok, 
ure »a—€ DEINE types western Mono; g, eastern Mono. (Cf. Pls. 39, 40.) 


with a wooden frame, 

f-g basketry forms. It will be seen that there is a complete transition 
from a to d: 6 differs superficially from c¢ only in lacking the point 
of the latter. Structurally, however, the gap in the series comes be- 
tween these two, > being only a with the ends of the frame rod joined, 
whereas ¢ is d, namely, a natural fork at the bottom, with an added 
hoop. That form and consequent use may be of more importance 
than structural plan, so far as connections go, appears from the fact 
that ) and ¢ are the winter and summer types of the same people, 
the Maidu. 

Even the stick and the basketry types shade into each other: 6 and 
c, whose transverse rods are close and slender, need only the substi- 
tution of a few courses of twining for their underlying hoop or fork 
frame to become g. 

In Miwok basketry pieces of type f, like Plate 39, e, the strengthen- 
ing hoop seems secondary, but may be a vestige of a former wooden 
foundation. 

The hood is primarily associated with the basketry cradle, but 
again there are exceptions on both sides that make transitions. PB 
and d are always hoodless, so far as known, and the hood of a is 


5386 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [pur 78 


structurally separate. C, however, is hooded; on the other hand, f 
is found without a hood as well as with it. 

Finally, the soft tule-mat cradle of the Tachi (Pl. 40, g) is the 
same in plan as Mono stiff basketry specimens like Plate 40, /, dif- 
fering only in its pliability. 

An aberrant type is e, so far reported only from the northerly 
Miwok. The frame is wooden, but distinctive in not being in a single 
plane. The two rods curl up from the base. This enables them to 
serve at once as hooks for hanging and as a hood frame. (PI. 39, 7.) 

The historical interrelations of the several types can only become 
known through ampler material than is now available, both from 
within California and without. It is only possible to say that in 
spite of transitions the basketry and the wooden-frame types seem 
fundamental. 

The former has its rods running longitudinally and is intra- 
Californian, or rather cis-Sierra, the northern sitting cradle linking 
with it in ais feature of Fis dstia of the elements. 

The wooden-frame cradle with cross rods is trans-Sierra, in- 
cluding southern California. On this interpretation the hill and 
mountain Maidu cradle has been shaped by Shoshonean influences 
from the Great Basin, and the Yokuts have been infiltrated to some 
extent by the same influences. On the other hand, the Shoshoneans 
within the Sierra Nevada, such as the western Mono, and presumably 
the Tiibatulabal, follow the Californian method of construction at 
least as frequently as do the neighboring native stocks. 

An interesting minor feature of Yokuts cradles is the expression 
of sex in the decoration. The Chukchansi put a band of parallel 
diagonal lines on a boy’s hood, a zigzag on a girl’s. A number of the 
Yokuts cradles from other localities show the same designs; several 
have the twining of the frame analogously disposed (PI. 40, A, 2, 7). 
Diamonds may be the equivalent of the zigzag, in which case a 
cenital connotation is possible. Eastern and western Mono hoods 
show patterns of the same kind (PI. 40, %); the Washo denote sex in 
their hood ornamentation; the Miwok may therefore be guessed to 
follow the principle also; and the Mohave use distinct patterns for 
boys and girls in the braided bands with which the child is lashed to 
the frame, besides putting feathers only on a boy’s hood. The device 
is therefore of some geographical extent, and may represent an east- 
ern influence into California. It is of special appeal because of the 
rarity of symbolic expression in California outside of ritual; and 
even in ritual the symbolism is scant compared with the habits 
of the Southwest, the Plains, and the East. 

While the same patterns probably occur over a large area with the 
same symbolism, the sex denotation itself is expressed in other ways 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 537 


also. Thus the Nutunutu boy’s cradle is said to have the hood 
fastened only at the sides, the girl’s at the top and the base also. 


POTTERY. 


The Yokuts practice one curious and hitherto undescribed art: 
that of pottery making. The precise distribution of this indus- 
try remains to be ascertained. ‘The southern hill tribes made pots; 
the adjacent valley tribes appear to have; on the lake tribes there 
is no information; the Chukchansi and probably other northern 
tribes did not follow the art. Of adjacent Shoshoneans, the Tiibatu- 
labal made pots; some of the western Mono probably did. Outside 
of these groups there is no record whatever of the industry. It is 
not connected geographically with the pottery-making area of south- 
ern California, which does not come north of the San Bernardino 
Range, so far as known; and the territorial gap is paralleled by a 
thorough diversity of the ware. 

The distinctive feature of this pottery is its excessive crudeness. 
It appears to have been made by a rough fitting together of pieces 
of clay, or a pressing out of a lump: there is no evidence of the coiling 
and smoothing method. It is doubtful whether the clay contains 
tempering. Glue, blood, or a sticky substance may have been intro- 
duced as binding material. The color is from light to dark gray. 
There is no slip, wash, or pattern, except now and then a rude in- 
cision obviously modeled on a basket pattern. The shapes are indefi- 
nitely varied, without approach to standardized forms. A row of 
the vessels looks as if produced by children or experimenters. 
(Pl. 51.) | 

Even the uses are not known. Most of the pots show evidences 
of employment in the fire. But their purposes must have been 
special, since the ordinary cooking of the Yokuts is as regularly 
performed in baskets as among other groups. Small vessels may 
have been intended for services that we can only suspect. Thus 
the Yaudanchi affirm that they formerly kept tobacco in hollowed 
clay balls. | 

Archaeology gives no information as to the age of the industry. 
There has been little collecting in the Yokuts area and no systematic 
exploration. The prehistoric clay cooking balls or sling shots of 
the stoneless Stockton plains, where the Yokuts Chulamni lived 
in the historic period, suggest a connection; but no vessels of the 
same material have ever been found with these. The Clear Lake 
Pomo sometimes make a minute receptacle by pressing a hole in 
a lump of clay; but they do not bake these little articles. Evi- 
dently there were some anticipations toward pottery making latent 
in parts of California; and the Yokuts carried these tentative steps 


538 | BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bun 78 


a little further. But the inference of a stimulus, however indirect, 
coming through their immediate Shoshonean neighbors from the 
pottery-making Shoshoneans of the south or east can hardly be 
avoided; and therewith the interpretation of an BHA Se southwest- 
ern origin of the art. 

PIPES AND TOBACCO, 


The pipe is small among the Yokuts. (PI. 30, c, d.) A wooden 
pipe is found among the Chukchansi and Gashowu; the Yaudanchi 
and southern tribes normally used a bit of cane, which was carried in 
the pierced lobe of the ear. The northern Yokuts implement sug- 
gests the southern Californian stone pipe in size and shape, and 
the Mohave equivalent. of clay.* Outwardly it is similar to the 
abbreviated Miwok pipe, but the latter has a very short reed or 
stem inserted as a mouthpiece. Occasionally a pipe with enlarged 
bowl, of Pomo shape but very much smaller, is to be found among 
the northerly Yokuts. All the Yokuts declare that they did not 
use stone pipes; and the random finds of prehistoric material in 
their habitat include very few, if any, such implements. 

The reason for the abortiveness of the Yokuts pipe is to be found 
in the fact that a common practice of all the tribes was to eat, tobacco 
instead of smoking it. This custom is affirmed by the Chukchansi, 
Gashowu, Tachi, Wiikchamni, Yaudanchi, and Yauelmani, and was 
therefore evidently universal. Garcés, in 1776, found a Serrano 
Shoshonean tribe bordering on the Yokuts, either the Kitanemuk 
or the Alhklik, following the same practice, to the serious discom- 
fort of his unaccustomed Mohave companions. One method was to 
mix the leaves with fresh-water mussel shells that had been burned 
to lime. This procedure is of interest because it recurs in the 
northernmost part of the Pacific coast. A probably less usual plan 
was to drink a decoction of tobacco in water. In either event 
vomiting followed except for the long-hardened. The after effects 
of the emetic may have been pleasant. At any rate they were con- 
sidered beneficial, and in some cases at least they were thought 
to impart supernatural efficiency. The Chukchansi speak of being 
able to detect wizards after eating tobacco. 


GAMES. 


Among the Yokuts the guessing or hand game becomes less impor- 
tant than among the tribes of northern California. Its place in the 
prime estimation of men is taken, as in parts of southern California, 
by the hoop and pole and the shinny game, though which of these 
two enjoyed preeminence it is hard to say—perhaps shinny. 

This game, katawwish, was named from the shinny stick, hated. 
The ball was called odot. It was not shinny in our sense, played 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 5389 


with one pall, but rather a form of the ball or stick race of the 
Southwest, each party propelling its knob of white oak with sticks 
instead of feet. The course, however, was short, within a definite 
field, the katadwishchu,; and among the Chukchansi the ball had to 
be holed to win. 

Chukchansi women played the same game with straighter sticks, 
and threw a hoop in place of striking the ball. 

Another variant, though for men, was lacrosse, ch’itywish, named 
after the racket, ch’itez. The “net” was nothing but a loop that half 
fitted the ball. This game was secondary to the katdwwish. 

In hoop and pole the throwing stick was called payas, the rolling 
buckskin-wound ring tokoin, and the carefully smoothed ground, 
often by the side of the sweat house, 2’n. The game itself, hochuwish, 
was substantially that of the Mohave; it extended as far north as 
the Chukchansi. 

In the athkuich the pole was thrown at a sliding billet, eh. The 
same name is now apphed to the Spanish “nine men’s morris” 
the men are qek. 

A third form was the haduwush, in which darts were thrown at 
a mark hidden by a fence of brush. 

There is no record of any Yokuts cup and ball game. 

The guessing game was called wehlawash by the Chukchansi, 
a'liwash by the: Yauelmani, hi’wntwich by the Yaudanchi. The fi 
mer, like the northern Galitounnis. used wooden pieces, or in a good 
set, Borde: the latter, bits of cane di; dee as in southern California, 
over an endless string to prevent the deceit of interchange after 
the guess. The marked piece was called “man” and guessed for; 
the plain one was the “woman.” The Yaudanchi shot out one 
finger if he meant the hand at which he pointed, but two to in- 
dicate the ignored side as containing the “ man.” When there were 
two pairs of players confronting each other, a single finger signi- 
fied a guess at the hand indicated and at the partner’s opposite 
hand; two fingers, the same hand of both players. These com- 
plications look like arbitrary elaborations; but like most such Cali- 
fornian devices, they spring from an intensive development of the 
spirit of the game. A gesture begun with one finger can be fin- 
ished with two if the instant Taker for recognition of a trace 
of satisfaction in the opponent’s countenance as he realizes an im- 
pending false guess. These attempts to provoke betrayal imply 
instantaneous shiftings of features and fingers and lhehtninglike 
decisions and reactions; and it is impossible to have seen a Cali- 
fornian Indian warmed to his work in this game when played 
for stakes—provided its aim and method are understood—and any 
longer justly to designate him mentally sluggish and emotionally 


540 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bunn 78 


apathetic, as is the wont. It is a game in which not sticks and 
luck but the tensest of wills, the keenest perceptions, and the sup- 
plest of muscular responses are matched; and only rarely are the 
faculties of a Caucasian left sufficiently undulled in adult age 
to compete other than disastrously against the Indian practiced in 
his specialty. Seen in this light, the contortions, gesticulations, 
noises, and excitement of the native are not the mere uncontrolled- 
ness of an overgrown child, but the outward reflexes of a powerfully 
surcharged intensity, and devices that at once stimulate the con- 
testant’s energy still further and aid him in dazzling and confus- 
ing his opponent. ‘There is possibly no game in the world that, 
played sitting, has, with equal intrinsic simplicity, such compati- 
tive capacities. 

‘The Yaudanchi rama under a blanket instead of behind the back 
or in bunches of hay. Among the Chukchansi only women used the 
blanket. 

Chomwosh is the guessing or matching of hidden fingers. It is 
tco little described to allow of a decision between the possibilities 
of native and Mediterranean origin. 

Dice was the woman’s game. There were two forms. Huchuwish 
was played with 8 jee half shells of nut filled with pitch or 
asphalt and bits of sea shell, thrown from both hands on a basketry 
tray, ?aiwan. The far-away Chemehuevi play this much like the 
southern Yokuts, though with 6 instead of 8 pieces; it appears to be 
a game of Shoshonean origin. The Chukchansi keep the name, but 
use 6 split acorn kernels. Beyond them, the course of the game 
becomes uncertain. For the Miwok nothing is known, and the 
Maidu seem to lack all dice. The Yaudanchi played for 12 counters, 
and the scoring ran: 5 of 8 flat surfaces up, 2 counters; 2 up, 1; 
any other number, none. The Chukchansi won by taking 10 count- 
ers, and considered only the possible combinations of falls, irrespective 
of side. Six to none counted 4 points; 4 to 2 or 3 to 3,1; 5 to 1, 
nothing. Such variations seem to occur in all Californian games, 
even between adjacent areas. 

The second dice game, tachnuwish, was played with 6 (or 8) 
split sticks, dalak, of elderwood in the north, of cane in the south, 
burned w a a pattern on the convex side oan thrown on end on 
a skin. 

There was a generic Serdry goyuwinich, for gambler. Gwiunauzhid 
mak, “let us gamble,” the Yaudanchi would say. 


AESTHETICS. 


Apart from basket patterns, there was no trace of activity of 
graphic or plastic art in Yokutselife. The images in the mourning 
ceremony were symbols of the rudest kind. Anything like the trac- 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 541 


ing of a picture or shaping of a figure was foreign to the native 
mind. Even conventionalized symbols were lacking, for conven- 
tionalization is a standardization of some artistic impulse, and this 
impulse never manifested itself. The stiff figures of men and ani- 
mals that occasionally appear on baskets are invariably due to 
American influence, among the Yokuts as well as among all other 
Californian groups. One can not have become imbued with a feeling 
for the decorative value of California basketry without resenting 
these childish introductions as fatal to the inherent aesthetic 
qualities of the work. Our tastes have been infinitely more culti- 
vated than those of the native Californian; but in the few direc- 
tions, or one direction, in which he had made an incipient progress 
in ornamentation, his habits had poise and restraint. 

The ungraphic, unplastic, and unsymbolic character of native Cali- 
fornian civilization is complete to a degree that is almost incon- 
celvable. It is only rarely that an Indian can be induced to draw 
in the sand the most schematic sketch of the rivers or mountains of 
his habitat. In southern California there are indeed some faint 
stirrings in the sand paintings, but only under a strong ritualistic 
motive; and the poverty and rudeness of these, compared with their 
Navaho and Pueblo prototypes, reveal the aridity of the artistic 
soil which this southwestern religio-aesthetic influence encountered 
in its invasion of California. 

In all the remainder of the State even this trace is wanting. For 
once the deep cleavage between the northwest and the central south 
is effaced. The Yurok and Hupa culture may be a North Pacific 
coast civilization in nine-tenths of its essential impulses and goals; 
in representative art it is as Californian as that of the Maidu or 
Yokuts. 

How far some beginnings of literary form have evolved in Yokuts 
traditions, in comparison with those of their neighbors, it would be 
difficult to state. The languages, the emotions, and the pleasures of 
the natives are everywhere known with too little intimacy for a 
judgment to be of value. Myths have been recorded primarily with 
reference to their episodic content, their religious associations, or 
their systematic coherence. Such as are available from the Yokuts 
evince a lower literary pitch, a less intensity of presentation, than 
those of northern and southern California at their best. But we 
do not know how far they are artistically representative; and what 
has already been said about the animal pantheon of these people 
suffices to reveal that the real merits of their folklore lie implicit 
in a background or setting of which the skeletonized translations that 
are available give to us but rudimentary hints, 


549, BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULL. 78 


Much the same must be said of music, only in a still stronger 
degree. Some differences of external form, or involved system, are 
apparent between the songs of various parts of California. But as 
long as no exact analysis has been rendered, and especially as long 
as no one has approached this music with any desire to enter into its 
essential spirit, comparisons between the aesthetic value of the 
inclinations and achievements of this and that tribe are empty. 

Southern Yokuts men sometimes played the musical bow after 
settling themselves in bed; the Chukchansi in mourning the dead. 
These may be but two expressions of one employment. Modern 
forms of the instrument have a peg key for adjusting the tension, 
or are made on cornstalks. In old days a true shooting bow, or a 
separate instrument made on the model of a bow, was used. J/aawu, 
or mawuwt, was its name. One end was held in the mouth, while 
the lone string was tapped, not plucked, with the nail of the index 
finger ; the melody, audible to himself only, was produced by changes 
in the size of the resonance chamber formed by the player’s oral 
cavity. 

THE TYPE OF YOKUTS CIVILIZATION. 


The affiliations of Yokuts civilization are nearly equal in all direc- 
tions. To the north, their system of totemic moieties connects them 
with the Miwok while certain detailed elements of their culture, 
such as the Y-frame cradle and the magpie headdress, link them 
definitely with the Maidu. To the east their twined basketry has 
close relations as far as the remoter edge of the Great Basin. To- 
ward the Shoshonean and Yuman south there are innumerable 
threads: the Jimson weed ritual, the arrow straightener, the carrying 
net, to mention only a few. Toward the west the decay of Salinan 
and Chumash culture makes exact comparison difficult, but what 
little is known of the former people evidences a strong Yokuts im- 
press, while with the nearer Chumash relations of trade. were close 
and must have brought many approaches of custom in their train. 
It is difficult to say where the most numerous and most basic links 
stretch. 

Equally impressive, however, are the features distinctive of the 
civilization of the Yokuts, or rather of the group composed of them- 
selves and their smaller and less known Shoshonean neighbors on the 
immediate east and south. These specialties include the true tribal 
organization, the duality of chieftainship, the regulated functions 
of transvestites, the coordinated animal pantheon, the eagle-down 
skirt, the constricted coiled basket, a distinctive pottery, and the 
communal house, to mention only a few points. 

It thus seems that the Yokuts were a nation of considerable indi- 
viduality. It appears throughout California that the dwellers in 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF GALIFORNIA 543 


the larger valleys, though they were the first to crumble at the 
touch of the Caucasian, elaborated a more complex culture than the 
hill tribes; and the Yokuts were a lowland people in a greater 
measure than any other stock in California. 

But it is also evident that wherever the soil of history is really 
penetrated in California a rich variety of growths is found. If a 
little mountain group like the Yuki, placed between more highly 
civilized nations, has been able to evolve feature after feature of 
cultural distinctness, there is every reason to believe that the same 
would prove to: be true of nearly all the California tribes, if only 
we really knew them; and a large, compact, and prosperous block 
of people like the Yokuts would be exceptional only in having carried 
the development of their originality somewhat farther than the 
majority. 

It so happens that in the long stretch of land between the Maidu 
and the Luiseno no tribe has yet been exhaustively studied with any 
array of information. It is therefore inevitable that the present 
account of the Yokuts, the first rendered in any detail, scattered 
as that is, should reveal many novelties. But there is nothing 
to encourage the belief that if the Miwok, the Tiibatulabal, the 
Serrano, or the Salinans had happened to be chosen, there would 
have been any notably less quantity of interesting peculiarities 
revealed; not to mention that for the Pomo and Chumash, little 
known as they are, we have every indication of a civilizational 
richness greater, if anything, than that evinced by the Yokuts. 

In other words, the exact understanding of the Indian history of 
California still les before us. Some foundations may have been 
laid for it in the present work. The outlines were sketched for all 
time 40 years ago by the masterly hand of Stephen Powers. But 
the real structure will be a gift of the future; and its materials can 
only be assembled by investigations far more intensive, as well as 
continuous, than those yet undertaken. 


3625°—25 36 





CHAPTER 36. 
THE ESSELEN AND SALINANS. 


THE Esseten, 544. Tur SALinan INDIANS, 546; territory, 546; numbers, 546; 
settlements, 547; type of civilization, 547, 


Tue Esseien. 


With this people, we are back in the Hokan family, with which, 
except for a long Shoshonean excursion, the remainder of this survey 
will be occupied. 

Long reckoned as an independent stock, the Esselen were one of the 
least populous groups in California, exceedingly restricted in terri- 
tory, the first to become entirely extinct, and in consequence are now 
as good as unknown, so far as specific information goes—a name 
rather than a people of whom anything can be said. There are 
preserved a few hundred words and phrases of their speech; some 
confused designations of places, and a few voyagers’ comments, so 
generic in tone as to allow no inferences as to the distinctiveness of 
the group. 

The only clue to their ultimate history is, as usual, afforded by 
language. On two sides the Esselen had the Penutian Costanoans 
as neighbors, on the third the Hokan Salinans; they faced the ocean 
on the fourth. Salinan speech, however, leans toward Chumash, its 
southern sister; and the obvious affinities of Esselen are toward 
Yuman, far to the south, and to Pomo, Yana, and other north Hokan 
languages, before which a broad belt of alien Penutian tongues inter- 
venes. In short, Esselen is free from the peculiarities of Chumash 
and Salinan, and is a generalized Hokan language. It can not well, 
therefore, have originated in the same branch of the family as Sali- 
nan, and probably represents a separate wave or movement. Further 
than. this, nothing can be said until the internal organization of the 
Hokan family shall have been better determined. 

There is only one conjecture that may be alluded to. The small- 
ness of the group is in marked contrast to the degree of its linguistic 
distinctness. It is therefore likely to be a remnant of a people that 
once ranged over a much larger territory. Now the Penutians of 
California were very plainly the people of the great interior valley. 
It is chiefly from the vicinity of San Francisco to Monterey that they 
impinged on the ocean. They have therefore presumably spread out 
along this stretch of coast, in which their Costanoan division was 


544 


KROFBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 545 


located in historic times and where it may be supposed to have taken 
shape as a group. This stretch is adjacent to the soil which the 
Esselen still held when they were discovered ; and it seems reasonable 
to believe, accordingly, that the Esselen once owned at least part of 
this region to their north. This ancient extension might have con- 
nected them with the northern Hokans, particularly if the Pomo or 
some allied group formerly lived farther south. 

The heart of Esselen territory at the time of discovery was the 
drainage of Carmel River, exclusive, however, of its lower reaches, 
where Costanoans were situated and the mission was established. 
The Esselen also held Sur River and the rocky coast for 25 miles 
from a little short of Point Sur to Point Lopez. At the great peak 
of Santa Lucia they met the Salinans. Nearly all of this territory is 
rolling or rugged, part of it sierra. The Esselen, like most small 
groups in California, were therefore distinct mountaineers. A thou- 
sand souls would be a very liberal estimate for their population. 
Five hundred seems nearer the mark. 

Esselen, Eslen, Escelen, Ecselen, or Ensen, also Ecclemach, is used 
by all authorities of the Spanish period as a tribal name and com- 
monly provided with the plural ending —es. It seems, however, to 
be the name of a village, after which, following Caucasian custom, 
the group was denominated. This is borne out by a reference to 
Kslanagan and Ecgeagan (also recorded as Kkheya) as on opposite 
sides of the Carmel River. The final —7 itself is hardly likely to be of 
native Esselen origin. The word “Eslanagan” looks like a stem “sla, 
plus possibly the common Esselen noun suffix —nah or —neh, to which 
in turn the Costanoans added their -n. The Eslen or Ensen and 
Rumsien or Runsen seem to have been habitually distinguished as 
the two predominant groups at mission Carmelo, much in the sense 
in which we might distinguish Esselen and Costanoan. The names 
were easy and rhymed; and travelers came away and reported the 
two “tribes,” sometimes as extending 20 leagues from Monterey. 
Data were scarce; and for nearly a century almost every book on 
California refers to the famous “ Ensenes and Runsenes,” as if they 
were great ethnic groups instead of villages. Huelel—that is, Welel— 
is mentioned once as the “language of the Esselenes” attached to 
mission Soledad. 

The settlements cited in various authorities are: Ensen, at Buena Esperanza ; 
Ekheya, in the mountains; Hchilat, 12 miles southeast of mission Carmelo; 
Ichenta, at San Jose (this is certainly a Costanoan name, whoever inhabited 
the spot; compare the locative ending -ta) ; Xaseum, in the sierra; Pachhepes, 
near the last; and the following “clans or septs”: Coyyo, Yampas, Fyules 
(f is an Hsselen sound), Nennequi, Jappayon, Gilimis, Yanostas. These are 
all in the original orthography, which in most cases is Spanish, 


Several terms in the preserved vocabularies may be of ethnographic interest. 
Thus, pawi or lottos, arrow (two kinds may have been used) ; iwano, house; 


546 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY _ pura, 78 


tsila, kwuh, ishpashwa, shaka, various kinds of baskets; ehepas, rabbit-skin 
blanket; shikili, asphalt (?) ; ka’a, tobaeco; makhalana, salt; lelima a “ favorite 
dance,” possibly the Loli of the Kuksu system; twmas-hachohpa, night spirit; 
kuchun, arroyo; aspasianah, dry creek. The last two may be names of places 
rather than generic terms. 


Tue SALINAN LnpIANS. 


The Salinan Indians are one of those bodies of natives whom four 
generations. of contact with civilization have practically extin- 
guished. Some 40 remain, but among these the children do not 
speak the language, and even the oldest retain only fragmentary 
memories of the national customs of their great-grandfathers. Mis- 
sionaries and explorers happen to have left only the scantiest notices 
of the group; and thus it is that posterity can form but a vague im- 
pression of their distinctive traits. Even a name for the tribe or 
for their language has not been recorded or remembered; so that 
they have come to be called from the Spanish and modern designa- 
tion of the river which drains most of their territory. 


TERRITORY. 


The Salinan language extended from the headwaters of the 
Salinas, or perhaps only from the vicinity of the Santa Margarita 
divide, north to Santa Lucia Peak and an unknown point in the 
valley somewhere south of Soledad; and from the sea presumably to 
the main crest of the Coast Range. Much of this territory is rugged; 
nearly all of it is either rough or half barren. Along the steep har- 
borless coast one dialect or division of the language, the extinct 
“Playano” or “beach” idiom, was spoken; in the mountains and 
valley the second or “ principal.” This in turn was divided into a 
northern and a southern subdialect, of both of which records have 
been made, and which are usually named after the missions of San 
Antonio and San Miguel. 

The Salinan language is wholly unconnected with the neighboring 
Yokuts and Costanoan. It has remote affinity with Esselen, and a 
greater resemblance to Chumash. These three tongues constitute the 
central Californian representatives of the Hokan family. 


NUMBERS. 


Cabrillo in 1542 saw no natives on the Salinan coast, and Vizcaino 
60 years later only a few on tule rafts. The true discoverers of the 
group were the members of the Portola expedition of 1769. In 
the mountains between the future sites of San Luis Obispo and 
Monterey they saw, going and coming, 10 different towns whose 
population they estimated to range between 30 and 400 souls, with 
an aggregate of 1,200. As Chumash, Esselen, or Costancan villages 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 547 


were included, these figures shed little ight on the numbers of the 
Salinan stock; but they are of interest in giving an average of over 
100 people per town. 

The records of the missions furnish an approximate Salinan 
census. San Antonio was founded in 1771, and reached a maximum 
population of 1,124—or 1,296—neophytes in 1805. San Miguel, 
established in 1797, had 1,076 converts at the end of 17 years. The 
sum, about 2,300 souls, includes some Yokuts—Tachi, Telamni, and 
perhaps other tribes—from the San Joaquin Valley; so that even if 
allowance is made for conjectural unreduced Salinan villages as late 
as 1814, the total aboriginal population of the family can not pos- 
sibly be placed above 3,000; and 2,000 seems a safer estimate. The 
record of baptisms—not quite 7,000 at both missions up to 1834, dur- 
ing a period which on the average took in nearly three generations— 
would confirm the smaller rather than the larger figure. 


SETTLEMENTS. 


Of the 20 or so Salinan villages known other than as mere names, some can 
be placed on a map only with a question (Fig. 49). Ehmal, Lema, Ma’tihl’she, 
and Tsilakaka are entirely undetermined except for having been on the coast. 
Trolole has been located at points so widely separated as Santa Margarita 
and Cholame. Cholame, the most important town of the San Miguel divi- 
sion, is stated by some to have been situated at that mission, by others on 
Cholame Creek. As the Cholame land grant lies along this creek, and the 
Spaniards and Mexicans were rather precise in their application of native 
names, the latter vicinity seems more likely. But Estrella Creek, as the 
lower course of Cholame Creek is now designated on maps, flows into the 
Salinas near the mission; and as it is the general custom of the California 
Indians to name streams after the sites at their mouths, the name may in this 
way have been, correctly enough, carried upstream by the Spaniards. Con- 
jecture, however, is all that is possible on such disputed points. The ma- 
jority of Salinan towns of ascertained location lie on San Antonio and 
Nacimiento Rivers. In part this unevenness may be the fault of the preserva- 
tion of knowledge; but it seems also to reflect the preponderating distribution. 
Even in the barren hills of the Cholame drainage there are known as many 
villages as in the long valley of the Salinas proper. 


TYPE OF CIVILIZATION, 


The Salinan Indians were completely omnivorous. Every obtain- 
able variety of fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals, with the single 
exception of the skunk, and possibly the dog and coyote, was eaten. 
An incomplete list of their vegetable dietary contains six kinds of 
acorns, three of grasses, three of clover, six at least of berries, and 
two of pine nuts; besides wild oats, buckeye, sunflower, chia and sages, 
grapes, prickly pears, yucca, and Brodiaea bulbs. This wealth of 
plant foods is typical of aboriginal California. 


548 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULL. 78 


Salinan industries and customs were largely influenced by those of 
the Yokuts, with whom they traded, visited, and communicated 
freely, whereas the Costanoans on the north were generally their 
bitter enemies, and the main body of the Chumash to the south were 
too far removed, and of too different an outlook, to hold much rela- 
tion with them. Baskets were essentially Yokuts in material and 
technique. Women’s hats and mortar hoppers of coiled basketry are 


3 
2 
pe : 
eo oe alinas eA 
es 


: Monterey @, 
Carmelo 


Xa 
VEN COS KANOAN 
*) >) ae 


= Se et tsoleasa : YOK UTS oe 
pt Elica ‘ (TULARENOS) 
yp 
m 
Tv 


eh 


Seep - 4 


‘ Slee nee 74 
ak 
peeeale 
) hahomesh 
Tesospek 
eSkotitoki 
2 ¥San Antonio 
neha 
», 
ilin\e eS SJolo Pp 


Oe 
pe EN Pe sgtacheya Ct he 


Nasih! Shaumis 
eyto 
<i AM proven! 


Las 


SanSimeon- 
Tsilakak 


: Le WS iiacpunte 
= a 
2 NV 


tT ——— > 
San Luis Obispo \_ 


CHUMASH 





Wig. 49.—Salinan and Hsselen territory and probable Salinan settlements. 


reported. The former may have been introduced by the missionized 
Yokuts; the latter is a southern California type that seems out of 
place in Salinan territory. Roughly interlaced receptacles of willow 
for the storage of acorns also recall those of southern California. 
Grooved arrow straighteners, reed smoking pipes, the eating of to- 
bacco mixed with lime, and the practice of cremation indicate Yokuts 
affihations. The initiation of boys into manhood with a toloache 
drinking rite, whereas the advent of adolescence in girls was disposed 
of with less circumstance, also suggest Yokuts contact. 


KRODBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 549 


On the contrary, the few names of Salinan dances that are still 
remembered point to an origin of these ceremonies from the Patwin- 
Pomo-Maidu-Miwok cycle in the north. These dances are: the Kuk- 
sui, made by a feather-covered performer; the Hiwei, by men; and 
the Lolei, by women. But their introduction may. possibly have been 
due to commingling of nationalities at the Salinan missions. 

Beliefs, again, were substantially those of the Tachi and other 
valley Yokuts. Certain medicine men were thought capable of bring- 
ing rain with amulets; others of turning themselves into grizzly 
bears. Souls inhabited a western island of the dead. Earth was 
brought up from primeval water, given shape as this world, and 
mankind fashioned from it, by a trio of animal creators, the eagle, 
coyote, and kingfisher. 

Only two distinctive peculiarities are known of the rude civiliza- 
tion of the Salinan Indians. One is the use of the musical rasp, a 
notched stick rhythmically rubbed with another. The second is the 
remarkable report from mission sources that at San Miguel they 
lent each other shel! money at 100 per cent interest per day! The 
rasp is a simple implement, easily invented even by a rude tribe, or 
perhaps learned by it from others who have allowed it to degenerate 
into a toy, or to go out of use altogether. Usury, however, is con- 
trary to all the known customs of the California Indians, and the rate 
of increase seems incredible, especially as a temporary or emergency 
use for money is hard to conceive under aboriginal conditions. Still, 
a report as definite as this can hardly be without some foundation. 


Cuaprer 37. 


THE CHUMASH. 


History and territory, 550; Cabrillo’s discoveries, 552; intertribal relations, 
556; social institutions, 556; dwellings, 557; canoes, 558; wooden imple- 
ments, 559; basketry, 560; industry in stone, 562; shells and money, 564; 
status of Chumash culture, 566. 


HISTORY AND. TERRITORY. 


Except for a brief and unsettled experience of Alarcon with the 
ageressive tribes of the lower Colorado a year or two before, the 
Chumash are the first Californian group discovered by Caucasians. 
Cabrillo in 1542-48 sailed back and forth among the islands, coasted 
the shore, had abundant and most friendly contact with the natives, 
lived on San Miguel, and died there. 

Subsequent explorers and voyagers have left a number of casual 
observations on the Chumash, but none of the missionaries settled 
among them showed inclination to develop into a painstaking his- 
torian like Boscana; and when California was long enough American 
for ethnologists to survey it, the old life of the Chumash was a dim- 
ming memory. The result is that there exist more impressions than 
information. There is no group in the State that once held the 
importance of the Chumash concerning which we know so little. 

The Spaniards were disposed to regard the Chumash as superior 
to the other tribes of California with whom they had acquaintance, 
and on the whole they seem to have been correct in this opinion. 
We know so little of the religion of the group that it is impossible 
to decide whether they attained to the comparative height of semi- 
abstruse symbolism that the Gabrielino and Luisefio displayed. In 
their industries, in the arts that accompany ease of life, possibly in 
the organization of society, they rather surpassed these Shoshoneans. 
The consequence is that Chumash culture presents the appearance 
of a higher development on the material, technological, and economic 
side than on the religious, but we can not be altogether certain that 
such a formulation would be reliable. 

The Chumash are predominantly a coast people, and were more 
nearly maritime in their habits than any other Californian group. 
They held the three northern large islands of the Santa Barbara 
archipelago—Anacapa does not appear to have been inhabited per- 


550 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA ob 


manently. ‘They clustered thickly along the calm shore from Malibu 
Canyon westward to Point Concepcion, and from there extended 
northward along the more boisterous and chillier coast as far as 
Estero Bay. Inland, in general, they reached to the range that 
. divides the direct ocean drainage from that of the great valley; 
except that in the west their frontier was the watershed between 
the Salinas and the Santa Maria and short coast streams; and in the 
east, some small fragments had spilled into part of the most south- 
erly drainage of the San Joaquin-Kern system. The Carrizo plains 
are doubtful as. between Chumash and Salinans, and may not have 
contained any permanent villages. 

Marine life along the Chumash shores is exceptionally rich, the 
climate far famed, and every condition favored the unusual concen- 
tration of population among a people lving directly upon nature. 
The land, however, is dry; the watercourses, though long, are small 
and rarely run permanently, and each successive mountain chain 
increases the aridity. Only some narrow stretches among the up- 
lands of the western end of the Tehachapi range are more favorable. 
There was thus every occasion for the inlander to drift to the edge 
of the ocean, if he could, but small inducement for the coast people 
to go to the interior, except for occasional visits. The population 
in the districts away from the sea must have been comparatively 
light. 

From Point Concepcion north the coast is exposed to westerly 
winds, fogs, and heavy surfs, and the inhabitants were noted by the 
Spaniards as less numerous and poorer than on the Channel of 
Santa Barbara. 

Five missions—San Buenaventura, Santa Barbara, Santa Ynez, La 
Purisima Concepcion, and San Luis Obispo—were established among 
the Chumash. These being recruited almost wholly from the mem- 
bers of the stock, would argue a population of about 8,009 or 10,000; 
and this figure seems reasonable on the basis of the character of the 
land and sea. The Chumash accepted the Spaniards with unusual 
kindliness. But the subjection which the residence of the superior 
people entailed broke their spirit and produced a deep inward de- 
pression, which manifested itself in the alarming spread of the prac- 
tice of abortion, and as late as 1824 fanned itself into a feeble and 
timid flame of insurrection at three of the missions. By the time 
of secularization, the population was heavily on the wane. The dis- 
organized decade and a half that followed melted it even more rap- 
idly, and when the American came there were scattered peons on 
ranchos, but no more Chumash nation. ‘To-day there remain scarcely 
a dozen old men and women who still speak the language of their 
grandfathers, although the number of individuals admitting pure 
or partial Chumash blood is somewhat greater. 


5De BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


There was a dialect for each mission; at least one other on the 
islands; another in the mountain region where the Tehachapis meet 
the coast ranges; and possibly others. As to the limits of these, 
there is no information whatever. Some attempt has been made to 
estimate their boundaries on Plate 1. But it must be frankly con- 
fessed that the lines there drawn represent little but conjectures based 
on topography. 

A rough classification of the known dialects is possible. That of 
San Luis Obispo, the most northwesterly, thrust into an angle be- 
tween the Salinans and the sea, is the most divergent. Next in de- 
gree of specialization seems to be that of the islands. Santa Ynez 
and Santa Barbara are rather close, Ventura somewhat more dif- 
ferent. San Emigdio appears to lean on Ventura. 

When it comes to villages, information is abundant as regards 
names, but often less precise as to location and almost wholly want- 
ing as to relations. Several hundred Chumash place names are on 
record, the majority referring to inhabited sites. Nearly 100 of these 
can be located with some approximation to accuracy on a map of the 
scale of Plate 48; and these undoubtedly include most of the impor- 
tant towns near the ocean. The interior is less satisfactorily rep- 
resented. 

The following may be added to the data contained in Plate 48: 

The native name of San Luis Obispo was Tishlini.’ Pismo and 
Huasna appear to derive their designations from Chumash originals. 
Upop is mentioned as near Point Concepcion, Awawilashmu near the 
Canada del Refugio, Alwatalam and Elhiman in the Goleta marsh; 
Shtekolo at the Cienega and Kulalama and Tenenam and Tokin near 
the mission at Santa Barbara; Skonon and Mismatuk in Arroyo 
Burro in the same neighborhood; Kinapuich’, Mishtapalwa, Kach- 
yoyukuch, Antap, and Honmoyanshu near Ventura; Mahalal at San 
Cayetano. Ho’ya or Huya has been recorded for San Miguel Island, 
Santa Catalina Island (which is Gabrielino), and a village on Santa 
Cruz. Another name for Santa Catalina is Himinakots, with which 
Cabrillo’s Taquimine, “Spaniards,” may possibly be connected. 

Kamupau, Tashlipunau, Takuyo, and Lapau are Yokuts forms, 


but some of them may rest on Chumash originals. Takuyo, reflected. 


in the modern name of Mount Tecuya, may be a locative of Tokya, 
the generic name which the Yokuts apply to the Chumash. 


CABRILLO’S DISCOVERIES. 


The report of ‘Cabrillo’s voyage mentions by name a considerable 
number of coast and island Chumash villages. As this list antedates 
by more than two centuries any similar record for other California 
Indians, its examination is of interest, : 


Pel thee, eee. oo z= 


KRORBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 558 


~ Beginning with Xucu, the Pueblo de las Canaos, sometimes placed 
at Santa Barbara or Ventura but more likely to have been at Rincon, 
the Cabrillo narrator names Xucu, Bis, Sopono, Alloc, Xabaagua, 
Xotococ, Potoltuc, Nacbuc, Quelqueme, Misinagua, Misesopano, EI- 
quis, Coloc, Mugu, Xagua, Anacbuc, Partotac, Susuquey, Quanmu, 
Gua (or Quannegua), Asimu, Aguin, Casalic, Tucumu, Incpupu. The 
context implies that these extended westward not quite to Dos Pueb- 
los. Subsequently Cabrillo speaks of the greater part of this coast, 
namely, the stretch from Las Canoas to Cicakut or Pueblo de Sardinas, 
identified with Goleta, as the province of Xucu, appearing to contrast 
it with the province of Xexu which reaches from Xexu or Xexo on 
the lee side of Point Concepcion to Dos Pueblos. From Sardinas to 
Point Concepcion he then names Ciucut (the “ Capital,” where an old 
woman reigned as “senora”), Anacot (or Anacoac), Maquinanoa, 
Paltatre, Anacoat, Olesino, Caacat (or Caacac), Paltocac, Tocane, 
Opia, Opistopia, Nocos, Yutum, Quiman, Micoma, Garomisopona. 

It is clear from the misspelled repetitions in these lists, as well as 
their correspondences, that they cannot represent any consistent geo- 
graphical order. Sopono, Misesopano, and Garomisopona; Potoltuc, 
Paltatre, Partocac, and Paltocac; Anacot, Anacoat, and probably 
Nacbue and Anacbuc; Opia and Opistopia; Cicakut, Ciucut, and per- 
haps Caacat, are all duplicate references. 

The identifications with villages mentioned in more recent sources 
point to the same conclusion. The more probable of these are: 

Xucu: Shuku, at Rincon (not Ventura). 

Alloc: Heliok, near Goleta. 

Xabaagua: Shalawa, near Santa Barbara (b for 1?). 

Quelqueme: Wene’me, at Hueneme (q for g?). 

Elquis: Elhelel (?), near Santa Barbara. 

Coloc: Kolok, at Carpinteria. 

Mugu: Muwu, on Mugu lagoon. 

Xagua: Shawa on Santa Cruz island, or for Xabaagua (7). 

Susuquey: Shushuchi, between Refugio and Gaviota. 

Quanmu: Kuyamu (?), at Dos Pueblos. 

Casalic: Kasil (?), at Refugio. 

Tucumu: Tuhimu’l, near Shushuchi. 

Inepupu: Humkaka, on Point Concepcion. 

Ciucut: Siuhtun or “ Siuktu” in Santa Barbara. 

Tocane: Perhaps a misreading of Tucumu, but Tukan, the name of San 
Miguel Island, may be intended. 

Xexo: Shisholop, inside Point Concepcion. 


It may be added that Paltocac is placed by a later authority near 
Goleta, presumably on native information. 

The islands present more difficulty, since the expedition may have 
confounded or rediscovered them. Two of the three Cabrillo names 
for the islands can not be identified: Liquimuymu, San Miguel, and 


54 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Ruta 78 


Or 


aa 


Nicalque, Santa Rosa. The third is involved in doubt: Limu or 
Limun, Santa Cruz. 

Liquimuymu is said to have had two towns: Zaco or Caco, which 
may be for Tukan (the island may well have been named after the 
principal settlement) ; and Nimollolo, which suggests Nimalala on 
Santa Cruz. Liquimuymu itself suggests the Santa Cruz village 
of L’aka’amu, or, as it has also been written in Spanish orthography, 
Lucuyumu. 

On Nicalque three villages are named: Nichochi or Nicochi; Coy- 
coy; and Caloco or Estocoloco (“este Coloco, this Coloco”?). None 
of these can be identified. Coloco may be another Kolok distinct 
from that at Carpinteria: compare Shisholop at both Point Con- 
cepcion and Ventura. Nicalque itself might possibly stand for 
either Niimktlkiil or Niakla on Santa Rosa. 

Limu is said to contain eight towns, and ten are then enumerated, 
whose names seem unusually corrupted: Miquesesquelua, Poele, 
Pisqueno, Pualnacatup, Patiquiu and Patiquilid (sc), Ninumu, Muoc, 
Pilidquay (sic), and Lilibeque. If these words are Chumash, the 
initial syllables in P— suggest a native article or demonstrative 
which has been erroneously included. Not one name of this list can 
be connected with any known Chumash settlement. 

A previous mention of “San Lucas” has been interpreted as re- 
ferring to Santa Rosa, but several of its six villages can be safely 
identified as on Santa Cruz: Maxul is Mashch’al; Xugua (compare 
the mainland list), Shawa; and Nimitopal, Nimalala. The others 
are Niquipos, Nitel,and Macamo. If we are willing to allow a con- 
siderable play to misprints, Nitel might be Swahiil (Ni- for Su-—), 
and Macamo, L’aka’amu (M for L). Hahas, one of the principal 
towns in later times, is not mentioned by Cabrillo. Even if some 
of these identifications with Santa Cruz settlements seem doubtful, 
it is significant that not one of the San Lucas villages bears any re- 
semblance of name to the villages of Santa Rosa. 

It follows, therefore, that “San Lucas,” as the designation of a 
single island, is Santa Cruz, and not Santa Rosa. Limu or “San 
Salvador,” for which an entirely different lst of villages is given, 
accordingly would be not Santa Cruz but Santa Catalina, as indeed at 
least one authority has already asserted. There is the more warrant 
for this attribution, since the name Santa Catalina in the mouths of 
all Shoshoneans is Pimu, of which Limu is an easy misreading. 
Hence, too, the eight or ten unidentifiable village names on “ Limu”: 
they would not agree with any known designations of Chumash vil- 
lages because Santa Catalina is Gabrielino, that is, Shoshonean. It 
is true that the words do not ring Shoshonean. They are almost 
certainly not Gabrielino, which has “7” where more southerly cog- 


K 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 555 


nate dialects have “7.” Various conjectures can be advanced on 


this point. Perhaps the simplest is that Chumash names were ob- 
tained for Shoshonean settlements. 

It may be added that these reinterpretations are much more con- 
sonant with a reasonable course for Cabrillo’s little vessels. The 
route formerly accepted is: San Pedro Harbor (San Miguel), then 
westward to Santa Cruz (San Salvador), back easterly to Santa 
Monica (Bahia de los Fumos or Fuegos), then west once more to 
Mugu, and then to Ventura (Xucu); with Catalina, which is in 
plain sight of San Pedro, unmentioned until later. The following 
chart is suggested instead: San Diego or Newport Bay (San 
Miguel) ; Santa Catalina; either San Pedro or Santa Monica (Los 
Fumos); Mugu; and Rincon (Las Canaos, native name Xucu). 
This gives a continuous course. 

On the other hand, Limu reappears in later sources, and almost 
certainly as Santa Cruz. Father Tapis in 1805 wrote of two islands, 
whose position seemingly best fits that of Santa Cruz and Santa 
Rosa, as being called, respectively, Limtii and Huima. The latter 
is clearly Wima’l, that is, Santa Rosa. It was said to contain seven 
settlements, which is the number located on it in Plate 48. Limt 
must therefore be Santa Cruz. Its 10 rancherias nearly reach the 
number on the map. The three principal, with populations of 124. 
145, and 122 adults, respectively, were Cajatsi—that is, Hahas; 
Ashuagel; and Liam, the Liyam of the map. 

This evidence seems almost inescapable; but its acceptance gives 
Cabrillo a confused route; makes his San Salvador (Limit) and 
San Lucas (Maxul, etc.) the same island; furnishes two entirely 
different lists of villages said by him to be on this island, one of 
them identifiable and the other wholly unidentifiable by more recent 
Chumash data; and makes the voyager silent on the inhabitants of 
Santa Catalina. These difficulties lend a certain seduction to the 
temptation somehow to regard Cabrillo’s Limit as having been Pimu- 
Catalina; enough, perhaps, to justify the maintenance of some sus- 
picions until further elucidation is forthcoming. 

With “San Lucas” and possibly “San Salvador” shifted one 
island east from the accepted interpretation, it may be that the “ Isla 
de la Posesion” or “ Juan Rodriguez,” where Cabrillo wintered and 
lies buried, was Santa Rosa instead of San Miguel. Since nothing 
certain can be made of the native names that seem to refer to either 
island, this problem is one for the geographer rather than the eth- 
nologist. 

Two things are clear that are of general interest to the historian 
of the natives of California. First, many place names have en- 
dured for centuries in California, And, second, on allowance for 


556 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY ['BULL. 78 


the accumulation of errors in successive recording by mariners, 
copying, and printing of meaningless terms, there is no evidence that 
the Chumash language has materially altered in more than 350 years. 


INTERTRIBAL RELATIONS. 


The Chumash knew the Salinans as At’ap-alkulul; the Yokuts or 
San Joaquin drainage Indians in general as Chminimolich or “ north- 
erners”’; the Alliklik, their Shoshonean neighbors on the upper Santa 
Clara River, by that name; the Fernandefio, Gabrielino, and per- 
haps the groups beyond as At’ap-lil’ish. Most of these names in 
their full plural form carry a, prefix /-. 

All accounts unite in making the Chumash an unwarlike people, 
although intervillage feuds were common and the fighter who killed 
was accorded public esteem. A little war between Santa Barbara 
and Rincon, probably in Mission times, seems to be the chief one of 
which knowledge has been perpetuated. 


SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. 


Notices of the status of the chief, wot or wocha, are brief and as 
conflicting as is customary when no intensive study has been made. 
One statement is to the effect that chiefs had no authority and were 
not obeyed. This is no doubt true if “authority” is taken in the 
strict legal sense which the word can possess among more advanced 
peoples. But, on the contrary, everything goes to show that the 
Chumash chief enjoyed influence and honor to a rather unusual 
degree. Cabrillo’s reference to his “ princess” indicates that rank 
was carefully regulated. In an anarchic society, leadership would 
have been in the hands of a man of natural capacity; a woman can 
attain to accorded preeminence only through definitely crystallized 
custom. It is also repeatedly stated that the chief received food and 
shell money from the people—no doubt for a return of some kind. 
It is specifically said that he was head among the rich men. Ordi- 
narily, he alone had more than one wife. The chief summoned to 
ceremonies—the general Californian practice; and no doubt enter- 
tained the visitors. Refusal to attend was a cause of war. As the 
same is reported from the Juanefio, the fact can not be doubted. But 
it is likely that some motive other than resentment at shghted prestige 
was operative. Declination of an invitation may have been a formal 
imputation of witchcraft, or a notice that hostile magic had been 
practiced in revenge. 

The Chumash, alone among their neighbors, buried the dead. The 
Salinans cremated; so did the Shoshoneans eastward; the Yokuts 
both buried and burned. Only the inhabitants of the three Sho- 
shonean islands followed the Chumash practice. The custom must 


KROERER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 557 


have been very ancient, since skeletons are as abundant in most of 
the Chumash area as they are rare in adjoining territory; and there 
is no clear record of calcined human bones. 

The body was roped in flexed position. The prehistoric burials 
frequently show the same position, and sometimes contain fragments 
of heavy cord. One man alone carried the corpse and made the 
grave. This practice indicates belief in defilement. Those who 
assisted at a funeral were given shell money. The widow observed 
food restrictions for a year and wore the husband’s hair on her head. 
The cemeteries seem to have been inside the villages, and were marked 
off with rows of stones or planks. For prominent men, masts bear- 
ing the possessions of the dead were erected, or tall boards bearing 
rude pictures. The mourners, it appears, farce around the ceme- 
tery, or perhaps about the fatnily plot within it, 


DWELLINGS. 


Avcording to all accounts, the Chumash house was large—up to 
50 feet or more in diameter—and harbored a community of in- 
mates; as many as 50 individuals by one report, 40 by another, 
three or four families according to a third. The structure was 
hemispherical, made by planting willows or other poles in a circle 
and bending and tying them together at the top. Other sticks 
extended across these, and to them was fastened a layer of tule 
mats, or sometimes, perhaps, thatch. There was no earth covering 
except for a few feet from the ground, the frame being too hght 
to support a burden of soil. 

The ordinary sweat house seems to have been small, but nothing is 
known of its construction. There was, however, also a large type of 
sweat house or ceremonial chamber, apparently dirt roofed, with steps 
leading up to the top, where the entrance was by ladder. This 
is clearly the Sacramento Valley dance house, whose appearance 
among the Chumash is rather remarkable in view of the fact that 
otherwise it was not built south of the Miwok, several hundred 
miles away. Such discontinuous croppings out are not rare in 
California; witness the distribution of totemic exogamy, of caps, 
and the acorn soup paddle. They indicate a greater group in- 
dividuality than has generally been assumed or than appears on 
first acquaintance. It is extremely probable that of such now 
separated cultural elements many once extended over a large un- 
broken tract, from certain middle portions of which they were 
subsequently eliminated by the increasing activity of other factors 
of social life. 

The Chumash are one of the California nations that knew true 
beds and made what might be called rooms inside their houses. 


558 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 78 


The beds were platforms raised from the ground, on which rush 
mats were spread. A rolled-up mat served as pillow. Other mats 
were hung about the bed, both for privacy and for warmth, it 
appears. The islanders, on the other hand, slept crowded and on 
the ground, according to Cabrillo. 


CANOES. 


The canoe, tomol or tomolo, was one of the glories of the Chumash. 
Their northern neighbors were entirely without; only toward Cape 
Mendocino were canoes again to be encountered; and these were 
of a quite different type. The Shoshoneans of the islands, of 
course, had boats; and in some measure the Chumash-Gabrielino 
form of canoe was employed southward at least as far as San Diego. 
But the Luiseno and Dieguefo did not voyage habitually; and for 
local use, the rush balsa seems to have been commoner. The Chu- 
mash, however, were mariners; they took to their boats not only 
when necessity demanded, but daily, so far as weather permitted. 

The canoe as generally described was made of separate planks 
lashed together and calked with the asphalt that abounds on the 
beach. Fragments from ancient sites tally exactly with the accounts. 
Whether the dugout form of boat was also made is not altogether 
certain, but seems not unlikely. The planked vessel has less strength; 
but the sea is generally remarkably calm in the Santa Barbara 
Channel, and landings would normally be made in sheltered coves. 
This type of boat is, of course, also hghter and swifter. It has 
sometimes been thought that the Chumash had recourse to planks 
because of lack of timber suitable for hollowing, especially on the 
islands. This explanation seems to be only indirectly true. Santa 
Cruz still bears tolerable pines, Santa Rosa was not wholly without 
trees, and on the mainland there were, of course, forests. But the 
rainfall is hght in Chumash land, and trees of any size grow only 
on the mountains, in the most favorable cases several miles from 
the shore. There are no streams large enough to float a heavy log, 
and the carriage of one would have been extremely laborious at best, 
perhaps quite impracticable. A long board, however, was easily 
carried down a trail by a pair of men. The abundance of asphalt 
remedied any deficiencies of carpentering, so far as tightness to 
water went. Once the type was worked out and established, it might 
be given preference over the dugout even in the rarer cases where 
the latter was practicable. 

The larger canoes must have had some sort of skeleton, or at least 
thwarts; but there are no clear reports as to such constructional ele- 
ments. Neither do we know if the bow was pointed, as the speed 


KROPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 559 


attained would indicate, or blunt, as in the river boat of north- 
western California. One account mentions that the ends were high. 
Prehistoric stone models are sharp and raised at both ends, with a 
vertical drop in the gunwale aft of the stem and forward of the stern. 

The canoes are described as holding from 2 or 3 to 12 people; one 
account even says 20. Another mentions 8 paddlers and 6 passen- 
gers. The length is said to have run to 8 or 10 varas, say 25 feet, 
with a 4-foot beam; but this size must have been exceptional. It is 
certain that double-bladed paddles were used; their employment has 
already been noted on San Francisco Bay and recurs among the 
Dieguefio. This implement seems elsewhere in North America to be 
known only to the Eskimo. The ordinary one-bladed paddle may 
also have been in use by the Chumash. 

The planking was split with wedges, which would be needed also 
for cemetery boards and probably for wooden dishes. The Chumash 
replaced the usual Californian antler wedge with one of whale rib. 
The adze is not known. Its blade must have been of shell, as with 
the Yurok, since flint chips too jaggedly to be of service for planing, 
and grained stone can not be rubbed down to a fine enough edge and 
retain strength. The handle may be conjectured to have been of 
wood, since no remains of stone or bone have been found that would 
answer the purpose. 


WOODEN IMPLEMENTS. 


Another device that is unique among the Chumash, at least so far 
as California is concerned, is the spear thrower. Our knowledge 
of this rests exclusively upon a single specimen brought to England 
by Vancouver. The record that it was obtained at Santa Barbara 
is not entirely free from suspicion, but seems authentic. It might 
be conjectured that the Chumash learned the implement from the 
Aleutians who were brought to some of the islands by Russian sea 
otter hunters during the latter part of the Mission period; but there 
is nothing in the specimen to suggest an Alaskan prototype, and Van- 
couver seems to have preceded the Russians. The shape is remark- 
able: a very short and rather thick board, nearly as broad as long, 
and appearing extraordinarily awkward for its purpose. It is, 
however, indubitably a spear thrower, with groove and point for the 
butt of the spear. While the circumstances surrounding this solitary 
example are such as to necessitate some reserve in the acceptance of 
the implement as native in Chumash culture, it seems sufficiently 
supported to be added to other instances as an illustration of the 
technical advancement which this people had reached. 

A companion piece in the British Museum is a harpoon quite dif- 
ferent from any other known Californian one. It has a rather heavy 


3625°—25 OT 





560 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


shaft of wood painted red. Into this is set a slenderer foreshaft, a 
device never reported from California except in arrows. The head 
is of bone, with a barb and a chert point. The line is attached to the 
head in typical Californian manner: lashed on with cord, over which 
gum or asphalt has been smeared. The weapon is meant for sea 
otters or seals, not for fish. It is to be hoped that these two remark- 
able pieces may soon have the remnants of doubt that still cling to 
them dissipated by a searching scrutiny. A determination of their 
wood promises to be particularly convincing. 

Also unique is a sinew-backed bow in the British Museum; and of 
special interest because southern California generally used self-bows. 
This specimen is narrower and thicker than the Yurok bows obtained 
by Vancouver at Trinidad on the same voyage; and its wood is more 
yellowish than the northern yew. The attribution to Santa Barbara 
is therefore probably correct. The grip is thong wound, the cord of 
three-ply sinew. 

Otherwise, the Chumash bow is unknown. The arrow is said some- 
times to have been of cane. This report is confirmed by the presence 
in graves of the grooved arrow straightener of steatite that is the in- 
variable concomitant of the cane arrow in the southern half of Cal- 
fornia. It is less common, however, than might be anticipated among 
a people who worked soapstone so freely as the Chumash. The in- 
ference results that the cane arrow was less typical than one with a 
wooden shaft. 

Several early sources speak of neatly made dishes and bowls of 
wood, beautifully inlaid with haliotis; but not a single representative 
specimen has survived. The type appears to have been confined to 
the Chumash; though inlaying on a smaller scale was practiced by 
the southern Californians on their ceremonial batons, and the Yurok 
and their neighbors occasionally set bits of haliotis into a pipe. 


BASKETRY. 


Chumash basketry is substantially that of the Shoshoneans of 
southern California, which is described in detail in the chapter on 
the Cahuilla, plus some leanings toward the Yokuts and certain mi- 
nor peculiarities. Perhaps the most important of these is the sub- 
stitution of three rushes (/uncus) for a bundle of grass stems 
(E'picampes rigens) as the foundation of coiled ware. The grass is 
used both by the Southern Yokuts and the Shoshoneans. The Chu- 
mash employed it, but rarely. One or more of their rushes were 
apt to be split with each stitch: the awl was as likely to pass through 
as between the soft and hollow stems. Sumac (Rhus trilobata) 
was also coiled about the Juncus foundation. The prevailing surface, 
however, at least in decorative baskets, was of the rush. Typical 


BULLE AM tom oF LA DReSo 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 


ote 
A 


oeows 


> 
; 





CHUMASH BASKETRY 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BUELETIN@ PLAT Baas 





; 
: 
; 


—— 





d € 


a, Ancient Chumash coiled cap; b, c, d, e, asphalted water baskets found in a cave. 0b, Plain twining; 
c, same with reinforcement in three-strand twining; d, same with more reinforcement; e, diag- 
onal twining 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 54 


ce : 





ANCIENT CHUMASH BURDEN AND STORAGE BASKETS, COILED 
FOUND IN A CAVE 





MOHAVE FRAME FOR WEAVING GLASS BEAD CAPE 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN SSP UATE sos 


: 
‘ 
i 
‘ 
: 
BS 





a, Head net for dancing, Northwestern Valley Maidu. Baskets: b, Mohave; c, Kitanemuk; 
d, Eastern Mono; e, Kawaiisu; 7, Washo 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 561 


coloration of such vessels was threefold: a buff background, often 
inclining to red or mottled, with black patterns outlined in yellow or 
white, all of these shades except the black appearing to have been ob- 
tained from the undyed rush itself. This three-color effect is Yokuts 
rather than southern Californian. (PI. 52.) 

There is also northern resemblance in the shape of baskets in- 
tended for gifts or offerings. The shape of these stands midway be- 
tween the Yokuts bottleneck and the southern California globular 
basket. They are low, with mouth rather small in the perfectly flat 
top. Sometimes there is a small rim or neck, but this never rises to 
any distance. One or two preserved specimens are fitted with a lid, 
but there is no evidence that this is an aboriginal feature. The di- 
rection of the coil in these shouldered baskets is antisunwise, as they 
are viewed from above, and contrary to the direction in vessels of 
other shapes. Exactly the same holds for the Yokuts and Sho- 
shonean sniall-mouthed baskets, which, in all three regions, were 
evidently held or pierced in reverse position during manufacture. 

The best Chumash work is somewhat finer and smoother than that 
of the Shoshoneans of southern California. In part, the difference 
may be attributed to the preservation chiefly of exceptional show 
pieces, which contrast with the average effect of the much more 
numerous modern utilitarian Cahuilla and Luisefio specimens. But 
there was no doubt also an actual distinction, in which the southern 
Yokuts were aligned with the Chumash as against the Shoshoneans. 
This is what one should expect from the general types of civilization 
of the peoples. The Chumash at all points show themselves finished 
and loving artisans of exceptional mechanical skill. The Shosho- 
neans of the south were coarse handicraftmen, but mystic speculators 
and religious originators. 

An ancient Chumash cap which fortune has preserved in a cave is 
also southern Yokuts rather than Luisefio in appearance. (PI. 53.) 

Coiled storage baskets, wider at the bottom than at the mouth, were 
made by the Chumash. (PI. 54.) These may have been known also 
to the other tribes of the south, but, if so, they have gone out of use. 

Openwork rush baskets, both deep and plate form, were practically 
identical with those of the Luiseno. 

A basketry water bottle must have been of some importance, since 
a number of prehistoric specimens have come to light. (PI. 53.) 
They are usually in simple twining reinforced here and there by 
courses of three-strand or diagonal twining, flat bottomed, and lined 
with asphalt, which was applied with hot pebbles. The water bottle of 
the Plateau Shoshoneans and of the desert tribes of Arizona, which 
penetrated eastern and southern California at least as far as the 
Tehachapi range, was in diagonal twining, pitched outside, and 


562 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY | BULL, 78 


usually pointed or rounded below. It is intended for hanging and 
for travel; the Chumash form, to be set about the house. The ma- 
terial of the latter seems most commonly to have been Juncus. which 
the asphalt stiffened for enduring wear. 

The woven fur blanket, which in its characteristic California form 
is made, as in the Southwest and Plateau, of strips of rabbit skin, was 
partly replaced among the Chumash by one of feathers. Narrow 
pieces of bird skin were twisted with a cord to give them strength; 
into these were woven shorter strands of plain strings. This is a 
form of blanket that appears to have been known through a consid- 
erable part of California. 

This type of feather blanket is described by the Maidu, and is only a variant 
of the rabbit-fur robe. Two specimens preserved in museums, one from the 
Chumash and the other from an unspecified group in California, have a different 
structure. The former has a long continuous warp of two cords wrapped with 
strips of quill, to which feather web adheres. A double woof of, unfeathered 
cords is twined in. The second piece also has a double warp, but the two 
strands are twisted on each other and a bit of feather inserted at each turn. 


The woof is inserted in close rows. This makes at least three techniques fol- 
lowed in the manufacture of these blankets. 


INDUSTRY IN STONE. 


The Chumash did not make the pottery of their southeastern neigh- 
bors, and did not acquire it in trade, although stray pieces may now 
and then have drifted among them. References to their “ pots” or 
‘“ollas” are to steatite vessels, both open dishes and nearly globular 
bowls, often large—up to 2 feet in diameter—and usually thin 
walled. Some are shell inlaid and have not been subjected to setting 
in the fire, but the service of ceremony or show which they rendered 
is unknown. When a pot broke, its pieces were used as fry pans; at 
least, many such have been found, fired and usually perforated in 
one corner, to allow of being moved with a stick. 

The Chumash used the metate; the bowlder mortar; the mortar 
finished outside; and the pounding slab with basketry hopper. The 
latter is attested by numerous circles of asphalt on ancient stones— 
sometimes on mortar edges, too. Whether the relation of the several 
types was one of use or period, or both, is not known, since no at- 
tention appears to have been given to stratigraphy in any of the 
humerous excavations of Chumash sites. The deposits are sometimes 
of considerable thickness, and once they are examined with reference 
to their time sequences, light may be shed on the obscure history of 
mortar and metate, which is discussed in connection with the Maidu 
and other tribes. 

One. consideration may be added here. There are indications 
that the true or squared metate is a utensil which spread north- 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 066 


ward from southern Mexico, probably in more or less close association 
with agriculture. This is the implement with flat or cylindrically 
concave surface, over which an elongated. stone was worked back and 
forth. In contrast with this is the grinding stone more prevalent 
in California: an irregular slab on which a roundish or short stone 

yas rubbed with a rotary motion. This is a ruder device, effective 
enough for the occasional grinding of seeds, and sufficiently simple, 
both in its manufacture and manipulation, to form part of a very 
rudimentary culture. It would not answer the daily needs of a 
population practicing maize agriculture systematically. The ques- 
tion for California is whether the grinding slab may go back to an 
early period with the metate superadded later, or whether the former 
is to be regarded as the contemporary equivalent among a lowly 
civilized people of the more specialized metate. Almost every speci- 
men shows at a glance how its surface has been worn; but no con- 
sistent distinction of the two types appears to have been attempted. 

Small and large show mortars are not rare in Chumash graves. 
They are of fine sandstone, flat bottomed, the walls of uniform thick- 
ness, and polished outside as well as in. The rim is nicely squared, 
sometimes even concave, or asphalted and inset with shell beads. 
Such pieces would-necessarily be far too valuable for ordinary use, 
and would certainly break promptly under wear. That they were 
made for the toloache ritual is possible, but unproved. They do 
confirm, however, the early remark that “the constancy, attention to 
trifles, and labor which they [the Channel Indians] employ in finish- 
ing these pieces, are well worthy of admiration; ” a fitting characteri- 
zation, also, of most other products of Chumash industrial art. 

Large stone rings or perforated disks have been found in great 
numbers in Chumash territory. These were slipped over the women’s 
digging sticks to give the stroke momentum. [Elsewhere in Cali- 
fornia such weighting of the stick hag not. been reported, and since 
stones with sufficiently large perforations are rare, it seems that the 
Chumash were nearly unique in not contenting themselves with the 
simple sharpened shaft. Most of the stones are well rounded and 
some are beautifully polshed in hard, compact material. They were 
evidently highly prized and illustrate once more the fondness of the 
Chumash for perfection in manual matters. 

There has been some inclination to interpret these objects as war- 
club heads, net sinkers, and the like, but as native statements on the 
subject are perfectly clear and decisive, mere conjectures are baseless. 
It does not matter that now and then a carefully polished piece shows 
wear as if someone had hammered with it. A hasty woman may 
occasionally have laid hold of the first implement that came to hand, 


564 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


or young or thoughtless members of the family may have aroused 
her resentment by putting a carefully preserved treasure to rough 
and ruinous use in her absence. We do not conclude from coffee 
stains on a chair that the owner regarded it indiscriminately as a seat 
and a table, nor from its violently fractured condition that it was 
intended as a weapon of offense. The remains of primitive people 
must be judged in the same spirit. 

The pipe, as recovered by excavations, is a stone tube, slightly 
convex in profile, and thinning considerably from bowl to mouth end. 
A short bone mouthpiece remains in many specimens and is likely to 
have been set in regularly. The length varies, but 5 inches would 
be not far from the average. Steatite is perhaps the commonest 
material, but by no means the only one; a rough-breaking brick- 
red stone occurs rather frequently. Now and then the pipe is bent 
near the middle at an angle of from 15° to 60°. This form allowed 
comparatively easy perforation of pieces more than a foot long, 
since boring could be carried on in four sections—at each end and 
in both directions from the elbow. the two latter holes being sub- 
sequently plugged. 

Analogy with the practices of other California Indians makes 
it almost certain that the stone pipes of the Chumash were em- 
ployed by shamans. Their comparative abundance suggests that they 
were also put to profaner use. But, on the other hand, it is scarcely 
probable that a man would smoke only when he had a stone imple- 
ment. Pipes of wood or cane are hkely to have been used but to have 
perished. 

SHELLS AND MONEY. 


The commonest fishhook among the Chumash and their neighbors 
to the southeast was of haliotis, nearly circular, and unbarbed. The 
point is turned so far in as to make it difficult to see how it could 
have bit; but hooks of similar shape are used in Polynesia and Japan 
for fish that swallow slowly. As tension is put on the line, the point 
penetrates the jaw and shdes through to the attachment of the line. 

Chumash money appears to have been the clam-shell disk bead 
currency that was the ordinary medium of all those parts of Cali- 
fornia that did not employ dentalia. In fact, it is likely that the 
Chumash furnished the bulk of the supply for the southern half of 
the State, as the Pomo did farther north. The usual south and 
central Californian method of measuring the strung beads on the 
circumference of the hand was in vogue. The available data on this 
system have been brought together in Table 6. 


565 


CALIFORNIA 


HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF 


KROEBER | 


‘oyuod 


[‘oyuod §] 


‘oyosTn’] 


“*(p) oABYeS 


“ef eee eee eee 


‘OUTIeLIGBy 





-2e ete eee eee eee 


ed 


“yssunyy 


“891044 Z YJIOM SB POU0}}USMI ST MOG]O 94} ,,0},, losUYy eTPpTUr 9q1 Jo dry 944 WOT] oINSvOUT OUT, 9 
<< OUIBU-SII-F,, 04} 03 [enbo ATIvoU SB PoUOYooyY 








*pioM oures 94} ATqeqolg + 


“IeBUY O[PPTUL 9} JO YASUO] oO} SNT ¢ 
Ino} ‘nunys ‘0M “uLoys? oreduI0D 


«SUQ,, UBILIOUTY JO sazpa4 ystuedg uljuseAtnbo oy} oats sosoyjuoied UT soinsy oy, 1 








peer | Co oe es aes 
ae? eee Sel las Shoe Se. 
7 cae eee a] e OUI 
sta AOU we OS Se Seas 
"S{NYO X "SqNYO X 
WI9y NOG [e1}U99 


ee 


(Z) ,,eureu-s}I-Z,, 
(1) , JULBVU-S}I-T i) 


‘OUSTONSTIY UBUT[TRS 





ee 


cae oe (Z) BATABUL 
(1) , QUIBU-S}I-T i) 


‘ce (%) Weuresom 


‘OuRTUOJUY UBUTIeg 





‘SHUASVAJ AMNOW GVA TIAHY VINYOMIIVO—'9 ATAVY, 


} 





ct ae ee a ----"*punoie soull} x1g 
“siesuy pus stayed punore soul} INO, 
“-sd1} Josuy pus MOq]e soUsTJE;MINOIL 
Pn ere S- Sts--E > “UTOTE DOTA, 
"--""""""-HUNOIB SOUT} J[VY B PUB BUH 
ee siesuy pues wed soueleyuIMdITO 


-uy pues wyed soueroyUIMOITO JO ITV ET 
wed Jo asvodo 0} Jesuy aypptur jo dry, 


566 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


The following conclusions may be drawn from this table: 

(1) There was no unit of identical length of strung disks that 
obtained among all tribes that measured on the hand. One, one and 
a half, or two circumferences, with or witbout the length of the 
middle finger of the hand superadded, and the circuit of the fore- 
arm, were the basis of valuation among different groups. 

(2) The Miguelefio system has been renamed, and possibly altered, 
to fit the Spanish currency of reales and pesos. 

(3) The native system was everywhere one of duplicating or 
quadruplicating units. 

(4) The equivalations to silver money must be accepted with 
caution, because they may date from various periods, when native 
currency perhaps had reached different stages of depreciation. But 
it is rather clear that the Chumash, who probably furnished most 
of the supply, held their bead money in the lowest estimation. It 
was worth a third more among the Gabrielino and four times as much 
among the Salinans. With the southern Maidu, who are probably 
the farthest group to whom money from the Santa Barbara Channel 
penetrated, the system of measuring on the hand seems to have been 
no longer in use; but the values were extremely high. A yard 
would rate from $5 to $25 in American money; whereas the Chumash 
sti and Gabrielino ponko, of nearly the same length, were rated 
at only 124 cents. 

Chumash graves, as a rule, yield but little of this thick clam 
money. Small curved beads of olivella are far more abundant, 
and sometimes occur in great bulk. It may be that the Chumash 
buried these inferior strings with the dead and saved their genu- 
ine money to burn at a subsequent mourning commemoration. 

Long tubular beads, sometimes of the columella of large univalves, 
others of the hinge of a large rock clam, are also found. These 
were prized like jewels from the Yokuts to the Diegueno—much as 
the magnesite cylinders in the north. Again the Chumash seem 
to have been the principal manufacturers. 


STATUS OF CHUMASH CULTURE. 


Practically every implement here mentioned as Chumash was 
known also to the inhabitants of the Shoshonean islands, and most: 
of them to the mainlanders of the coast for some distance south, 
especially the Gabrielino. The archipelago must be considered a 
unit as regards material culture, irrespective of speech and origin 
of the natives. Santa Catalina remains, at any rate, show all the 
characteristics of Chumash civilization, perhaps even in their most 
perfect form. The Chumash coast, however, appears to have been 
much more closely inked with the Chumash islands, at least tech- 


KROELER } HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 567 


nologically, than the Shoshonean mainland with the Shoshonean 
islands; so that the prevailing impression of the culture as a 
distinctively Chumash one is substantially correct. 

The steatite of the Chumash, so far as known, came from Santa 
Catalina, although ledges of this stone are reported in the “Santa 
Ynez Mountains and near Arroyo Grande. But it can not be 
doubted that the island was the source of much of the supply. 
With it came certain curiously shaped objects—shovel-form, hooked, 
and the like, even carvings of finned whales, all very variable in 
size, and clearly serving no utility. They are less frequent in 
Chumash graves than on Santa Catalina, as might be expected. 
Since this island is the source of the Chungichnish religion, the 
most developed form of any cult based on the taking of the toloache 
plant, it might be suspected that this worship and the soapstone 
figures, whose import is obviously ritualistic, had traveled to the 
Chumash together. This may be; but there is no evidence in the 
scant extant knowledge that any of the specific phases of the Chun- 
gichnish religion, such as the sand painting, prevailed among the 
Chumash. They did use the Jimson weed; but for all that is known 
to the contrary, the associated cult may have been a generalized one 
such as flourished among the Yokuts. 

It must be plainly stated, in fact, that our ignorance is almost com- 
plete on Chumash religion, on the side of ceremony as well as belief 
and tradition. The plummet-shaped charm stones were regarded 
magically and made much of. This fact points to central rather 
than southern California affinities in religion. Seeds, or perhaps 
meal ground from them, were used in offerings; but this is a custom 
of wide prevalence in California. Sticks hung with feathers were 
set up in their “adoratories.” Such isolated scraps of information 
allow of no broader conclusions. Even the habits of the shaman 
are undescribed. The god Achup or Chupu, whose “worship” a 
missionary report of 1810 mentions as being uprooted among the 
Purisima natives, may or may not have had connection with the 
toloache cult. We can believe that the great mourning anniversary 
of the larger half of California was practiced; but we do not really 
know. 

The curious ceremonial baton known to the Luiseno as paviut was 
certainly used by the Chumash, since prettily inlaid pieces, though 
lacking the inserted crystals, have been found. Again it would be 
hasty to draw the inference that the outright Chungichnish cult had 
reached the Chumash. Concrete religious elements often have a 
wider distribution, especially among primitive peoples, than organ- 
ized religions, which, like all flowers, are temporary and superficial. 
It is difficult, to be sure, to picture the Chungichnish religion origi- 


568 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


nating on Santa Catalina and spreading east and south to tribes of 
much inferior arts while leaving the nearer and more advanced 
Chumash on Santa Cruz and of Ventura untouched by its influence. 
An interpretation that avoids this mental obstacle is the conjecture 
that the Chumash and Gabrielino jointly worked out a _ well-de- 
veloped religion based on toloache, of which we happen to know only 
the Gabrielino or Chungichnish phase because its spread was very 
recent and its influence affected tribes that have survived. 

On the other hand, it is possible that the Chumash were really in- 
ferior to the speculating Shoshoneans in power of abstract formula- 
tion. Such differences in national spirit exist in California, as wit- 
ness the Shoshonean Luisehno and Yuman Dieguenho. The techno- 
logical abilities of the Chumash do not by any means prove an equal 
superiority in other directions. And yet their excellence in material 
matters is so distinct that it is difficult for the ethnologist to picture 
them as mere secondary copyists in other respects. 


CHAPTER 388, 


THE WASHO. 


Affiliations, 569; habitat, 569; numbers, 570; culture, 571; basketry, 571; dress 


and implements, 572; buildings, 572; religion and society, 573. 


AFFILIATIONS. 


The Washo have been unduly neglected by students of the Indian. 
What little is on record concerning them makes it difficult to place 
them. 

Their speech, which is rather easy to an English tongue and 
pleasant to the ear, is distinctive and very diverse from that of the 
Shoshonean Mono and Northern Paiute with whom they are in con- 
tact and association. Such investigation as has been made—and 
it has not gone very deep—points to the Washo language as being 
Hokan and therefore no longer to be regarded as an independent stock. 
Still the affiliation with other Hokan languages can not be close. The 
position of the Washo makes this comparative distinctness remark- 
able. For a detached and quasi-independent little group the Washo 
are on the wrong side of the Sierra. Diversity is the true Califor- 
nian habit. The moment the Plateau is entered single dialects 
stretch for monotonous hundreds of miles, and the basic Shoshonean 
tongue continues without interruption across the Great Basin and 
even over the Rockies. Now the Washo are a Basin tribe. Their 
settlements were all on streams that flow eastward to be lost in the 
interior desert. Even as the artificial lines of statehood run they 
are as much a Nevadan as a Californian people. Their anomaly as 
a separate fragment is therefore in their location. 

It is tempting to conjecture, accordingly, and especially on the 
basis of their probable Hokan kinship, that they are an ancient 
Californian tribe, which has gradually drifted, or been pressed, over 
the Sierra. But there are no concrete grounds other than speech 
to support such an assumption. | 


HABITAT. 


The Washo territory is the upper and more fertile drainage of the 
Truckee and Carson Rivers—streams born in California mountains 
to perish in Nevada sinks. How far down they ranged on these 


569 


i 


570 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


two rivers has not been ascertained with accuracy. It seems to have 
been but a little below Reno and Carson City. Long Valley Creek, 
which drains northwestward into Honey Lake, a Californian stream, 
was also in their possession. West of the crest of the Sierra they 
had no settlements, but the Miwok acknowledged their hunting rights 
on the upper Stanislaus nearly as far down as the Calaveras Big 
Trees. They may have enjoyed similar privileges elsewhere. Where 
there are no winter villages, information is often conflicting: boun- 
daries may have been in dispute, or amicably crossed. If the Washo 
hunted on the North Stanislaus they may have come down the Mid- 
dle Fork also, or frequented the Calaveras, Cosumnes, or American. 
Sierra Valley has been assigned both to them and the northeastern 
Maidu. The deep snows prevented more than temporary occupation. 
Honey Lake, too, may have been more largely Washo than the map 
(Pl. 46) shows, or entirely forbidden to them. 

Lake Tahoe is central to Washo territory, and was and is still 
resorted to in summer, but its shores are scarcely habitable in the 
season of snow. 

The Washo call themselves Washiu or Wasiu. The names applied 
to them by their neighbors are unknown, except for northern Maidu 
Tsaisuma or Tsaisti. Northern Miwok Hisatok or Histoko means 
merely “ easterners.” | 

The Washo were at times in conflict with the adjacent Northern 
Paiute, whom they call Paleu, and by whom they are said to have 
been defeated about 1860. 


NUMBERS. 


There are the usual statements, some made as much as 50 years ago, 
about enormous decrease and degeneration or impending extinction; 
but actually the Washo seem to have suffered less diminution as a 
consequence of the invasion of our civilization than the vast majority 
of California Indians. Estimates of their population were: In 1859, 
900; 1866, 500; 1892, 400; 1910, 300. The Federal census in this last 
year enumerated over 800, about one-third in California and two- 
thirds in Nevada, some three-fourths or more being full blood. As 
the Washo are distinctly separated from the “ Paiutes” and the 
“California Diggers” in the local American consciousness, it is not 
likely that this figure involves any erroneous inclusions of conse- 
quence. Their lack of any reservation, and the semiadjustment of 
their life to civilized conditions, leading to a scattering habitation on 
the fringes of white settlements, have evidently caused a persistent 
underestimation of their numbers. 

Their original strength may have been double what it is to-day: 
1,500 or under seems a likely figure in view of the nature of their 
country, their solidarity, and their unity of speech. 


KROBRER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 571 
CULTURE, 


The customs of the Washo will undoubtedly prove interesting once 
they are known. Their habitat on the flank of the Sierra Nevada 
must have made them in the main Californians. But being over the 
crest of the range, they must have had something of an eastern out- 
look, and their associations with the Northern Paiute, who main- 
tained direct affiliations with the tribes in the Rocky Mountains, and 
were apparently subject to at least some indirect influences from the 
Plains, can hardly but have given the civilization of the Washo some 
un-Californian color. 


BASKETRY. 


Their basketry, which is deservedly noted for excellent finish and 
refinement of decorative treatment, is of the central Californian 
order, with coiling predominating in fine ware (PI. 55, 7), whereas the 
adjacent Shoshoneans, like most of those of the Great Basin, incline 
to plain and diagonal twining. The nearest analogues are in Miwok 
work. Both single and triple rod foundations are employed. The 
shapes are simple; the designs are characterized by a lack of bulk 
that is typical also of Miwok patterns, as well as by a delicacy and 
slenderness of motive to which the Miwok do not attain. The direc- 
tion of the coil is from left to right, as among the Miwok and Maidu; 
the edge has the herringbone finish of diagonally crossed sewing, 
where most California tribes, except sometimes the Miwok, simply 
wrap the last coil. 

A twined and pitched water jar is no doubt due to Shoshonean 
influence. The conical carrying basket is either of plain-twined wide- 
spaced openwork of peeled stems, as in northwestern California, or 
unpeeled like the wood-carrying basket of the Pomo, or diagonally 
twined in openwork, or closely with a pattern. The nearer Cali- 
fornian tribes use chiefly a narrow mesh filled in by smearing over. 
Oval and triangular trays, elliptical seed beaters, and the like were 
of the types common to all the Sierra tribes and the nearer Sho- 
shoneans; with the weave in plain or diagonal twining. The latter 
technique is in use also for cooking baskets. Three-strand twining 
is employed for starts and reenforcements. 

The almost universal basket material is willow, with fern root 
(Pteridium aquilininum) for the black of patterns, and redbud 
(Cercis occidentalis) for red. The latter material was also used for 
warp and coiling foundation. It is said to have been imported 
from west of the Sierras. 

Cradles are of the hooded basketry type described among the 
Yokuts. A band of diagonal bars or crosses—diagonals in two direc- 


572 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (Reeae 


tions—is put on a boy’s cradle, of rhombuses on a girl’s. Occasion- 
ally the cradle and hood are covered with buckskin, as in the eastern 
Great Basin. 


DRESS AND IMPLEMENTS. 


Sinew-sewed deerskin clothes for women are mentioned, but. may 
possibly have had the same recent and eastern source as the small 
sweat lodge. Their description as consisting of a separate waist and — 
skirt sounds rather unaboriginal. 

Rabbits were taken in nets of a 3-inch mesh, 14 or 2 feet wide, 
and as much as 300 feet in length. These were hung loosely on 
stakes or bushes. Sometimes two were set at an angle. When the 
animals were driven, they became entangled in the sagging net, 
and had their temples crushed by hunters that sprang out from 
concealment. All hunts organized on a large scale were under 
the direction of the chief of the rabbit hunt, peleu-lewe-tiyeli, whose 
position was hereditary. | 

The bow was sinew backed and had recurved ends. The arrow 
was foreshafted, the quiver of deerskin had the hair side turned in. 
This indicates the usual north and central Californian type of 
weapon. 

Pinon nuts, tagum, usually ground and boiled, were a commoner 
food of the Washo than acorns, mad, although these could also be 
gathered in some tracts and were obtained by trade from the west. 
The mortar was a hole in a bowlder, used without basketry hopper; 
the pestle usually an unshaped cobble. The metate was called demge. 
The mush-stirring paddle was called k’a’as,; the looped stick which 
was used for the same purpose Yokuts-fashion, deleyu. 


BUILDINGS. 


The house was of poles joined in an oval dome, thatched with 
mats of tule, much as among the adjacent Northern Paiute. In the 
mountains leaves or bark were used for covering. The winter house 
was a cone of slabs of bark, about 8 feet high in the middle and 12 
feet in length, with a projecting entrance. It must have been very 
similar to the Maidu hiibo. 

The Plains Indian type of sweat lodge, a pole frame temporarily 
covered with skins or mats, just large enough to sit in, and heated by 
steam, was used instead of the earth-covered Californian sweat house, 
it is said. This form is likely to be a recent one, introduced with the 
horse, or possibly a reflex of a ghost-dance movement. 

The dance or assembly house with roof of earth was known to 
the Washo, who call it dayalimz,; but whether they built and used it, 
or had merely seen it in the west, is not clear. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA sy bs 
RELIGION AND SOCIETY. 


The adolescence dance for girls was practiced, perhaps in a Sho- 
shonean guise, since neither the valley Maidu, the hill Miwok, nor 
the Yokuts make this dance in developed form. 

Some form of mourning anniversary was held—‘ cry” is its Eng- 
lish name in vogue—but all details are lacking. 

The chief, tewbeyu, succeeded in the male line. At marriage an 
exchange of gifts is said to have been optional. As among the 
Northern Paiute, there evidently was no bride purchase, even in 
form. The dead were cremated. 

It is clear that some real information on the Washo is highly de- 
sirable. 


CHAPTER 389. 
THE SHOSHONEAN STOCK. 


Relation of the stock to the Californian area, 574; the larger Uto-Aztekan 
family, 575; Shoshonean branches and divisions, 576; Shoshonean move- 
ments in California, 578. 


RELATION OF THE STOCK TO THE CALIFORNIAN AREA. 


The Shoshonean stock is easily the largest in California, in pres- 
ent-day numbers as well as in territory. It occupied a third of the 
area of the State. It stretched in a solid belt from the northeastern 
corner nearly to the southwestern. True, the Washo break the con- 
tinuity at one point within the State limits. But this is a gap only 
in a nominal sense, for the Shoshoneans of the north and those of the 
south of California are connected by a broad band of territory that 
sweeps over nearly the whole of Nevada. 

In one sense, however, the Shoshoneans are an un-Californian 
people. Except for a highland strip in the south (see Figs. 34, 52), 
they have nowhere crossed the Sierra Nevada,and therefore failed to 
penetrate the great valley and mountain area which is the heart 
and bulk of California. More than half of their territory that we 
are here concerned with is in that essentially Shoshonean region, 
the Great Basin. The lines that legislation has seen fit to impose 
on the States include this tract in California, but nature had planned 
differently and her line of division between the fertile lands that 
face the ocean and the deserts that front nothing at all ran nearer 
the shore. It is this natural line that the Shoshoneans have observed 
in their history. And in this sense the bulk of them are un-Cali- 
fornian, although within California. 

In the south, it is true, they have arrived at the ocean, and there 
some of the most populous divisions had their seats. But southern 
California is in many ways a physiographic and climatic area dis- 
tinct from the bulk of the State. At Point Concepcion on the coast, 
and at Tehachapi Pass inland, the vegetation, the marine life, the 
temperature, and the humidity change. The alteration of the land 
is visible from a train window. The south is in some parts the 
most fertile as it is the balmiest portion of the State. But the tract 
to which those traits apply is restricted. It is confined to the imme- 
diate drainage into the ocean, and its limits are nowhere more than 


574 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA pth 


50 or 60 miles from the surf. Even of this fortunate belt the 
Shoshoneans held only part: Hokan, Chumash, and Dieguefo clung 
to more than half. 

In any event, the coastal territories of the Shoshoneans were 
small in contrast with their inland desert range, even within the 
limits of political California, and, when their whole habitat is con- 
sidered, insignificant. From north to south the Shoshonean diffusion 
in the State was 600 miles: their ocean frontage, a scant 100 miles. 
Of at least 20 known divisions established on the basis of dialect, 
only 5 bordered on the sea, and only 3 of these in any notable degree. 


THE LARGER UTO-AZTEKAN FAMILY. 


Reference has been to “ Shoshoneans”; but actually this group 
is only part of a larger one, from which habit rather than convic- 
tion has to date withheld the universal recognition which is its 
due: the Uto-Aztekan family. This mass of allied tribes, which ex- 
tended from Panama to Idaho and Montana (Fig. 50), is one 
of the great fundamental families of aboriginal America, of im- 
portance in the origins of civilization, politically predominant at the 
time of discovery, and numerically the strongest on the continent to- 
day. The association of our Shoshoneans of east and south Cali- 
fornia with this aggregate at the centers of native culture opens a far 
perspective. The lowly desert tribes and simple-minded folk of the 
southern coast are seen in a new light as kinsmen, however remote, 
of the famous Aztecs; and an unexpected glimpse of a vista of his- 
tory opens up before the concrete fact that the sites of the cities of 
Los Angeles and Mexico were in the hands of peoples whose affinity is 
certain. 

Of course, any recent connections are out of the question. It was 
the ancestors of the Mexican Nahua and the California Shoshoneans 
some thousands of years ago who were associated, not their modern 
representatives; and, as to the former association, no one knows where 
it occurred. No tribe that could by any legitimate stretch be called 
Aztec was ever in California, nor for that matter within the present 
confines of the United States. That the speech of India and that 
of Germany go back to a common root is a circumstance of the 
utmost historic import. But no sane mind would infer from the ex- 
istence of an Indo-Germanic family that Germans were Hindus or 
Hindus Germans. It is only reasonable that we should accord the 
Indian a similar discrimination. x 

The Shoshonean group, however, forms a solid block within the 
Uto-Aztekan group. It is a well-marked subdivision, with a long 
and justly recognized unity of its own, though of a lower order. The 


3625°—25——38 


576 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


speech affiliations of the Shoshoneans of California are all with the 
other Shoshoneans, and not with the Pima, Yaqui, Tarahumare, Cora, 
and other Mexican groups of the Uto-Aztekan family. Hence it can 
only aid proper understanding to treat the California tribes as Sho- 
shoneans rather than as Uto-Aztekans. Their relations to Mexico, 
however ultimately important, are through the Shoshonean group as 
a whole. . 





Wig. 50.—Vto-Aztecan family. 


SHOSHONEAN BRANCHES AND DIVISIONS, 


The Shoshonean group of languages is divided into four branches: 
the most extensive in the Great Basin or Plateau; the next in southern 
California; a third between these two on upper Kern River; and the 
fourth in the Pueblo area in Arizona. These are all about equally 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA SAL 


distinct from one another, except that the speech of the Hopi, the 
Pueblo tribe, who are territorially as well as culturally isolated from 
the others, is somewhat the most diverse. Two of the three other 
branches are subdivisible; and the organization of the whole body 
appears in the following scheme: | 





Groups in California. Division. Branch. 








Koso (Panamint) .........- Shoshoni-Comanche. ...- - I. Plateau. 


Bastern Monoy. 05.4..45- 2% Mono-Bannock..........-.- 
Chemehuevi:...-...2.....-- | 
Weenies Set noe cot 


tice SERS Ip ame a 0g 20 Se (en 0 NO a ge RON II. Kern River. 
MNRMEIVTITILIC? Co 8. Be on ioe we 


|e-chemehes oe, ee 


“a LPN d Vea sa are de tee gaye 





| MBITANOM PRs oy 8 so ein 





PPR OPIEIINON eos eee S - Gabrielitosgw ns. soci. 2: IIT. Southern California 
IIL. Sou n California. 
VESTS CS, gpg ile Rag pe a a 
BPC SE Toe tk Oc Ors oie 
Cupenio...-....+-++2 +222 +e Luisefio-Cahuilla......-.. 
Meee VAUD. nike ween ater 
Mountain Cahuilla.......... 
Desert Cahiuillay o.. 2N 2k: 





Gee oo so oa a8 IV. Pueblo. 





The more intimate geography of these groups can be surveyed in 
Figure 51. The relative position and extent of the branches and divi- 
sions appear in Figure 52. The Shoshonean holdings in California 
will be seen to be but a small fraction of the entire territory of the 
stock. Yet seven of the eight divisions, or every one except Hopi, is 
represented within the borders of the State. The inclination to diver- 
sity of idiom which has followed us throughout our progress over 
California greets us once more. 

As Figure 52 is regarded, the Shoshonean subdivisions appear as if 
raying in a semicircular fan from a point in south-central California, 
on or near Kern River. It is highly improbable that they have ac- 
tually spread out thus. We must rather look upon the focus as the 
region where the condensation has been greatest, the tract where new- 
comers gradually agglomerated, not the hive from which the whole 
body swarmed, 


578 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 
SHOSHONEAN MOVEMENTS IN CALIFORNIA, 


The languages of the southern California branch are sufficiently 
specialized to make it necessary to assume a considerable period for 
their development. ‘This specialization could hardly have taken 
place without either isolation or alien contacts in a marginal loca- 







GY SHOSHONEANS OF CALIFORNIA 
g WY Plateau Branch. Mas es, LS 

Aern Fiver Branch...... aH 
Southern California Branch so 













So 





© 
S 
Nicoleno 
% * aa 
AX Pine «ake 
Shoshonean branches, divisions, and dialect groups in California. 





HiGes 


tion, such as the branch is subject to now. 'T hen, the ramifications 
of this branch imply a residence of some duration: there are three 
fully differentiated languages and a dozen dialects in southern Cali- 
fornia. How long it would take these to spring up it is impossible 
to say; but 1,000 years of location on the spot does not seem an ex- 
cessive figure, and perhaps it would be conservative to allow 1,500 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 579 


years since the Shoshoneans first began to reach the coast. The lan- 
guages of the Yuman and Chumash peoples, whom the Shoshoneans 
have apparently split apart in their ancient shoreward drift, are so 
extremely different from each other now that this period is certainly 
the minimum that can be assumed for their separation. 











Shoshoni-Comanche dialects 


S G 
Ute-Chemehuevi dialects. KW 
KernRiver branch------- Ba 


Southern California branchEid 


Wig. 52.—Clustering of Shoshonean divisions in California. 


The little Kern River branch, being equally distinctive, would seem 
to demand a nearly equal antiquity in the vicinity of its present 
seats. This would involve a drift separate from the last, but a sub- 
stantially simultaneous one. It is possible that the Kern River 
group, being a much smaller one, and therefore much more suscepti- 
ble to foreign influences, reached its high degree of specialization in 
a somewhat shorter time. | 


580 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The languages of the Plateau branch in California represent a 
much more recent stratum. Those east of the Sierra are scarcely 
distinguishable from their congeners throughout the Great Basin. 
It is entirely conceivable that these tongues have been spoken in their 
present locations from time immemorial. Their territory is in the 
Great Basin; their speakers were actually part of the Plateau tribes; 
and there is no foreign element or anything else to indicate that they 
ever had any antecessors on the spot. 

Two offshoots from them, however, have crossed the Sierra and 
entered the true Californian valley system: the Western Mono and 
the Kawalisu, one north and the other south of the Kern River 
branch. Their speech, though somewhat changed from that of their 
respective neighbors and presumable ancestors to the east, is not 
greatly altered; certainly far less than that of the Kern River 
Tiibatulabal. The Western Mono and Kawaiisu, then, are late comers. 
On the basis of reckoning which allows the Kern River and southern 
Californian branches 1,000 years in their present vicinity and 1,500 
since their detachment from the main Shoshonean stock, 500 would 
be ample to account for the dialectic specialization of Mono and 
Kawaiisu. But we do not know. They may have been where they 
are now for a longer or a less period. Native tradition is silent; 
and civilized records go back barely a century. | 

At any rate, we can be positive that the Shoshoneans of California 
do not represent a single migration or drift, but rather a succession 
of local waves. The earliest and most important was that into 
southern California proper. Not much later, or perhaps synchro- 
nous but separate, was the entry of the Kern River division. Much 
the most recent was the movement of distinctive Plateau peoples to 
the west of the watershed. 


Craprer 40. 


THE PAIUTE, MONO, AND KOSO. 


THE NORTHERN PAluTeE: Nomenclature, 581; the Great Basin culture, 582; the 
two ghost dance waves, 588; tribal data, 584. Tur Mono: Designations, 
584; eastern and western Mono, 585; western Mono divisions, 585; eastern 
Mono territory, 586; numbers, 586; culture, 587; totemic grouping, 587; 
other notes, 588. THE Koso oR PANAMINT: Connections, 589; habitat and 
population, 589; manufactures, 590; subsistence, 591. 


THe NorrHern PaAtore. 
NOMENCLATURE. 


The northeasternmost corner of California is held by a Sho- 
shonean people who popularly are known by the blanket term 
“Paiute.” People of the same speech and very similar customs 
occupy the adjacent parts of Nevada, in fact the whole northwest- 
ern third of that State; the majority of the eastern half of Oregon; 
roughly the southern half of Idaho; and they extend southward 
along the eastern border of California, except for the local inter- 
ruption of the Washo, for 300 or 400 miles. In Nevada and Oregon 
they are called Paiutes; in central California sometimes by this term 
and sometimes Mono; in Idaho they are the Bannock. The form of 
speech over this vast stretch is, however, virtually identical: minor 
dialects may be numerous, but intelligibility prevails throughout. 
Mono-Bannock is perhaps the generic designation least open to con- 
fusion. Paviotso is the term of the Shoshoni proper for the Nevada 
members of the group, but, like Mono and Monachi, is too limited 
in its application to serve for the entire Mono-Bannock body with- 
out producing opportunity for error. 

The unqualified term “ Paiute” is unfortunate because it refers 
to two quite different peoples, both indeed Shoshonean, and Plateau. 
Shoshonean at that, but of quite distinct divisions. The other 
Paiute are in southern Utah, southern Nevada, and southern Cali- 
fornia. Their affiliations are with the Ute and Chemehuevi, and 
their speech is divergent enough from that of their northern name- 
sakes to be at first contact mainly unintelligible, at least as connected 
cliscourse. 

As a matter of fact, the Mono-Bannock and Ute-Chemehuevi 
divisions seem’ nowhere to be even in contact, Shoshoni-Comanche 


581 


582 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


tribes intervening from California to Colorado. The distinction 
between Southern Paiutes and Northern Paiutes will therefore be 
rigidly adhered to hereafter whenever the term is used at all. For 
the former term, Chemehuevi is a customary and convenient syno- 
nym in southern California. For the latter, “Mono” occupies a 
similar position in central California. Only the Northern Paiute 
in northern California have no alternative epithet. Paviotso origi- 
nated in eastern Nevada, and is locally unknown in California. 
The northwestern Maidu call the Northern Paiute near them Monozi 
or Mona, which are evidently forms of Monachi and Mono. This 
very fact of its being a related name for a related people would 
make Monozi a desirable designation were it not that Mono has 
become so definitely identified with the central Californian Shosho- 
neans of the same division that its extension, even in slightly altered 
form, to a people several hundred miles distant would be certain 
to cause confusion. For our northeasterly Californians, then, the 
unwieldy designation “ Northern Paiute” seems to remain as the 
only safe one. 

The only other native ethnic name known for the Northern Paiute 
is Toloma, applied by the northeastern Maidu. 


THE GREAT BASIN CULTURE. 


These people should be described in connection with those of 
Nevada and Oregon, of whom they constitute a minute peripheral 
fraction. They can, in fact, not be described here because nothing 
of any significance 1s known of them, and httle of moment of their 
main body to the east. Their country was un-Californian. What 
has been said before of Great Basin tribes that belong to California 
unnaturally and only through the courtesy of arbitrary political 
lines is particularly applicable here. The land is one of sagebrush 
and cedar, as what appears to be really a juniper is currently called. 
The acorn of California has vanished. The true pine nut takes its 
place only in a measure. The soil is desert, the mountains rocky, 
with timber in spots. Lakes are numerous, but they are evaporation 
pools, swampy sinks, or salt basins. Streams run only in the moun- 
tains, and flow nowhere. The outlook is wide of necessity, the 
population scant, travel and movement almost enforced. The Cali- 
fornian self-chaining to a short compass, with a dim gloom every- 
where beyond, is impossible. But, to compensate, subsistence is 
slender and a constant makeshift. There may be leisure indeed, 
but it is an intermittent idleness, not the occupied and productive 
luxury of well-fed time. The imagination has little occasion for 
flight; or when the opportunity arises, there is but scant stimulus 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 583 


in the concrete basis of life. Customs, therefore, remain rude. They 
are too flexible to bear any ramifying elaboration. Ritual, symbol- 
ism, and art attain little intensity, and monotonous simplicity takes 
the place of a rich growth. Where an activity specializes, it develops 
in isolation, and fails to merge or expand into a broad scheme: eagle 
hunting, shamans’ singing, mourning customs fix the attention, not 
an assemblage of the gods or a coordinated series of rites. 

The very poverty of Nevadan native civilization endows it with an 
interest. Its numberless little but crudely effective devices to strug- 
gle along under this burden, its occasional short plunges here or 
there, contain a wealth of significance. But we can only glimpse 
this cultural story from bits of stray knowledge. Its import and 
tenor can scarcely be mistaken; but the episodes that make the real 
tale have never been assembled. 

We must leave the Northern Paiute of our northeasterly angle of 
California to some future historian of the bordering States. That 
they had muck. in common with their Maidu and Achomawi neigh- 
bors in the detail of their existence can not be doubted. But it is 
equally certain that in other respects they were true Basin people, 
members of a substantially homogeneous mass that extended east- 
ward to the crest of the Rockies, and that in some measure, whether 
to a considerable or a subsidiary extent, was infiltrated with thoughts 
and practices whose hearth was in the Plains beyond. Several traces 
of this remote influence have already been detected among the 
Achomawl. 


THE TWO GHOST-DANCE WAVES. 


It was a Northern Paiute, though one of Nevada, Jack Wilson or 
Wovoka, who in 1889 in his obscurity gave birth to the great ghost- 
dance movement; and before him his father, or another relative, about 
1870, originated a similar wave, whose weaker antecedent stimulus 
carried it less far and scarcely impressed the American public. In 
both cases the fringe of Northern Paiute whom we hold under con- 
sideration were involved with the main body of their kinsmen to the 
southeast, and passed the doctrine westward, the first time to the 
Modoc, the second to the Achomawi. The later and greater agitation 
stopped there: the California Indian inside the Sierra had long 
since given up all hope and wish of the old hfe and adapted himself 
as best he might to the new civilization that engulfed him. But in 
the early seventies less than 25 years had passed since the pre-Ameri- 
can days of undisturbed and undiluted native existence. The middle- 
aged Indian of northern California had spent his early years under 
its conditions; the idea of its renewal seemed not impossible; and its 
appeal to his imagination was stirring. From Klamath Lake the 
tidings were carried to the Shasta; from them they spread to Karok, 


584 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (sun 78 


Yurok, and Athabascan tribes. The doctrine, taking new forms, but 
keeping something of its kernel, worked its uneasy way about and 
somewhere was carried across and up the Sacramento Valley, until, 
among the Pomo and southern Wintun, it merged with the old re- 
ligion, crystallized, and remains to-day a recognizable element in 
ceremonial. 


TRIBAL DATA, 


The band of Northern Paiute of Surprise Valley and on Upper, Middle, and 
Lower Alkali Lakes, south of Fort Bidwell, were the Kaivanungavidukw. To. 
the north, around Warner Lake in Oregon, but ranging southward toward or 
to Fort Bidwell, were the Tuziyammo, also known aS Ochoho’s band. The 
Honey Lake group were the Waratika or Wadatika, the “ wada-seed eaters.” 
East of these, over the State line, the Smoke Creek region seems to have 
belonged to the Kuyui-dika or “ sucker-eaters,” the Pyramid Lake people or 
Winnemucca’s band. (PL 37.) 

The California limits of the Northern Paiute are not quite certain. The 
doubts that exist have been aired in the foregoing discussions of Achomawi, 
Atsugewi, and Maidu. The present population appears to be in the vicinity 
of 300. It probably never exceeded double this figure. 


Tur Mono. 
DESIGNATIONS. 


After the alien Washo have been passed in a southward journey 
along the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada, Mono-Bannock people 
are again encountered. They can now be named Monos with little 
fear of misunderstanding. 

The word Mono means “ monkey ” in Spanish, but this significa- 
tion, some guesses notwithstanding, can be eliminated from consider- 
ation of the origin of the term. So can a Yokuts folk etymology, 
which derives it from monai, monoyi, “ flies,” on the ground that the 
Mono scaled the cliffs of their high mountains as the insect walks 
up the wall of a house. Monachi is the Yokuts term for the people, 
corresponding to Miwok Mono-k, and to Maidu Monozi for the 
Northern Paiute. It isa meaningless name. The subtraction of the 
tribal suffix cht leaves a stem of which a Spaniard could hardly 
have made anything but Mono. Whether the Yokuts originated 
the word, or whether it comes from some Shoshonean or other source, 
is not known. The Mono call themselves only Niimti, which means 
no more than “ persons.” 

Besides Monachi, the Yokuts call the western Mono Nuta’a (plural Nucha- 
wayi), which, however, is only a directional term meaning ‘“ uplanders,”’ and 
therefore generally easterners. That it is not a true ethnic term is clear from 
the fact that Garcés, in 1776, used the same name, in the form Noche, for the 


southern foothill Yokuts themselves. Malda is a specific southern Yokuts term 
for the Kern River Shoshoneans, and perhaps for all members of the family. 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 585 


The eastern Mono of Owens Valley are called by themselves or their kinsmen 
Pitanakwat, which probably means ‘ pine-nut-eaters,” after a system of tribal 
or band nomenclature that prevails over much of Nevada and the surrounding 
Shoshonean regions. The Kern River Tiibatulabal call the eastern Mono, 
Yiwinanghal; the western Mono, Winanghatal. 


EASTERN AND WESTERN MONO. 


The bulk of Mono territory and population is still in the Great 
Basin; but a branch is established in the high Sierra, at least in its 
marginal, permanently habitable portion, from which they look 
down on the foothill and valley Yokuts. The upper San Joaquin, 
Kings, and Kaweah comprise this domain, in which all the pine 
forest, and some stretches below it, are Mono. The dialect east and 
west of the huge crest is not identical, but appears to be remarkably 
similar considering that the two parts of the people have only their 
backs in contact—if contact it be with one of the earth’s greatest 
walls between—and that their outlooks are opposite. The western, 
cis-Sierra, truly Californian Mono can hardly, therefore, have come 
into their present seats very long ago, as the historian reckons; and 
they are certainly newer than their neighbors, the Tiibatulabal of 
Kern River, or the southern Californians of the same family. Both 
the western and the eastern halves answer to the name Mono, and the 
Yokuts call them both Monachi. 





WESTERN MONO DIVISIONS. 


The western Mono have several distinctive names applied to them 
by the Yokuts. It is not clear whether the Mono themselves employ 
these, or equivalents; nor whether, as the names might indicate, the 
Mono have borrowed the tribal organization of the Yokuts, or the 
latter merely attribute their own political unity to each Mono group 
to which its habitat gives a topographic unity. 


On the North Fork of the San Joaquin, close to the Chukchansi, Dalinchi, and 
half-mythical Toltichi, as well as the uppermost of the southern Miwok on 
Fresno River, was a Mono band that survives in some strength to-day, but for 
which no ‘* tribal’? name is known, 

South of the San Joaquin, on Big Sandy Creek, and toward if not on the 
heads of Little and Big Dry Creeks, were the Posgisa or Poshgisha. Their 
Yokuts neighbors were the Gashowu., 

On a series of confluent streams—of which Big, Burr, and Sycamore Creeks 
are the most important—entering Kings River above Mill Creek, were the 
Holkoma. Towincheba has been given as a synonym and Kokoheba as the name 
of a coordinate neighboring tribe, but both appear to be designations of Hol- 
koma villages, 

At the head of Mill Creek, a southern affluent of Kings River, and in the 
pine ridges to the north, were the Wobonuch. Their Yokuts associates were 
the Michahai, Chukaimina, and Entimbich. In regard to the latter there is 
some confusion whether they are Yokuts or Mono. 


586 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


On Limekiln and Eshom Creeks and the North Fork of Kaweah River were 
the Waksachi, whose Yokuts contacts were primarily with the Wtikchamni. 

On the Kaweah itself, especially on its south side, the Balwisha had their 
home. They, too, associated with the Witikchamni lower down on their own 
stream, but also with the Yaudanchi on the headwaters of Tule River, the 
next stream south. 

This makes six named western Mono divisions, one each, roughly 
speaking, on each side of the three great streams that flow through 
their territory. Their more precise location appears on the Yokuts 
map (PI. 47). 


EASTERN MONO TERRITORY. 


The eastern Mono inhabit a long, arid depression that lies along 
the base of the Sierra. Numerous small streams descend, even on 
this almost rainless side, from the snowy summits; and through 
most of the valley there flows one fair-sized longitudinal stream, 
the Owens River—the Jordan of California—and, like it, lost in a 
salt sea. The exact southward limits of the Mono have not been 
recorded, it appears. The line between them and the Koso, the next 
group beyond, has been drawn between Independence and Owens 
Lake; but it is possible that the shores of this sheet should have 
been assigned rather to the Mono. 

Eastward and northward the Mono extend indefinitely across the 
diagonal line that gives the State of Nevada its characteristic 
contour. There appears to be no consequential change of dialect and 
no great modification of custom. On Owens River and around Mono 
Lake the people are sometimes called Mono and sometimes Paiute; in 
western Nevada they are only Paiutes; as the center of that State 
is approached, the Shoshoni name Paviotso begins to be applicable. 
Yo the Paiute of Pyramid Lake they are all, together with the bands 
far in Oregon, one people. 

To the northwest, toward the Washo, the Mono boundary is formed 
by the watershed between Carson and Walker Rivers. 


NUMBERS. 


The Mono are to-day the most numerous body of Indians in 
California. The eastern Mono alone exceed, according to census 
returns, every group except the Maidu and Pomo; and at that both 
the latter are composite bodies, each including distinct languages, 
and are likely to have been more completely enumerated. The re- 
turns show 1,388 Mono in California. But as Mono and Inyo 
Counties, which are wholly eastern Mono except for a few Koso, are 
credited with nearly 1,200 Indians; and as the western Mono are 
about half as numerous as their eastern kinsmen, it is impossible to 
avoid the conclusion that the total for the combined group is above 


KROHBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 587 


rather than below 1,500. Part of them have probably been classed 
under other names, such as Paiute, or reported without tribal 
designation. 

This relatively high standing is, however, of recent date. A cen- 
tury ago the Mono were feeble in numbers compared with many 
other groups. The very inhospitability of their habitat, which then 
‘aused their population to be sparse, has prevented any consider- 
able influx of Americans and has spared them mutch of the conse- 
quent incisive diminution that a full and sudden dose of our civiliza- 
tion always brings the Indian. They may retain in 1916 a full one- 
half of their numbers in 1816; the proportion among tribes situated 
as they are is in the vicinity of this fraction. A conservative esti- 
mate of their original number is 3,000 to 4,000; 5,000 or 6,000 a very 
liberal figure. 

Much the same result is reached by comparison. If 50 Yokuts 
tribes totaled 15,000 to 20,000, the 6 western Mono divisions higher 
in the mountains may have aggregated 2,000 at best; and allowing 
double for the eastern division, we are still within the range of our 
estimate. 

It is a subject for thought that a body of people that once stood 
to their neighbors as three or four to one should now be outranked 
by them one to three, merely because the former were a few miles 
more accessible to Caucasian contact. 


CULTURE. 


Mono civilization is little known, either as to customs or pre- 
served implements. It is not even certain that they formed a group 
other than in speech and origin. There may have been a deep cul- 
tural cleft between the two halves, the western people being essen- 
tially Yokuts in practices and ideas, the eastern little else than Ne- 
vada Paviotso. Or they may really have been one people, whose 
western division had their civilization overlaid with a partial veneer 
of Yokuts customs. Information is practically lacking, for eth- 
nologists have put httle on record concerning either half of the 
group. 

TOTEMIC GROUPING. 


The western Mono, at least those on the San Joaquin and very 
likely those on other streams also, possessed one important central 
California institution that had not penetrated to their eastern 
brothers nor to any trans-Sierra people: the totemic moieties. But 
these moieties exhibit one feature that is neither Miwok nor Yokuts: 
they are not exogamous. Marriage is within or without the moiety. 
Descent is in the male line, and a group of animals is associated as 


588 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


“nets” or “dogs” with each moiety. These animals, at. least the 
birds among them, were sometimes reared in captivity. When adult 
they were either despoiled of their feathers or released unharmed. 
The personal name is of Yokuts rather than Miwok type: it is in- 
herited, and generally meaningless, not of totemic connotation. 
Chieftainship was dual as among the Yokuts, but the chief of the 
moiety represented by the eagle had precedence. 

Besides being” nonexogamous, the Mono moieties are peculiar in 
being definitely subdivided. The entire scheme is: 

Moiety I, corresponding to Miwok “land” and Yokuts ‘“ downstream; ” 
Yayanchi. 

Subdivisions: Dakats,-Kunugechi. 

Totem animals: Eagle, crow, chicken hawk. 

The name Dakats suggests Kawaiisu adagatsi, “crow,” and Yayanchi the 
yayu hawk, identified with the opposite moiety. 

Moiety II, corresponding to Miwok “water” and Yokuts “upstream :” 
Pakwihu. 

Subdivisions: Tiibahinagatu, Puza’ots or Pazo’odz. 

Totem animals: Buzzard, coyote, yayu hawk, bald eagle. 

Pakwihu is probably from pakwi, “fish”; Tiibahinagatu perhaps from tuba, 
which seems to mean ‘pine nut” in certain Shoshonean dialects—compare 
“Tiiba-tulabal”’; Puza’ots recalls oz@ots, ‘“magpie’”—a bird of the opposite 
moiety among the Miwok—but the etymology seems more than venturesome. 
In fact, ogwots may be nothing but a modified loan ward, the Yokuts ochoch. 

The animal associations are the same as among the Miwok and 
Yokuts. The yayu may prove to be the Yokuts “émik, the falcon, 
and as for the “bald eagle” on the buzzard or coyote side, this 
may be the “fish hawk” whom the Tachi put in the same division. 
But the Mono totemism is perhaps looser than that. of their neigh- 
bors; it is said that a person may change his moiety. 

OTHER NOTES. 


| 


The relationship terms of the San Joaquin Mono are, like those 
of the eastern Mono, of Great Basin type. Cross cousins are 
“brothers” or “sisters,” not “parents” or “children” as among 
the Miwok and central Yokuts. This circumstance, coupled with 
the absence of exogamic regulations, makes it very probable that 
none of the Mono practiced cross-cousin marriage, a peculiar cus- 
tom established among the Miwok. 

The western Mono observed rather strictly the taboo between 
mother-in-law and son-in-law. If speech was necessary, these per- 
sons addressed each other in the plural, as if to dull the edge of 
personal communication by circumlocution. This device has al- 
ready been noted among more northerly tribes. Some restraint or 
shame, though of a milder degree, was observed also toward the 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 589 


father-in-law ; and—as among the Yana—between brother and sis- 
ter. ‘The eastern Mono knew nothing of these customs. 

The rough Yokuts type of pottery seems to have been made by the 
western Mono but its precise range among them is unknown. 
Their basketry agreed with that of the Yokuts in forms, technique, 
and materials. A diagonally twined cap from the eastern Mono is 
shown in Plate 55, d. 

The southern Yokuts report that the Mono cremated their dead; 
but it is not clear to what. subdivision this statement refers. The 
eastern Mono about Bishop buried. 

The mourning anniversary of south and central California was 
probably made by the western Mono. The eastern Mono burned 
considerable property over the graves of dead chiefs and possibly 
of other people, too; and saved their remaining belongings in or- 
der to destroy them a year later. This is an echo of the standard 
mourning anniversary. 

The ritual number of the eastern Mono was four, 


Tur Koso or PANAMINT. 
CONNECTIONS. 


With the Koso (also called Kosho, Panamint, Shikaviyam, Sikaium, 
Shikaich, Kaich, Kwiits, Sosoni, and Shoshone) a new division of 
the Plateau Shoshoneans is entered—the Shoshoni-Comanche. This 
group, which keeps apart the Mono-Bannock and the Ute-Cheme- 
huevi (Fig. 52), stretches in a tenuous band—of which the Koso 
form one end at the base of the Sierra Nevada—through the most 
desert part of California, across central and northeastern Nevada, 
thence across the region of the Utah-Idaho boundary into Wyoming, 
over the Continental Divide of the Rockies to the headwaters of the 
Platte; and, as if this were insufficient, one part, and the most 
famous, of the division, the Comanche, had pushed southeastward 
through Colorado far into Texas. 


- HABITAT AND POPULATION. 


The territory of the westernmost member of this group, our Koso, 
who form as it were the head of a serpent that curves across the 
map for 1,500 miles, is one of the largest of any Californian people. 
It was also perhaps the most thinly populated, and one of the least 
defined. If there were boundaries, they are not known. To the 
west the crest of the Sierra has been assumed as the limit of the 
Koso toward the Tiibatulabal. On the north were the eastern Mono 
of Owens River. Owens Lake, it seems, should go with the stream 
that it receives; and perhaps Koso territory only began east or south 
of the sheet ; but the available data make the inhabitants of its shores 


590 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY - [BuLn, 78 


‘“ Shoshones ” and not “ Paiutes.” On the south the Kawaiisu and 
Chemehuevi ranged over a similarly barren habitat, and there is so 
little exact knowledge of ethnic relations that the map has had to be 
made almost at random. The boundaries in this desert were cer- 
tainly not straight lines, but for the present there is no recourse but 
to draw them. | 

The fact is that this region was habitable only in spots, in oases, 
if we can so call a spring or a short trickle down a rocky canyon. 
Between these minute patches in or at the foot of mountains were 
wide stretches of stony ranges, equally barren valleys, and alkaline - 
flats. All through California it is the inhabited sites that are sig- 
nificant in the life of the Indians, rather than the territories; and. 
boundaries are of least consequence of all. In the unchanging desert 
this condition applies with tenfold force; but ignorance prevents a 
distributional description that would be adequate. 

It is only known that at least four successive ranges, with the 
intervening valleys, were the portion of this people—the Coso, 
Argus, Panamint, and Funeral Mountains, with Coso, Panamuint, 
and Death Valleys. Thirty years ago they actually lived at four 
spots in this area—on Cottonwood Creek, in the northwestern arm 
of Death Valley; south of Bennett Mills on the eastern side of the 
Panamint Mountains, in another canyon leading into Death Valley; 
near Hot Springs, at the mouth of Hall Creek into Panamint Val- 
ley; and northwest from these locations, on the west side of Saline 
Valley, near Hunter Creek at the foot of the Inyo Mountains. 

It is not clear whether the terms “ Coso” and “ Panamint ” were 
first used geographically or ethnically. The latter is the most 
common American designation of the group, and would be prefer- 
able to Koso except that, in the form Vanyume, it has also been 
applied to a Serrano group. 

KXoso population was of the meagerest. It is exceedingly doubtful 
whether the country would have supported as many as 500 souls; 
and there may have been fewer. In 1883 an estimate was 150; in 
1891, less than 100; a recent one, between 100 and 150. The Koso 
are not sufficiently differentiated from adjoining groups in the popu- 
lar American mind to make ordinary census figures worth much. 


MANUFACTURES. 


The Koso must have lived a very different life from the San Joa- 
quin Valley tribes; but they share many implements with the Yokuts, 
through intercourse of both with the Tiibatulabal; and it can not be 
doubted that ideas and practices were also carried back and forth. 

The ceremonial skirt of strings of eagle down is one such evidence. 
Whether this traveled from west to east or the reverse, it is almost 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 56 





MOHAVE HOUSE INTERIOR, LOOKING IN FROM 
DOOR 





KOSO SWEAT HOUSE 





BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BUC ENG Sas SAG EeoG 





PARTS OF QUILL HEADBANDS 


From above, down: Ixoso, Luisefio, Miwok, Miwok 


Pass 0 


fe oe 
ie ay 


Aria 


$s ‘ G6 J 
_ As toe 7 
mee re i Ane er h 





KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 591 


certain to have transported with it some religious associations. 
(Pl. 42.) 

Flat feather bands are of the type of the yellow-hammer orna- 
ments so characteristic of the whole cis-Sierra region, but their de- 
tailed form, as revealed in total length, inaccuracy of stringing, and 
proportion of feather to quill, allies them 
more particularly to the corresponding article 
of the Luiseno and other southern Cali- 
fornians. (PI. 58.) 

Baskets, again, are of Yokuts rather than 
southern eines, The plate or shallow 
bowl, it is true, is coiled; but there is a conical 
carrying basket, and it is twined. The 
pitched water basket is indispensable to a 
potless desert people. The carrying cap was 
worn by women. It was coiled. The founda- 
tion for coiled ware is a bundle of L’picampes 
grass stems containing a single woody rod; 
the sewing is strands of willow, and black 
patterns are made with the horns of A/artynia 
pods, or Scirpus bulrush roots soaked in ashes. 
For red, tree yucca root is used. Twined ves- 
sels are of strands of willow or sumac on 
shoots of the same. The patterns are also in 
Martynia, or if red, of tree yucca root. 

The carrying net is of southern California 
type (Mg. 53), but without the convenient 
loops of the Cahuilla form (Fig. 59). 

Earth-covered sweat houses were used reg- 
ularly, at least by some men. They were 
large enough to stand up in. The soil was 
heaped over a layer of “ arrowweed,” Pluchea 
sericea. (PI. 56.) 

The bow is of juniper, short, and sinew- 
backed. The string is sinew, or A pocynum, 





: Fig. 58.—Carrying net. 
wild hemp, the usual cordage material. The Koso (Panamint) of 
arrow is of willow, or of Phragmites cane; SS OSC AL CRBE, 


59.) 
the latter has a long point of greasewood. 


The cane arrow is heated in the groove of a stone straightener of 
Yokuts-Cahuilla type, then seized in the teeth and the ends bent. 


SUBSISTENCE. 


The most important food in the oakless country was the Nevada 
pine nut, from Pinus monophylla. Seeds were gathered by beating 





3625°—25 39 


592, BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 


as by the more favored Californian tribes. Ovryzopsis, the desert 
sand grass, perhaps furnished the most abundant supply. Seeds 
of evening primroses, of /'phedra, and of the devil’s pincushion 
cactus, were also available. Most of these were ground and then 
parched with coals in a shallow basket. The mesquite bean, Proso- 
pis, was pounded in wooden mortars; the stalks of the common 
reed, Phragmites, were treated similarly and cakes of the flour 
toasted. 

The “mescal” of the Southwest and southernmost California 
hardly penetrates the Koso country, but the tree yucca bud affords 
a substitute, which has the advantage of being edible after roast- 
ing on an open fire, whereas the agave butt or stalk requires pro- 
longed steam cooking in an earth-covered pit. 

Prickly pear joints, however, are treated by the Koso in this 
manner, and can then be kept indefinitely, or are sun dried and 
boiled when wanted. The thorns are first rubbed off. 

The leaves and shoots of several varieties of crucifers are eaten. 

In the fertile parts of California clover and other greens are 
mostly eaten raw, but the desert vegetation requires repeated boil- 
ing, washing, and squeezing to remove the bitter and perhaps dele- 
terious salts. 

Animal food is only occasionally obtainable. Rabbits, jack rab- 
bits, rats, and lizards, with some birds, furnish the bulk. Mountain 
sheep take the place of deer as the chief big game. On the shores 
of Owens Lake countless grubs of a fly were scooped out of the 
shallow water and dried for food. 


Cuapter 41. 
THE CHEMEHUEVIL. 


Affiliations, 598; habitat, 598; population, 595; names and divisions, 595; war 
and peace, 596; culture, 596; arts, 597; beliefs, 598; ritual, 599. 


AFFILIATIONS. 


With the Chemehuevi we encounter the third and last of the 
Shoshonean Plateau divisions, composed of this people, the Kawaiisu, 
the Southern or true Paiute, and the Ute, all speaking dialects of re- 
markable uniformity, considering the extent of territory covered 
by them. 

In fact, the Chemehuevi are nothing but Southern Paiutes, and all 
their bands have at one time or another been designated as Paiutes, 
Payuchis, and the like. 

Conversely, the term Chemehuevi has been applied to several more 
eastern bands, in Nevada and Arizona, on whom custom has now 
settled the name Paiute. The Mohave and other Yuman tribes 
follow this nomenclature consistently: Chemehuevi is their generic 
term for Paiute. Thus that remarkable pioneer Garcés, who in 1776 
entered Shoshonean territory from the Mohave and with Mohave 
guides, speaks not only of the Chemegué and Chemeguaba—our 
Chemehuevi—but of the Chemegué Cuajaéla and Chemegué Sevinta, 
that is, the Parantth Paiute of Muddy River in Nevada and the 
Shivwits Paiute of Shivwits Plateau in Arizona, the Kohoalcha and 
Sivvinta of the Mohave. In fact, the name Chemehuevi, whose 
etymology is uncertain, would seem to be of Mohave or at least 
Yuman origin. 

At the same time, the appellation is a convenient one to distinguish 
the Southern Paiute of California from their brethren of Nevada, 
Arizona, and Utah; and it will be used here in this geographical 
rather than in any essential ethnif sense. 


HABITAT. 


The Chemehuevi are one of the very few Californian groups that 
have partly altered their location in the historic period, and that 
without pressure from the white man. Their shifts emanated in 


593 


594 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY Buia. 78 


disturbances of the still more mobile and more compact Yuman 
tribes on whom they border. : 

Their old territory lay off the lower Colorado River westward. 
It commenced in the Kingston Range, south of Death Valley, where 
they met the Koso, and stretched southward through the Providence 
Mountains and other stony and sandy wastes, to about the boundary 
of Riverside and Imperial Counties. Roughly, this is the eastern 
half of the Mohave Desert. Somewhere along the middle of the 
southern half of this desert an ill-defined line must have run between 
the Chemehuevi and the Serrano divisions farther west. The oasis 
of ‘Twenty-nine Palms was Serrano. So was the Mohave Desert to 
beyond Daggett, and probably to its sink. Somewhat nearer this 
sink, however, cal to the Providence Mountains, Garcés found a 
Chemehuevi rancheria. North of the Serrano range, and south of 
that of the Koso, lies a stretch that if anything is more arid still 
than the neighboring ones—northwestern San Bernardino County. 
This seems to have formed a westward arm of Chemehuevi terri- 
tory—if not permanently inhabited, at least visited and owned. 
True, there is no specific record of any of their bands being in this 
area, now or formerly. But it has not been claimed for either 
the Serrano or Koso; and to the west, where the region begins to 
rise toward the southern Sierra Nevada, it meets the land of the 
Kawalisu, whose ey shows them to be a Chemehuevi offshoot. 
In the ear of knowledge the inherent probability would favor 
continuity of the territories of the two allied groups; and the Mohave 
speak of them as in contact. Intrinsically, it 1s of ttle import who 
exercised sovereignty in this tract: to all purposes it was empty. 
But it is extensive enough to loom large on the map, and in more 
favored regions three or fou stocks like Esselen, Wiyot, Yurok, and 
Chimariko could be put into an equal area. 

In 1776 there were no Chemehuevi on the Colorado re below 
Eldorado Canyon. The entire California frontage on this stream 
was in Yuman possession. Subsequently, however, the Mohave and 
Yuma drove the remnants of the Halchidhoma and Kohuana east- 
ward; and the Chemehuevi, who were intimate with the victors, 
began to settle on the stream. According to the Mohave, they them- 
selves brought the Chemehuevi to Cottonwood Island, where the two 
nations lived side by side, to Chemghuevi Valley, and to other points, 
At all events, when the Americans came, three-quarters of a century 
after the Spanish priest, they found the Chemehuevi on Cottonwood 
Island as well as in the valley that bears their name, and on both 
the Arizona and California sides, apparently. 

About 1867 war broke out between the old friends. The Cheme- 
huevi acquitted themselves well, according to the Mohave; but 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 595 


they must have been heavily outnumbered. At any rate, they fled 
from Mohave proximity to remoter spots in the desert. After a 
time they returned, and to-day there are even some individuals 
among the Mohave. A small group, however, remained at their 
asylum at Twenty-nine Palms, far to the southwest; and in recent 
years some members of this band have drifted still farther, across 
the San Bernardino range, to Cabezon in Cahuilla territory. 


POPULATION. 


The Chemehuevi area is the largest in California occupied by a 
people of uniform dialect; but it is also easily one of the most 
worthless, and was certainly among the two or three most thinly 
populated. A thousand inhabitants is a most liberal estimate. 

The last Federal census reports 350 Chemehuevi in all, 260 of them 
in California. The decrease since aboriginal times has not been 
heavy in regions so empty and remote as this. A reduction by one- 
half or two-thirds is all that can be allowed; which would make the 
primitive population something between 500 and 800. 


NAMES AND DIVISIONS. . 


The Chemehuevi and Southern Paiute name for themselves is only 
Niiwii, “ people,” corresponding to Mono and Northern Paiute 
Niimii. The Chemehuevi proper are sometimes called by their kins- 
men: Tantawats or Tantiiwach, “southerners,” an appropriate 
enough term; and they accept the designation; but it has local, not 
tribal reference. The various Serrano groups cal] them Yuakayam. 
The Yuma are said to name them Mat-hatevach, “ northerners,” 
and the Pima: Ahalakat, “small bows.” Tribes or local divisions 
that may fairly be included among the Chemehuevi are the follow- 
ing: 

Mokwats, at the Kingston Mountains. 

Yagats, at Amargosa. 

Hokwaits, in Ivanpah Valley. 

Tiimpisagavatsits or Timpashauwagotsits, in the Providence Mountains. 

Kauyaichits. 

Moviats, on Cottonwood Island in the Colorado River. 

Shivawach or Shivawats in the Chemehuevi Valley; it is not certain whether 
this is the name of a band or of a locality. 

There must have been others farther west and south. 

The Chemehuevi name their neighbors as follows: The Koso-Panamint, 
Kwiits or Panumits; the Serrano proper, Maringits; the Vanyume Serrano, 
Pitanta; the Kitanemuk Serrano, Nawiyat; the Kawaiisu, Hiniima or 
Hinienima; the Cahuilla, Kwitanemum; the Hopi. Mukwi or Mokwits. Yuman 
tribes are: the Mohave. Aiat; the Walapai, Huvarepats; the Havasupai, 
Pashaverats; for the Yuma there seems to be only the Mohave term 
“ Kwichyana.” The Yokuts were called Saiempive. 


596 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


Place names are: Niivant, Charleston Peak in Nevada, the most famous 
place in the mythology of both the Chemehuevi and the western bands of the 
Southern Paiute; Muvi, Eldorado Canyon (compare Moviats) ; Wianekat, Cot- 
tonwood Island; Pa’ash, Piute Springs, the Mohave Ahakuvilya, where there 
are petroglyphs; Toyagaba, near by; and Aipava, farther west on the trail 
to Mohave River. 

WAR AND PEACE. 


The international relations of the Chemehuevi were determined 
in general, and probably for a long time, by a series of interconnected 
amities and enmities that threw the tribes of southern California, 
southern Nevada, and western Arizona into two great alignments 
that ran counter to their origins as well as their mode of life. On 
one side were the Chemehuevi, Southern Paiute, Mohave, Yuma, 
Kamia, Yavapai, and Apache. These were generally friendly to 
the less enterprising and passive northern Serrano of the desert, and, 
so far as they knew them, to the Yokuts, the Tiibatulabal, the 
Chumash, and perhaps the Gabrielino. On the other side were the 
Hopi; the Pima and most of the Papago; of Yuman: tribes, the 
Havasupai, Walapai, Maricopa, Halchidhoma, Kohuana, Halyik- 
wamai, Cocopa, Diegueno, and the Cufeil or northernmost Baja Cali- 
fornians; of southern California Shoshoneans, the Serrano proper, 
the Cahuilla, and possibly the Luiseno. There was nothing like a 
confederation or even formal alliance among the tribes of either 
party. Rather, each had its enemies of long standing, and therefore 
joined hands with their foes, until an irregular but far-stretching 
and interlocking line-up worked itself out. Often tribes here 
grouped as on the same side had their temporary conflicts, or even 
a traditional hatred. But, on the whole, they divided as here in- 
dicated, as Garcés pictured the situation in the eighteenth century, 
as later reports of narrower outlook confirm, and as the recollec- 
tions of the modern Mohave corroborate. Small, scattered, or timid 
tribes, like the Chemehuevi, the Hopi, the Havasupai, and the vari- 
ous Serrano divisions, were less involved in open war and more in- 
clined to abiding suspicions and occasional conflicts, than aggres- 
sive, enterprising, or tenacious nations of numbers or solidarity such 
as the Apache, Pima, and Mohave; but their outward relations were 
largely predetermined by the general scheme. 

This mere list of tribal friends and foes, especially when con- 
ceptualized on the map, lifts one with a bound out of the peasant- 
like, localized, and murkily dim world knowledge of the true Cal- 
fornians into a freer atmosphere of wide and bold horizons. 


CULTURE, 


The groundwork of Chemehuevi culture was the Shoshonean one of 
the Great Basin, of the participants in which they were a member 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLE TING/8." PEATE 59 





PATWIN YELLOW-HAMMER QUILL HEADBAND; MOHAVE FISH SCOOP; CHEMEHUEVI BASKET 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLE TING 7 SanPit Arita 





HUPA WOMAN POUNDING ACORNS, 
HER LEGS FOEDINGRIHE*BASK Ea 
MORTAR 





INTERIOR OF SERRANO OR PASS CAHUILLA 
SWEAT HOUSE 


60 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 597 


physiographically as well as in speech and origin. This interior 
plateau civilization was largely composed of elements ultimately 
common to itself and the central Californian civilization. But spe- 
cific Californian influences reached the Chemehuevi only to a limited 
extent. The civilization of the Pueblos also did not affect them 
directly. Their life was, however, strongly colored by contact with 
the quasi-Southwestern Yumans—in its material aspects more by 
the unsettled tribes, such as the Walapai; in religion especially by 
the Mohave. 
ARTS. 


Like the Southern Paiute, the Chemehuevi now and then farmed 
small patches where they could. In the main, they lived on what 
their bare habitat provided—game, rabbits, rats, lizards, perhaps 
other reptiles, seeds, mescal, and the like. 

Also in imitation of the Mohave, they now and then, especially since 
settled along the river, ventured to bake a few pots. But such 
attempts were sporadic, and the Chemehuevi must in justice be 
classed as a tribe that made baskets and not pottery. 

Their basketry suggests, in its coiling, the San Joaquin Valley 
and the ware of the Shoshoneans adjacent to this valley, as much as 
southern California. This isin part due to their presumably enforced 
use of woody willow or other fibers for the sewing, in place of the 
reedy Juncus of the Cahuilla and Luisefo; in part to their manu- 
facture of vessels with constricted neck—not well definedly flat- 
shouldered as among the Yokuts, but of an approximating and 
rounded shape that is clearly due to the same influence. Their 
twined basketry is also foreign in spirit to that of southern Cali- 
fornia. Caps, triangular trays, and close-woven carrying baskets in 
diagonal twining, with an inclination to paint designs on instead of 
working them in, are pure Plateau types. (Pls. 59, 78, a.) The 
water basket was undoubtedly also used, but seems not to have been 
preserved. 

The bow is distinctly shorter than the Mohave self-bow, with re- 
curved ends. The back is painted, the middle wrapped, and the old 
game and fighting weapon was evidently sinew-backed, although no 
specimens seem to have survived. The arrow is at least sometimes 
of cane, foreshafted, and flint tipped with a small point. It differs 
entirely from the jointless Pluchea arrow of the Mohave, that lacks 
both foreshaft and stone head. 

Women’s dice were of gum-filled and shell-inlaid nut shells (Fig. 
54), similar to those of the southern Yokuts. 

Gareés found the Chemehuevi, at some springs in the desert west 
of Chemehuevi Valley, wearing “Apache” moccasins, skin shirts, 
perhaps of antelope or mountain sheep, and feathered caps. This 


598 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


is the dress of the nomadic Southwestern or Plateau Shoshonean 
tribes, and unconnected with that of the southern or central Cali- 
fornians or the Mohave, although the Serrano tell of having worn 
a similar costume. 

The Mohave, however, declare the Chemehuevi men to have 
worn their hair in the peculiar style characteristic of themselves and 
the Yuma. 

Houses need have been little else than shelters against the sun 
and wind. ‘The sweat house has not been reported. Open-air storage 
baskets are also not mentioned; most of the Chemehuevi habitat 
would furnish more safe and dry rock crevices than food to keep 


in them. 
BELIEFS. 


The Chemehuevi origin myth is free from southern Californian 
or Southwestern suggestions. It does recall the central Californian 
account of the creation, but evidently only 
in so far as it rests upon a Plateau set 
of conceptions, and these in turn approxi- 
mate those current in California. There 
is little that is common with the mythology 
of the Yokuts, the nearest of the central 
et tee Californians. 

Fra, OF aN tek dice of The heroes are Coyote and his elder 

. brother Puma—the Chemehuevi equivalent 
of the Wolf of the northern Plateau—who build a house on Charles- 
ton Peak while the world is still covered with water. When the 
earth has become dry through the instrumentality of an old woman 
in the west, Hawichyepam Maapuch, Coyote, failing to find men, 
marries a louse, from whose eggs spring many tribes. The 
Chemehuevi themselves, however, the Mohave, and other south- 
erners come from Coyote’s own voidings. They are taught to eat 
game by being given parts of a person, a human example of animal 
food. Puma is killed by eastern enemies, who, unwinding a power- 
ful object that he has made, bring on the first and an unbroken 
night. Coyote mourns, but wishes daylight to burn his brother’s 
belongings. He restores it when he shoots the yellow-hammer. 
After the completion of the funerary rites—the instituting ones for 
the world—Coyote recovers his brother’s scalp from the foes who 
are dancing before it and escapes their pursuit. 

Mohave traces are visible: the great sacred mountain, the build- 
ing of an abode, the actionless but all-powerful old woman, the death 
of the older brother, the mourning for him. But they are elements 
which tinge rather than shape the story. 





KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 599 
RE CLA, 


Chemehuevi rituals have been influenced by the Mohave. They 
may have been equally affected by the religion of other peoples of the 
region, but these are too little known to estimate. The cremation of 
the property of the dead, and, no doubt, of added belongings, as a 
definite rite—especially notable because the body itself was buried 
and not cremated—extends, it is true, over a wide area. But the fact 
that the Kaibab Paiute, in the far-away tract where westernmost 
Arizona and Utah conjoin, possess a long series of mourning songs 
in the Mohave language, establishes probability that the nearer and 
intimate Chemehuevi also derived their funeral music, and with it 
no doubt a large part of the associated practices, from the same 
source. 

Incidentally, the religious dominance of the Mohave over a vast 
region is clear. The Dieguefo myths tell of the sacred Mohave 
Mountain Avikwame; some of their song cycles are Mohave in words 
as well as melody and name; and tribes so advanced, self-centered, 
and remote as the Zuni perform dances that they attribute to the Mo- 
have and whose songs are possibly derived from a Mohave stimulus. 

The Chemehuevi sing four cycles—Salt, Deer, Mountain Sheep, 
and Shamans’ or Doctoring—all of which, in effect, are sung by the 
Mohave also, though to these people they constitute only a small 
fraction of a much larger number of different kinds of singings. It 
seems that each of these song cycles refers to a story, which may 
or may not be related in the intermissions; and that this narrative 
is believed to have been dreamed—that is, actually experienced in a 
spirit condition—but. that the presentation of the dream takes an 
essentially mythological form. Whether, as with the Mohave, danc- 
ing or other rudimentary ritual may accompany the singine— 
though only as a subsidiary feature, the songs remaining the kernel 
and essence of the complex—is not known as regards the Chemehuev1. 

It is possible that these Chemehuevi-Mohave resemblances lie as 
much in an equivalation made by the Indians as in any similarity 
of the ceremonies themselves. When the Zuni perform what they 
call the Mohave dance it is actually a purely Zuni ritual in every par- 
ticular, whatever its origin; but both tribes would nevertheless be 
likely to assert their corresponding rituals to be the same. It may 
be that analogous though slighter differences exist between Cheme- 
huevi and Mohave ceremonies, which the native consciousness oblit- 
erates, and which therefore will become revealed only when the rites 
are concretely known in some detail. But this theoretical possibil- 
ity is unlikely to amount to more than a partial qualification, so far 
as Chemehuevi similarities to the Mohave are concerned; for all the 





600 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULL. 78 


specific bits of knowledge that are available point to specific Mohave 
resemblances. 

Thus, the Chemehuevi “ dream ” and tell and sing of the mountain 
Niivant as the Mohave do of Avikwame. They see there Coyote and 
Puma and Yunakat, the personification of food. The shamans ac- 
quire their songs and powers from these or other mythological be- 


ings at Ntivant. A man “dreams,” for instance, of the time when ~ 


the earth was still wet from the primeval flood and without moun- 
tains, when the cane sprang up and Older Brother Puma instructed 
him in detail how to make each part of bow and arrow. This exper- 
ience is the source of the “dreamer’s” faculty to flake arrowheads. 
The assumptions, the imphed concepts, the whole setting as well as 
many of the particulars in this instance, are characteristically Mo- 
have, | 


eee 


CHaprer 42, 


THE KAWAIISU AND TUBATULABAL. 


THE KAwatrsu: Neighbors, 601; territory and designations, 602; society, 608; 
religious practices, 603; industries, 604. THE TUBATULABAL: Origin and 
movements, 605; geography, 606; arts, 608; society, 608; religion, 609. 
THE BANKALACHI, 610. THE GIAMINA, 610. 


THe KAwatrlisv. 
NEIGHBORS. 


An offshoot of no great antiquity, apparently, from the Cheme- 
huevi, the Kawaiisu have become differentiated from the parent body 
as a result of a new setting. They hved in the Tehachapi Moun- 
tains, and therefore half across the watershed that separates the 
ereat valley of California from the undrained Great Basin. Be- 
hind them remained the westernmost of the Chemehuevi; and nomi- 
nally the two bodies were in contiguity. Actually, however, the 
Chemehuevi tract in question was perhaps the least frequented of all 
the barren lands of that people; and the Kawaiisu had more to gain 
by clinging to the timbered and watered slopes of their mountains 
than by wandering among the rare vegetation and dry soda lakes of 
the desert. Intercourse between the two groups was therefore prob- 
ably not specially active. 

On the other side of the crest, however, the Kawaiisu were pressed 
close against a variety of neighbors. In the plains below them were 
the Yauelmani, and beyond them other Yokuts tribes. Relations 
with these seem to have been friendly, and intermarriages took place. 

On both sides were Shoshoneans, but of quite distinct history and 
speech ; to the north the Tiibatulabal of Kern River, to the south the 
Serrano Kitanemuk; and a journey of less than a day led into Chu- 
mash territory. 

It was inevitable, accordingly, that the Kawaiisu should be essen- 
tially Californian in culture, and that their speech should diverge 
from its original form. In all fundamentals it is pure Ute-Cheme- 
huevi, but superficially, especially in its pronunciation, it 1s consid- 
erably changed. With such close and numerous alien associations as 
the Kawaiisu were subject to, this degree of alteration might be at- 
tained in a very few centuries, possibly in a few generations. 

. 601 


602 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 
TERRITORY AND DESIGNATIONS. 


Tehachapi Pass, a famous Agua Caliente or hot spring in the 
vicinity, Walker Basin, and probably some southern affluents of 
Kern River were in Kawaiisu possession. They owned also the east- 
ward drier slope of the same mountains, and perhaps some of the 
desert beyond; but the limits of their extension in this direction are 
conjectural. 


Tehachapi has its designation from a local name, which has been taken over 
by the Yokuts as Tahichpi-u. The hot springs were called Hihinkiava by the 
Kitanemuk; Tumoyo or Shatnau ilak by the Yokuts. Walker Basin, or prob- 
ably the principal village in it, was Yutp or Yitpe. At or near Havilah were 
Wiwayuk and Antitap, Kitanemuk and Tiibatulabal names of possibly the same 
locality ; it may have belonged to the latter people or to the Kawaiisu, and 
certainly was near their boundary. 

The origin of the name Kawaiisu is not known. The Yokuts call them thus, 
or by dialectic variants. The Tiibatulabal say Kawishm. The Mohave desig- 
nation, Kuvahya, may be from the same stem; Garcés, the discoverer of the 
Kawaiisu, writes it Cobaji, and says that the Yokuts call them Colteche. The 
Chemehuevi designate them Hiniima or Hinienima. The Kitanemuk and 
Vanyume Serrano call them Agutushyam, Agudutsyam, or Akutusyam. Their 
own name for themselves is merely Nuwu or Nuwuwu, “ people” ; it has also 
been written Newooah. Locally, Americans usually speak of them as the 
Tehachapi or Caliente Indians. 

There were Kawaiisu or Chemehuevi at Victorville on the upper Mohave 
River some years ago who asserted that this was part of their ancient terri- 
tory, and that they ranged from there west along the base of the Sierra Madre. 
Most of them were born in the vicinity of Tehachapi, but they comprised indi- 
viduals from Sheep and Deadman Creeks, halfway, on the north side of the 
mountains, between the two railroad lines that cross the Mohave Desert. If 
these claims prove correct, a considerable part of the desert region that has 
been attributed to the Serrano must be assigned to the Kawaiisu instead. 

The same little group asserted that the southern end of the Panamint Moun- 
tains—that is, the general range of which the Panamint Mountains of our 
maps are part—belonged to their own people, only the northern segments of the 
chain being “Shoshone” or Koso. They may, however, include with “ their 
own people” the Chemehuevi. 

There is in these statements a possible explanation of a puzzling vacillation 
in the use of the name Panamint. The people of what we call the Panamint 
Mountains are those here named the Koso, of Shoshoni-Comanche affiliations. 
The Mohave, and with them the explorer Garcés, apply the name, in the 
form Vanyume or Beneme, to the Mohave Desert Serrano, who are Shoshoneans 
of quite a different branch. Garcés clearly recognizes them as speaking a 
southern Californian idiom. The Mohave, however, are not consistent, and 
sometimes place the Vanyume at Tehachapi or Tejon. If the Kawaiisu of 
Tehachapi, or a division of them, extended on the one hand to the upper Mohave 
River and on the other to the southern spurs of the Panamints, the applica- 
tion of the name Vanyume-Panamint to people as far separated as these two 
outlying localities begins to show some reason. This desert region is little 
known to the ethnologist and would prove a fascinating field for him, and this 
instance of apparent confusion as to the whole basis of ethnic conditions illus- 
trates how urgently knowledge is needed. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 603 


For modern times the census, and for the older period even esti- 
mates, fail us in regard to the Kawaiisu. There seem to be nearly 
150 of them; and the aboriginal population may have been 500. 


SOCIETY. 


- 


The Kawaiisu lack the organization of society on a basis of totemic 
moieties which is so characteristic of the Miwok and most of the 
Yokuts. As the eastern Mono and even the Kern River people agree 
with them in doing without this dual plan, it is clear that the system 
is essentially a Californian one and, far from being in any sense a 
trait of life in the Great Basin, has scarcely succeeded in reaching 
the crest of the Sierra. Even traces of the moiety scheme are want- 
ing with the Kawaiisu. Eagles and other birds are indeed kept in 
captivity; but they are without a personal or taboo relation to the 
owner, are not inherited, and in fact are released after having been 
plucked twice. ¢ 

The mother-in-law taboo is another Yokuts institution that the 
Kawalisu lack, no doubt under Plateau or southern California in- 
fluence. Children are usually named after relatives. [Kinship desig- 
nations are full of reciprocal terms; an old woman will call her 
daughter’s boy by the same word that he apphes to her, plus a 
diminutive suffix. This 1s a habit widely spread among the Plateau 
Shoshoneans. Another device of much greater restriction geo- 
graphically is the custom of altering a term of kinship or affinity 
when the connecting relative has died, as we might speak of an ex- 
son-in-law. The Tiibatulabal and Yokuts share this practice with 
the Kawalisu. 

Chieftainship is said to be much less a matter of descent than 
among the Yokuts and to depend almost wholly and directly on the 
possession of wealth. If the son succeeded the father it was be- 
cause he too had accumulated property rather than because of his 
parentage. As all a man’s belongings were destroyed at his funeral 
the prospects of a chief’s son being elevated to his father’s place did 
not so greatly tower above those of other members of the community. 
In fact the Kawatisu say outright that any rich man became a chief. 


RELIGIOUS PRACTICES. 


The inevitable mourning ceremony was practiced, but we know 
too little of it to relate it specifically to the type of rite prevalent 
among this or that group of people. As the use of crude representa- 
tions of the dead occurs among nations to the north as well as to 
the south of Kawaiisu, the practice might be looked for among them, 
but it has not been reported. Property seems to have been de- 


604 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY fBuun. 78 


stroyed at the funeral itself rather than at the subsequent com- 
memoration. This fact, if corroborated, indicates Chemehuevi and 
Mohave influences rather than central Californian ones in this set 
of customs. 

On the other hand, a washing of the participants at the end of 
the ceremony points northward; but the connection is weakened by 
the fact that the Kawalisu washed themselves, the Yokuts and 
Miwok each other according to moiety affiliations. The commemora- 
tive rites are said to have been performed for several nights, a year 
or two after a death. The impression given is that the ceremony 
was made for one particular person of distinction by one of his close 
relatives, who bore the cost of entertainment of visitors. This 
suggests the Mohave practice of holding a commemorative rite only 
for people of prominence. On the other hand, the difference from 
the more communal form of anniversary generally reported from 
central California is not so great as might appear. Thus among 
the Yokuts, while everyone participated and mourned his dead of 
the year, the initiative and direction of the affair, as well as the bulk 
of the entertaining, rested upon one person, who undertook to make 
the ceremony in honor of one of his relatives of rank or importance. 
There is no mention of every mourner appearing with images of his 
kin; and it is likely that this representation was confined to the one 
deceased individual, or at most to the few persons for whom the chief 
entrepreneur undertook the performance. Custom may well have 
varied from tribe to tribe, in this point of the degree of association 
of the commemorative ceremony respectively with individuals or the 
community; but at bottom the divergences may have been differences 
of emphasis more than absolute distinctions. 

As Jimson weed is employed for religious purposes both by the 
Yokuts and the southern Californians, the Kawaiisu might be ex- 
pected to use it also; and they do. It is associated with puberty rites; 
but, contrary to both Yokuts and Luisefio practice, seems to be 
administered as regularly to girls as to boys. There are suggestions 
of an approximation to shamanistic experiences, and of the initiate 
standing in a definite relation to his vision for his adult life. One 
girl, for instance, saw and was frightened by the grizzly bear while 
under the influence of the drug. He did not address her; but thence- 
forth she was forbidden bear meat. 

As to Kawaiisu shamanism, nothing is on record, except that they 
had powerful rain doctors. Thus, one member of the profession, 
while lying on a summer’s day with a wound in his neck—perhaps 
received from an avenging relative of some one recently dead— 
made a light rain to ease his pain and reduce the inflammation. 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 605 
INDUSTRIES. 


The manufactures and industries of the Kawaiisu are scarcely 
known. There is as yet no report that they made pottery of the 
San Joaquin Valley type. Their basketry is of Yokuts-Tiibatulabal- 
Koso type rather than southern Californian, and excellently made. 
‘Their water bottle is in diagonal twining, round bottomed, and 
pitched. (PI. 55, e.) 


Tre TtparuLABAL. 


ORIGIN AND MOVEMENTS. 


With the Kawatisu, the survey of the Plateau Shoshoneans in 
California is completed. We come now to an entirely distinct 
branch of the family—that of Kern River. There is only one 
people included in this divergent stem, the Tiibatulabal. Looking 
downstream, they face the utterly alien Yokuts. On their left are 
the Kawaisu, on their right the Mono, at their back the Koso. 
They are thus nearly surrounded by members of all three divisions 
of the great Plateau branch. 

From what little knowledge is available, the speech of the Tiibatu- 
labal is, however, not more similar to the Plateau idioms than to the 
Shoshonean idioms of southern California. A long separate history 
is thus indicated for them; and it is hard to imagine a more favor- 
able location for such continued aloofness than the one they now 
occupy—a clean-cut valley in a high mountain region; within the 
true California of nature and yet at its edge; outside the wide 
Shoshonean plateau but at the same time bordering upon it. Even 
the element of contact with totally strange peoples is given—a 
factor that would at once stimulate, accelerate, and tend to perpetuate 
novelties of speech formation, and thus lead to the condition of this 
little people ranking coordinate with much greater divisions, in the 
classification of the family to which they jointly appertain. 

The situation of the Tibatulabal thus partly accounts for their 
distinctiveness, and renders it unnecessary to assume any extreme 
length of time for their separateness. On the other hand, their 
language is so thoroughly specialized as compared with that of 
their neighbors, the western Mono and the Kawatisu, whose location 
with reference to topography and contact with aliens is similar, 
that it is clear that the Tiibatulabal have lived where they are now, 
or in the immediate vicinity, for a period several times as long as 
these two groups of their kinsmen. 

The Tiibatulabal are the people upon whom in particular has 
been fostered the slander, or the undeserved reputation, of issuing in 
warlike mood from their highland fastness and raiding the sluggish, 





606 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


peaceable Yokuts of the plains, dispossessing these, indeed, until 
the southernmost Yokuts were almost separated from the main body 
to the north. The story even goes on to picture how they would 
have seized the entire Tulare Basin had they not become enervated 
by malaria—somewhat as Greek and Latin civilization perished 
before the same disease, according to a more recent and famous, 
fancy. Even the fact that the Tiibatulabal were all found living in 
the mountains when the white man came is explained: the same 
scourge drove them back to the salubrious hills whence they had 
emerged, and they utilized their conquests only for an annual or 
occasional visit. 

As a matter of fact, the visits took place; but they were the visits 
of guests. The southern Yokuts tribes, both of the plains and of 
the foothills, were generally quite thoroughly friendly, and joined 
one another in their respective territories to such an extent, accord- 
ing to the season of the year, that it is almost impossible to assign 
an exact habitat to any of them. The Tiibatulabal, in spite of their 
separateness of origin and speech, were also in the main on amicable 
terms with these Yokuts tribes; and so came to join them in their 
little migrations. Just as they came down to Bakersfield, to Kern 
Lake, and to White River, probably even to Tejon and San Emigdio, 
the Yokuts, as occasion warranted, ascended the Kern for miles to 
fish, and to its forks, the center of the Tiibatulabal home, to visit. 

The entire little pseudo-history rests neither upon evidence nor 
even native tradition, but is solely an imagination developed from 
a knowledge of the facts that the Tiibatulabal are Shoshonean and 
that eastern tribes are often more aggressive than those of the Pacific 
coast area. 

Of course the amity between Yokuts and Tiibatulabal suffered in- 
termissions. But the Yokuts tribes fell out among each other also, 
now and then; and the relations do not seem to have been different 
in more than moderate measure. 


GEOGRAPHY. 


The land of the Tiibatulabal was the region drained by Kern 
River, down as far as a point about halfway between the forks 
and Bakersfield. The exact spot has not been determined; it was 
not far from the Paleuyami Yokuts settlements Shoko and Altau, 
and a few miles above what the Yokuts call K’ono-ilkin, “ water’s 
fall,” a cascade, or perhaps a stretch of rapids that does not appear 
on our maps but which served as a landmark to the natives. 

The modern Tiibatulabal settlements, and apparently the majority 
of the old villages, were in the vicinity of the forks of Kern, both 
above and below the junction, and apparently more largely on the 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 607 


smaller South Kern. On the map the entire area tributary to both 
branches has been assigned to the Tiibatulabal; but the upper 
reaches, which are little else than two great canyons among vast 
mountains, were assuredly uninhabited, and it is not. even certain 
that the Tiibatulabal laid exclusive claim to their hunting rights. 

Substantially, this Kern River country is a rugged depression be- 
tween the southern end of the main Sierra Nevada proper and a 
secondary parallel range. From this lower range to the west, Tule 
River, and Deer, White, and Poso Creeks flow westward, through 
Yokuts lands, directly into Tulare Lake. Kern River, however, is 
confined to a true southerly course until after it has worked its way 
around the end of the secondary range, when it sweeps westward, 
and finally almost northward, until lost in the tule swamps and 
lakes south of Tulare Lake. At least such was the condition until 
a generation ago: now the lake is nearly gone, and, except in 
times of flood, the volume of Kern River is dissipated in endless 
ditches and over irrigated stretches. The natural course of the 
stream is thus a great semicircle, open to the north: its upper half 
Tiibatulabal, its lower Yokuts. Only at one point did the Tiibatu- 
labal leave their river. In the region of upper Deer Creek a small 
band seems to have had a home among the Yokuts. This group is 
referred to below as the Bankalachi. 


Only a few names of places in Tiibatulabal country can be located, and it is 
not known how many of these were villages. On the South Fork, Cheibti-pan 
was at Roberts, Tiish-pan at Weldon. Yahaua-pan was at the forks; Piliwini- 
pan near Whiskey Flat or Kernville; Wokinapiii-pan farther up the main fork. 
Mount Whitney, ‘‘ where all rivers begin,’ was called Otoavit. Owens Lake, 
on one side of the mountains, was Patsiwat, Bakersfield, on the other, Palun- 
tanakama-pan. 

The Yokuts called the village at the forks Pitnani-u; others, at Kernville, 
Tulonoya, at Keyes, Haukani-u; and at a hot spring above Vaughn, Tumoyo. 
The Tiibatulabal territory is shown in most detail in the Yokuts map. (PI. 47.) 

The name Tiibatulabal is Shoshonean and means “ pine-nut eaters,” but its 
dialectic source is not established. The Tiibatulabal admit the designation, 
but also call themselves, or their speech, Pahkanaptil. The Yokuts sometimes 
translate Tiibatulabal into Wateknasi, from watak, “pine-nut”; but more 
frequently employ Pitanisha, from Pitnaniu, the central village. They also 
say Malda, but this term denotes any Shoshonean. Paligawonop and ‘“ Polok- 
wynah” are unidentified names for the Tiibatulabal. 

They, in turn, name their neighbors as follows: Winanghatal, the western 
Mono of Kaweah River; Yiwinanghal, the eastern Mono or perhaps the Mono 
in general; Witanghatal, the Kitanemuk Serrano. These three names present 
the appearance of being directional terms. The Kawishm are the Kawaiisu, 
the Toloim the Bankalachi, the Amahaba the far-away Mohave. The Yeokuts 
tribes in the valley along lower Kern River are the Molilabal; for the 
Yokuts in the foothills, somewhat distorted forms of their proper names 
are employed, as Witskamin, Paluyam, and Yokol, with perhaps an extension 


3625°—25——40 


608 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


of these terms to wider groups. Thus the “ Yokol” of the Tiibatulabal seem to 
have included also the Gawia, Yaudanchi, and perhaps other tribes. 


The Tiibatulabal of to-day may aggregate 150. Perhaps the 
number is nearer 100. On the ancient population there are no data. 
A thousand seems as reasonable a guess as any other: at least it 
appears ample. 

ARTS, 


The Tiibatulabal are one of the seemingly endless number of 
California tribes whose customs have never been described in any 
detail. Intercourse and intermarriage between them and the Yokuts 
were so frequent that they must have been strongly influenced by 
this much larger nation. 

Their basketry is scarcely distinguishable from that of the south- 
ern Yokuts; it appears to average a little better in fineness. Tree 
yucca root replaced Cercts bark for red patterns. They made pot- 
tery of the same type as the Yokuts. Like these people, they ate 
tobacco mixed with lime. Their houses, or at least one form of 
dwellings, were covered with tule mats. 

It is not certain that they had any form of sweat house: what 
may be remains of such have been reported. Balsas of bundled 
tules, with a keel, a slender prow, and a square stern, were made. 

The dead were buried. 


SOCIETY. 


In their social life they stood more apart. The exogamous 
moieties of the Yokuts were not represented among them. There 
are possible traces of the totemic manifestations that accompany 
this dual organization. Young eagles were caught and reared. 
They were not killed, but were ultimately hberated. The plucking 
of their feathers seems to have been only a minor end of their 
captivity. Other birds, such as condors, crows, hawks, and geese, 
and even young coyotes, were kept as pets; in some cases inherited 
by the son from the father. In mythology the eagle is the chief, 
the coyote his antithesis; one has as associates a variety of birds, 
the other lizards, vermin, and trivial or noxious beasts. 

In some matters Yokuts practices have failed to obtain a foothold, 
or a secure one, among the Kern River people. The parent-in-law 
taboos are not observed, or only by those individuals intimately asso- 
ciated with the Yokuts by intermarriage. This factor, incidentally, 
has introduced a number of Yokuts personal names among the 
Tiibatulabal, who care very little whether an individual’s appellation 
has any meaning as long as it is the name of an ancestor. The desig- 
nation of kindred is almost identical with that of the Kawaiisu, and 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 609 


apparently of the Chemehuevi: the terms used are often quite dif- 
ferent, but their significance is the same. The two groups thus think 
alike as regards relationship. A particular trait shared with the 
Yokuts is the custom of altering the kinship term when the connect- 
ing relative has died; but this has already been seen to be a Kawatisu 
device, and the custom may well have had a Shoshonean origin and 
been borrowed by the Yokuts. 

Chieftainship, on the other hand, resembles the Yokuts rather than 
the Kawalisu institution. The prime requisite is to be the son of a 
tiwimal or chief; the approval of the community and the possession 
of wealth are also factors. The father selects the son who is to re- 
ceive the dignity; if there is no male heir, a daughter succeeds. 
The feeling as regards descent must be strong, since the husband of a 
chieftainess is accorded no official authority, and the title passes to 
her son. 

RELIGION. 


Information fails as to whether the Tiibatulabal practiced the 
southern Yokuts form of Jimson-weed ritual. They did have what 
the Yokuts seem to have lacked: a definite adolescence ceremony for 
girls. It is the old story: among the hill men this simple and per- 
sonal observance stands out conspicuously, while in the more elab- 
orate civilization of the lowlanders it is dwarfed or crowded aside. 

The fact that the Tiibatulabal are said in this ceremony to put 
their girls into a pit and cover them suggests an influence from 
southern California. 

The mourning ceremony is called Anangat, is made primarily for 
a single person of prominence about two years after his death, and as 
among Maidu, Yokuts, and Luiseno, represents him by an image. 
Such a figure is made of bundled tules, and its sex denoted by bead 
necklaces and feathers, or an apron. The figure is burned at day- 
break of the last night of the rites, together with baskets and other 
valuables. 

So far we have substantially the same features as mark the cere- 
mony among the other tribes mentioned. A trait that may be dis- 
tinctive of the Tiibatulabal is the fact that the mourner puts the 
observances in charge of visitors from other localities. This may 
be the substitute of an undivided people for the reciprocal division 
of function among a dually organized one; or the basic idea of the 
participation of nonmourners may be older and have been seized 
upon and fortified by those groups that were subsequently cleft into 
social moieties. 

An invited chief had charge of the burning at the climax. His 
people gathered wood, tended the fire, burned the image, washed the 


610 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [RULE 78 


faces of the mourners afterwards, and performed other services, for 
all of which they were paid. 


Tue BAaNKALACHI. 


This small group was an offshoot from the Tiibatulabal, that had 
crossed the divide from Kern River and settled among the Yokuts 
foothill tribes in the region where Deer Creek, White River, and 
Poso Creek head. Their speech was only shghtly different from that 
of the Tiibatulabal; but their associations were primarily with the 
Yokuts, and they probably followed the customs of the latter. 
Bankalachi (plural Bangeklachi) was their Yokuts name: the Tiiba- 
tulabal called them Toloim. The majority of the little tribe are 
likely to have been bilingual; at any rate they were extensively in- 
termarried with the Yaudanchi, Bokninuwad, Kumachisi, Paleu- 
yami, and other Yokuts. Some of their blood flows in various of 
the Yokuts of to-day and something of their speech is not yet for- 
gotten, but as a tribe they are extinct. 


Tuer GIAMINA. 


The Yokuts occasionally mention a supposed Shoshonean tribe, 
called Giamina by them, in the vicinity of the Bankalachi, probably 
on Poso Creek. It is extinct. A few words have been secured from 
the Yokuts. These are indubitably Shoshonean, but not of any 
known dialect nor wholly of affiliation with any one dialect group. 
It is impossible to decide whether this brief vocabulary is only the 
result of a distorted recollection by an individual Yokuts of a 
smattering acquaintance with Shoshonean; or a sort of jargon 
Shoshonean that prevailed among the Kumachisi or some other 
Yokuts tribe; or the vanishing trace of a distinctive Shoshonean 
language and group. The last.alternative is by no means precluded; 
but it may never be proved or disproved. The existence of the name 
Giamina signifies little, for it may be a synonym. But it is an old 
appellation. Father Cabot in 1818 encountered the “Quiuamine” 
in the vicinity of the Yokuts Wowol (Bubal), Choinok, and Yauel- 
mani (“ Yulumne”’), 


CHAprer 48, 
SERRANO DIVISIONS. 


THE SERRANO GROUP, 611. THE KITANEMUK: Range, 611; customs, 612. THE 
ALLIKLIK, 613. THE VANYUME, 614. THE SERRANO PROPER: Habitat, 615; 
names and numbers, 616; social scheme, 617; cosmogony, 619. 


Tue SERRANO GROUP. 


The fourth and fifth Shoshonean tribes inside the Sierra, the 
JKitanemuk and the Allkhk, are in the same region of the head of 
the San Joaquin-Kern drainage as the preceding groups. With the 
KKitanemuk, however, an entirely new division of Shoshoneans is 
entered: the southern California branch of the stock. 

The Kitanemuk and probably the Alliklik (the latter are extinct) 
belonged to a northern section of the southern Californians to which 
the generic appellation “Serrano” has been applied. This is an 
unfortunate name. Not only is there this Serrano group and the 
Serrano tribe proper within it, but the name means nothing but 
“mountaineers ”—‘ those of the Sierras,” to be exact. In fact, the 
iitanemuk do not know themselves as Serranos, but extend the 
epithet to their neighbors the Kawausu, quite correctly in an etymo- 
logical sense, since these people happen to live higher in the moun- 
tains than they. But an ethnological designation is necessary, how- 
ever arbitrary. It is in the fertile portion of southern California 
that the term “Serrano” has acquired a definite ethnic meaning as 
the name of the people in the San Bernardino Mountains. Their 
dialect is close to that of the Vanyume and Kitanemuk; Alliklik 
speech was probably similar; and so “Serrano” is here used also 
in the wider sense as the name of the division. 


Tre KrraneMuk. 
RANGE, 


The Witanemuk lived on upper Tejon and Paso Creeks, whose 
lower courses are lost in the Yokuts plains before reaching Kern 
River. They held also the streams on the rear side of the Tehachapi 
Mountains in the same vicinity and the small creeks draining the 
northern slope of the Liebre and Sawmill Range, with Antelope 
Valley and the westernmost end of the Mohave Desert. The extent 
of their territorial claims in this waste is not certain. The popula- 
tion perhaps resided more largely in the smaller San Joaquin part 

611 


612 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


of the Kitanemuk area; the bulk of their territory was over the 
mountains in southern California. 


A synonym of Kitanemuk is Kikitanum or Kikitamkar. All these words 
are perhaps from the stem /i-, “ house.” The Yokuts know the Kitanemuk as 
Mayaintalap, “large bows”; the Ttibatulabal call them Witanghatal; the 
Chemehuevi, Nawiyat; the Mohave, Kuvahaivima—Garcés’s ‘“ Cuabajai ”— 
not to be confounded with Kuvahye, the Mohave designation of the Kawaiisu. 
The Americans are content to call them Tejon Indians, which would be satis- 
factory but for the fact that the former Tejon Reservation contained a little 
Babel of tribes. Most of the neighbors of the Kitanemuk to-day frequently 
refer to them as the Haminat. This is not a true designation but a nickname, 
a characteristic phrase of the language, meaning ‘ what is it?” 

It is necessary to distinguish between Tejon Creek, Tejon Rancho, and 
the old Tejon Reservation, all of which were in Kitanemuk territory, and Tejon 
Pass and the former Fort Tejon, which lie some distance to the west on the 
Cafiada de las Uvas in Chumash habitat. 

A few Serrano place names have been reported. Their present principal 
village, where Tejon Creek breaks out of the hills, is Nakwalki-ve, Yokuts 
Pusin-tinliu; Tejon ranch house on Paso Creek is Wuwopraha-ve, Yokuts 
Laikiu; below it lies Honewimats, Yokuts Tsuitsau; on Comanche Creek is 
Chivutpa-ve, Yokuts Sanchiu; Tehachapi Peak or a mountain near by is Mavin, 
perhaps Chapanau in Yokuts. 

The Mohave or “‘Amahaba” of the Colorado River were known as ‘“ muy 
bravos”’ and were welcome guests among the Kitanemuk, penetrating even 
to the Yokuts, Alliklik, and perhaps Chumash. They came to visit and to 
trade. It is characteristic that the local tribes never attempted to reciprocate. 
Their range was not as confined as that of the northern Californians, but they 
still had no stomach for long journeys to remote places inhabited by strange 
people. The Mohave refer to the Tehachapi-Tejon region in their myths; it 
is not known and not likely that the Kitanemuk traveled as far as the sacred 
mountains of the Mohave even in imagination. 

A curious and unexplained belief prevails among all the tribes in the 
Kitanemuk neighborhood, as well as among the Mohave, namely, that there 
is in this vicinity a tribe that in speech, and perhaps in customs too, is almost 
identical with the Mohave. Sometimes the Kitanemuk are specified, some- 
times the Alliklik, or again ideas are vague. The Mohave themselves speak 
of the Kwiahta Hamakhava or “ like Mohaves” as somewhere in this region; 
they may have meant the Alliklik. There is no known fragment of evidence 
in favor of this belief; but it must rest on a foundation of some sort, however 
distorted. Perhaps it is the presence of an Amahavit group among the Serrano, 
as mentioned below. 


CUSTOMS. 


Garcés in 1776 found the Kitanemuk hving in a communal tule 
house, which differed from that of the lake Yokuts in being square. 
His brief description is best interpreted as referring to a series of 
individual family rooms surrounding a court that had entrances on 
two sides only, at each of which a sentinel—compare the Yokuts 
winatum—was posted at night. Each family had its door and fire- 
place. The framework of the structure was of poles; the rushes 


KROERER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 613 


were attached in mats. The modern Yokuts deny that the Kitanemuk 
or any hill tribes built community houses, but Garcés’s testimony is 
specific. 

He mentions also the eating of tobacco. The leaves were brayed 
with a white stone (lime) and water in a small mortar, and the end 
of the pestle licked off. Even some of the natives swallowed the mess 
with difficulty. The avowed purpose of the practice was the relief 
of fatigue before sleep. 

Seeds, possibly crushed to meal, were scattered in the fire and over 
sacred objects. The Pueblo sprinkling of corn meal is inevitably 
suggested. 

The priest also tells of vessels, apparently of wood, with inlays 
of hahotis, “like the shellwork on the handles of the knives and 
all other manufactures that it is said there are on the Canal” of 
Santa Barbara—that is, among the Chumash. They trade much with 
the Canal, he adds, and suspects, though erroneously, that they may 
be the same nation. He had not himself been with the Chumash. 

The Kitanemuk seem to have been at war at the time with the Al- 
hkhk, for Garcés mentions their killing a chief on the Santa Clara, 
and the Alhkhk did not conduct him into Kitanemuk territory. To- 
ward the Yokuts, also, there seems to have been no friendliness; he 
could not get a Quabajay guide to the “ Noches” because these were 
“bad ”’—except a Noche married among them. 

The Yokuts of to-day declare that the Kitanemuk interred corpses. 

They danced differently from the Yokuts, and lacked the rattlesnake 
rite and the Teshwash doctor ceremony. They did have a memorial 
burning of property for the dead, when “clothing was stuffed” to 
represent them; and they practiced an initiation ritual with Jimson 
weed, which drug, or its drinking, they called pa-manit. The south- 
ern California deities to whom the Yokuts pray seem to have had 
their origin among the Serrano proper or, more likely, the Gabrie- 
lino; the Kitanemuk would in that case have been the transmitters. 

Basketry (PI. 55, ¢) seems to have been of the San Joaquin drain- 
age type rather than southern Californian. 


THe ALLIKLIK. 


Bordering the Chumash, on the upper Santa Clara River, there 
lived a Shoshonean tribe that was probably of Serrano affinities, 
although the two or three words preserved of their speech allow of 
no very certain determination. They can not have been numerous. 
Taken to San Fernando or San Buenaventura missions, they dwindled 
rapidly, and the few survivors seem to have been so thrown in and 
intermarried with people of other speech that their own language 
became extinct in a couple of generations. In fact, there is nothing 


614 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


known about them except that they held the river up from a point 
between Sespe and Piru, most of Piru Creek, Castac Creek, and 
yrobably Pastoria Creek across the mountains in San Joaquin Valley 
drainage and adjacent to the Yokuts. The location of a few of the 
spots where they lived is shown on the Chumash map. (PI. 48.) 
Alliklik, more properly Valliklik in the plural, is the Venturefio 
Chumash name. 
THe VANYUME. 


The Vanyume are the Serrano of Mohave River. Dialectically 
they stand nearer to the Kitanemuk than to the Serrano of the San 
Bernardino Mountains; but all three idioms appear to be largely 
interintelligible. 

Except perhaps for a few indiyiduals merged among other groups, 
the Vanyume are extinct, and the limits of their territory remain 
vaguely known. Garcés makes their habitat begin some few Spanish 
leagues east of the sink of Mohave River, perhaps a third of the way 
from it to the Providence Mountains; and Chemehuevi accounts 
agree. From there up to Daggett or Barstow was undoubted Van- 
yume land. Beyond, there is conflict. The well-traveled Mohave 
describe the Vanyume as extending to the head of the river. An 
ancient survivor not long since attributed the upper course of the 
stream to the brother tribe, the Serrano proper. Garcés, the first 
white man in this region, who rode from the sink of the river to its 
source, does not clear the problem, since he designates the Vanyume, 
the Serrano, and evidently the Allikhk by a single epithet: Befheme. 
The point is of no vital importance because of the likeness of the 
groups involved. Political affiliations may have conflicted with 
linguistic ones. The Mohave and Chemehuevi were at times friendly 
to the Vanyume, but hostile to the Serrano of the San Bernardino 
Range; there could well have been a division of the Serrano proper 
settled on upper Mohave River and allied with the Vanyume. The 
whole relation of Serrano proper and Vanyume is far from clear. 


It must also be remembered that there are some Kawaiisu claims: 


to a possession of Mohave River about where it emerges from the 
mountains. 


Vanyume is the Mohave name, whence Garcés’s “ Befieme.”” The Chemehuevi 
seem to call them Pitanta, The group has also been designated by the term 
Miihineyam, but this appears to be not so much an ethnic designation as the 
name of one of the local groups into which the Serrano proper were divided: 
Mohiyanim. The word Vanyume seems to go back to the radical of our “ Pana- 
mint,” which in turn is a synonym for the Shoshoni-Comanche group called 
Koso in this work. | 


The Vanyume population must have been very small. Garcés 
mentions a village of 25 souls and a vacant settlement on the river 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 615 


between Camp Cady and Daggett. Then there was nothing until a 
short distance below Victorville he encountered a town of 40 people 
and a league beyond another where the chief resided. These may 
have been Vanyume or Serrano proper. In the mountains, but still 
on their north slope, the rancherias were larger: 70, 25,and 80. These 
were probably Serrano proper. 

The river carries water some distance from the mountains, and 
seepage beyond; but in much of its course it is only a thin line of 
occasional cottonwoods through an absolute desert. The people must 
have been poor in the extreme. At the lowest village Garcés found 
some bean and screw mesquite trees and grapevines; but the in- 
habitants had nothing but tule roots to eat. They were naked, and 
a cold rain prevented their going hunting; but they possessed 
blankets of rabbit and otter fur. Their snares were of wild hemp. 
At one of the upper villages there were small game and acorn por- 
ridge; and where the chief lived, welcome was extended by sprink- 
ling acorn flour and small shells or beads. The latter were strung 
in natural fathom lengths. 

A punitive expedition against the Mohave in 1819 traversed Vanyume ter- 
ritory and names the following places and their distance in leagues from 
Jucamonga: Cajon de Amuscopiabit, 9; Guapiabit, 18; Topipabit, 38; Cacau- 
meat, 41; Sisuguina, 45; Angayaba, 60. The first three names are in a Serrano 
dialect; the fourth seems to be; the fifth is doubtful; the sixth Chemehuevi. 
Their locations fall within the territories assigned respectively to the Vanyume 
and the Chemehuevi on the map. 


Tue SERRANO, 
HABITAT, 


The Serrano proper, or “mountaineers” of the Spaniards, are 
the last of the four bodies of people that have here been united, on 
account of their similarity of dialect, into a “Serrano division” of 
the Shoshonean stock. 

Their territory was, first the long San Bernardino Range culminat- 
ing in the peak of that name, and in Mount San Gorgonio, more 
than 11,000 feet high. Next, they held a tract of unknown extent 
northward. In the east this was pure desert, with an occasional 
water hole and two or three flowing springs. In the west it was a 
region of timbered valleys between rugged mountains. Such was 
the district of Bear Lake and Creek. In the third place they oc- 
cupied the San Gabriel Mountains or Sierra Madre west to Mount 
San Antonio. This range is almost a continuation of the San Bernar- 
dino Range. In addition, they probably owned a stretch of fertile 
lowland south of the Sierra Madre, from about Cucamonga east to 
above Mentone and halfway up San Timoteo Canyon. This tract 


616 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


took in the San Bernardino Valley and probably just failed of 
reaching Riverside; but it has also been assigned to the Gabrielino, 
which would be a more natural division of topography, since it 
would leave the Serrano pure mountaineers. 

There is another territory that may have been Serrano: the northern slope 
of the Sierra Madre for some 20 miles west of Mount San Antonio, the region 
of Sheep, Deadman, and Big and Little Rock Creeks. But this is uncertain. 
The Kawaiisu may have ranged here, in which case this Chemehuevi offshoot 
no doubt owned the whole western Mohave Desert also, and cut off the two 
western Serrano divisions, the Alliklik and Kitanemuk, from contact with 
the two eastern, the Vanyume and present true Serrano. In support of this 
view is a reference to the ‘‘ Palonies—a subtribe of the Chemehuevi” as the 
northern neighbors of the Gabrielino.* 


The best parts of the Serrano land are shown in the southern Cali- 
fornia map, Plate 57, which includes place names. Many of the latter 
no doubt originally denoted villages; but it is usually impossible to 
determine. The Indians of this region, Serrano, Gabrielino, and 
Luiseno, have long had relations to the old ranchos or land grants, 
by which chiefly the country was known and designated until the 
American began to dot it with towns. The Indians kept in use, and 
often still retain, native names for these grants. Some were the 
designations of the principal village on the grant, others of the par- 
ticular spot on which the ranch headquarters were erected, still 
others of camp sites, or hills, or various natural features. The vil- 
lages, however, are long since gone, or converted into reservations, 
and the Indians, with all their native terminology, think in terms 
of Spanish grants or American towns. Over much of southern Cali- 
fornia—the “ Mission Indian” district—the opportunity to prepare 
an exact aboriginal village map passed away 50 years ago. The 
numerous little reservations of to-day do in the rough conserve the 
ancient ethnic and local distribution; but not under the old cir- 
cumstances. 


NAMES AND NUMBERS. a5 


The most frequent name for the Serrano among their neighbors 
to-day is some derivative of Mara or Morongo. Thus, Luisefo: 
Marayam; Chemehuevi: Maringits; they call themselves Maringa- 
yam. These terms are derived from the name of one of the Serrano 
bands or groups discussed below, the Maringayam or “ Morongo,” 
formerly at Maringa, Big Morongo Creek, whence the designation of 
Morongo Reservation near Banning, on which Serrano are settled 
among Cahuilla. <A similar word, Mara, is the native name of the 
oasis at Twenty-nine Palms. 





1 Recent inquiries by Mrs. Ruth Benedict, as yet unpublished, put Serrano groups in 
the canyons on the northern face of Mount San Jacinto, in territory assigned in 
Plates 1 and 57 to the Pass Cahuilla. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 617 


Tahtam has been given as the name of the Serrano for themselves: it means 
merely “ people.” Kauangachem is of unknown significance; Kaiviatam is 
only a translation into Indian of Spanish ‘“ Serrano.” 

The Mohave know the Serrano as Hanyuveche, the “ Jenigueche” of Garcés. 


The population must have been rather sparse; 1,500 seems an ample 
allowance in spite of the extent of the Serrano range. <A part of the 
group may have kept out of the exterminating influence of the mis- 
sions; yet few seem to survive. The census of 1910 reports something 
over 100. 

SOCIAL SCHEME, 


With the Serrano, the exogamous and totemic moieties of the 
Miwok and Yokuts reappear. Associated with them is a new feature, 
a series of bands or local subdivisions. 

One moiety is called Z’ukwm, “wild cats,” after tukut, its chief 
totem. It has as other totems tukuchu, the puma or mountain lion, 
older brother of wild cat, and kachawa, the crow, his kinsman. 

The other moiety is known as Wahdlyam, “ coyotes,’ and has as 
associate totems coyote’s older brother wanats, the wolf or jaguar, 
and his kinsman widukut, the buzzard. : 

The word for “totem” is niikriig, “my great-grandparent,” or 
“mingaka. The creator established the institution. Moieties joke 
each other; members of the first are reputed lazy and dull, of the 
second swift and perhaps unreliable. 

The bands offer more difficulty. Some are not assigned to either 
moiety in the available information. AI] of them are mentioned as 
localized within certain districts. Their recorded appellations are 
mostly either place names or words appearing to mean “ people of 
such and such a place.” For some districts a single band is men- 
tioned, for other regions pairs of intermarrying bands. 

In general, it would appear that the Serrano bands are not so much clans, 
as has been conjectured, as they are the equivalents of the “village communi- 
ties” or political groups of northern and central California—mwhat might be 
called tribes were they larger in numbers, set off by dialect, or possessed of 
names other than derivatives from one of the sites inhabited. Each of these 
Serrano groups or bands owned a creek and adjacent tract; its “ village” 
or most permanent settlement usually lay where the stream emerges from the 
foothills. Each group was also normally or rigidly exogamous: and there was 
at least a strong tendency, if not a rule, for particular groups to intermarry. 
Hach group or band was either Wild Cat or Coyote; but it appears that 
group and not moiety affiliation determined exogamy, since some of the regu- 
larly intermarrying bands are assigned to the same moiety. 

The known groups, in west-east sequence along the southern edge of the 
San Bernardino Range, were the Wa’acham of San Bernardino, Redlands, 
and Yucaipa; the Tiipamukiyam (7?) at Tiimiinamtu between EI Casco and 
Beaumont; the Paviikuyam at Akavat near Beaumont; the Tamukuvayam of 
Pihatiipayam (sic: the name seems that of a group) at Banning Water Can- 
yon; perhaps a group at Nahyu, Hathaway Canyon; one at Marki (Malki), 


618 BUREAU OF AMERIGAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLn. 78 


the present reservation near Banning; the Waktihiktam at Waktihi on Cabezon 
Creek ; the Palukiktam in Lyons Canyon; the Waniiptipayam at the mouth of 
Whitewater Canyon; three groups, the Maringayam, Miihiatnim (Mohiyanim), 
and Atii’aviatam, more or less associated at Yamisevul on Mission Creek, Tiirka 
on Little Morongo Creek, Maringa on Big Morongo Creek, Mukunpat on the 
Same stream to the north, and at Kupacham, the Pipes, across the mountains. 
Of these, the second, eleventh, and twelfth were Wild Cat, the fifth and sixth 
not known, the remainder Coyote.’ 

Other groups were the Tiichahitiktam (Coyote moiety) of Ttichahti at Snow 
JXanyon or One Horse Spring at the foot of Mount San Jacinto, on the south 
side of San Gorgonio Pass; the Coyote moiety people of Mara, Twenty-nine 
Palms, northeast of Big Morongo Creek; the Yuhaviatam or Kuchaviatam of 
Yuhaviat (‘pine place”) in or near Bear Valley, moiety unknown; the 
Pauwiatum, Coyote; the people of Kupacha, Wild Cat; the people of Kayuwat, 
Wild Cat (?)—these three in or north of the San Bernardino Mountains. 
The Mawiatum are described as east. of Kayuwat on Mohave River and the 
people of Amahavit as east of these. Both of these would be Vanyume rather 
than Serrano proper, by the classification here followed; and Amaha-vit 
suggests Hamakhava, Mohave, and reminds of the rather close relations between 
this people and some of the Vanyume. Some Serrano also list the Agutushyam 
of the Tehachapi Mountains, that is, the Kawaiisu, as if they were one of their 
own bands. This is in line with certain Kawaiisu claims, already mentioned, © 
to ownership of part of Mohave River and the northern foot of the Sierra 
Madre. 


Each group possessed a hereditary chief called kika. This word 
is from a Shoshonean stem meaning “ house” or “ live.” Associated 
with each Aika was a hereditary paha@ or assistant chief with cere- 
monial functions. The Luisefio have the same official and call him 
by the same name. Ceremonies were held in special houses built of 
tules, not in an open inclosure as among the other southern Cali- 
fornians. 

The moieties, at least as represented by the Maringayam and 
Miihiatnim, partly divided and partly reciprocated religious func- 
tions. Each tended the dead of the other before cremation. The | 
Miihiatnim paha’ named the children of both clans after their dead 
ancestors. The Maringayam ika ordered ceremonies, and his people 
built the tule house and acted as messengers. The Miihiatnim cooked 
and served food to the Maringayam at ceremonies. 

Acorns were fairly abundant in the western part of Serrano terri- 
tory, but the eastern bands got their supply from the western ones, 
or substituted other foods. Storage was in outdoor basketlike caches 
raised on poles. Houses were covered with mats of tules, which are 
said to grow along all the streams, even those that lose themselves in 
the desert. The modern ceremonial house at Banning, apparently 
kept up for a fragment of an annual mourning, is tule covered. A 
sweat house that stood there until recently—it may have been built 





2The list is incomplete and may be supplemented and corrected by the unpublished 
Benedict data already referred to. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 619 


by a Pass Cahuilla, but was probably Serrano—was small, earth- 
covered, and had a center post (Pl. 60). Pottery was made by the 
Serrano, but rarely if ever decorated. No specimens have been pre- 
served. 

COSMOGONY. 


The Serrano origin begins with Pakrokitat, from whose left 
shoulder was born his younger brother Kukitat. Pakrokitat created 
men. Jukitat wanted them to have eyes in the back and webbed 
feet, and quarreled constantly. It was he that caused death. Pakro- 
kitat finally left him this earth, retiring to a world of his own, to 
which the hearts of the dead go after first visiting the three beautiful 
Panamam on the island Payait. This island and its goddesses were 
also made by Pakrokitat. Before the separation of the brothers, the 
human race, led by a white eagle, had come from its origin in the 
north to Mount San Gorgonio. After Pakrokitat’s departure, men, 
under the influence of Kukitat, began to divide into nations, speak 
differently, and war on one another. They finally became tired of 
Kukitat and decided to kill him. The frog accomplished this end by 
hiding in the ocean and swallowing the god’s excretions. Kukitat, 
feeling death approach, gave instructions for his cremation; but the 
suspected coyote, although sent away on a pretended errand, re- 
turned in time to squeeze through badger’s legs in the circle of the 
mourners and make away with Kukitat’s heart. This happened at 
Hatauva (compare Luisefio Tova, where Wiyot died) in Bear Valley. 
People continued to fight, until only one man survived of the Marin- 
gayam. His Kayuwat wife bore a posthumous boy, who was reared 
with his mother’s people, but returned to his ancestral country, mar- 
ried two Miihiatnim sisters, and became the progenitor of the 
Maringayam or Serrano of today. 


CHAPTER 44. 


THE GABRIELINO. 


THE FERNANDENO, 620. THE GABRIELINO: Territory, 620; general status, 621; 
mythology, 622; ritual, 626; shamanism, 627; buildings, 628; basketry and 
pottery, 628; steatite, 629; trade and money, 630; food, 631; various imple- 
ments, 6382; social practices, 633. THE SAN NICOLENO, 6383. 


THe FERNANDENO. 


This group of people, more properly San Fernandefos, are named 
from San Ifernando, one of the two Franciscan missions in Los 
Angeles County. At San Gabriel, the other establishment, were 
the San Gabrielinos, more often known merely as Gabrielinos, popu- 
larly Gravielinos. In a larger sense, both people have been desig- 
nated as the Gabrielino. Their idioms were distinguishable, but 
not notably so; and if fuller knowledge were extant it might be 
necessary to recognize half a dozen dialects, instead of the two which 
the presence of the missions has given the appearance of being 
standard. The delimitation of Fernandefo and Gabrielino on the 
map is mainly conjectural, and there is no known point in which the 
two groups differed in customs. It will be best, therefore, to treat 
them as a unit under the caption of the more prominent division. 


THe GABRIELINO. 
TERRITORY. 


The wider Gabrielino group occupied Los Angeles County south 
of the Sierra Madre, half of Orange County, and the islands of 
Santa Catalina and San Clemente. The evidence is scant and some- 
what conflicting as regards the latter; a divergent dialect, or even a 
Luisefio one, may have been spoken there. The local culture on San 
Clemente, however, was clearly connected with that of Santa Cata- 
lina, perhaps dependent upon it; and Catalina was pure Gabrielino 
in speech. 


620 


EKROBBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 621 


On the west, the Gabrielino limits—here more exactly Fernandeio— 
against the Chumash were at the minor watershed through which the Santa 
Susanna tunnel has been bored; at the coast, between Malibu and Topanga 
Creeks.. Eastward, toward the Serrano and Luisefio, the line probably passed 
from Mount San Antonio to the vicinity of Cucamonga, Mount Arlington, and 
Monument. and Santiago Peaks; in other words, through western San Ber- 
nardino and Riverside Counties—although San Bernardino Valley has also 
been ascribed to the Gabrielino. Southward, Alisos Creek is cited as the 
boundary between Gabrielino and Juanefio. 

Most of the ascertained place names of the Gabrielino are shown in Plate 
57, whose limitations as regards the inclusion of true village sites have already 
been mentioned. Other places are these: Pimu or Pipimar, Santa Catalina 
Island; Kinki or Kinkipar, San Clemente Island; Aleupki-nga, Santa Anita; 
Pimoka-nga, Rancho de los Ybarras; Nakau-nga, Carpenter’s; Chokish-nga, 
Jaboneria; Akura-nga, La Presa; Sona-nga, White’s; Sisitkano-nga, Pear 
Orchard; Isantka-nga, Mision Vieja. Sua-nga near Long Beach is mentioned 
as the largest village. 

Synonyms or dialectic variants of the Gabrielino names shown in Plate 57 
are: Tuvasak for Siba; Iya for Wenot; Pashina for Pasino; Ongovi, Ungiivi 
for Engva; Chauvi and Unau for Chowi; Shua for Sua. 

A language of ‘‘ Kokomear” and one of “ Corbonamga” are mentioned as 
spoken by the neophytes at San Gabriel besides the ‘ Sibanga’’—Siba, the 
site of San Gabriel—and ‘ Guiguitamcar” or Kikitanum, that is, Kitanemuk. 

The Venturefo Chumash knew the Gabrielino, and perhaps all the Shosho- 
neans beyond, as Ataplili’ish (plural Dataplili’ish). 


GENERAL STATUS. 


The Gabrielino held the great bulk of the most fertile lowland 
portion of southern California. They occupied also a stretch of 
pleasant and sheltered coast and the most favored one of the Santa 
Barbara Islands. They seem to have been the most advanced group 
south of Tehachapi, except perhaps the Chumash. ‘They certainly 
were the wealthiest and most thoughtful of all the Shoshoneans 
of the State, and dominated these civilizationally wherever contacts 
occurred. Their influence spread even to alien peoples. They have 
melted away so completely that we know more of the fine facts of 
the culture of ruder tribes; but everything points to these very 
efflorescences having had their origin with the Gabrielino. 

The Jimson weed or toloache ritual is a case in point. The religious 
use of this drug extends far eastward, and its ultimate source may 
prove to be Pueblo, like that of the sand painting that is associated 
with it in the region from the Gabrielino south. The definite cult. 
however, in which the plant is employed, the mythology with which 
it is brought into relation, the ritual actions and songs that consti- 
tute its body, were worked out primarily if not wholly by the 
Gabrielino. All southern accounts mention Santa Catalina and San 


622 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Clemente Islands as the seat of the source of this cult. Whether it 
was brought from there to the mainland Gabrielino, or whether 
these had long shared the ritual with their oceanic kinsmen, is not 
certain. At any rate, the ritual was carried to the Juaneho; from 
them to the Luisefio; and they in turn imparted it to the Cupeno and 
the northern or western Diegueno. 

The last of this flow took place in historic time. It reached the 
interior Luisefio and the Dieguefio from about 1790 to 1850. ‘The 
very missions of the pious Franciscans stimulated the spread. They 
brought San Clemente Indians to San Luis Rey, and highland 
Luisefio to mingle with the coast Luisefo and islanders there. ‘The 
Luisefio and Dieguefio to-day sing nearly all their toloache songs 
in the Gabrielino language without concern at not understanding the 
words issuing from their mouths, 


MYTHOLOGY. 


Among the Juanefio and Luisefio the Jimson-weed cult is intimately 
associated with beliefs in a deity called Chingichnich or Chungich- 
nish. This name has not been reported from the Gabrielino, but 
Kwawar occurs as a synonym of Chingichnich among the Juanefio 
and as the “creator” with the Gabrielino. Further, certain of the 
animals of the Luisefio worship, such as the raven and rattlesnake, 
reappear with religious significance among the Gabrielino. There 
can thus be little doubt that these people also acknowledged the 
divinity. The problem which we can not answer is whether they 
knew him under another name, or whether Chungichnish is itself 
a Gabrielino term which happens not to be mentioned in the scant 
sources of information upon this tribe. Pura, the Luisefio say, is 
what the Gabrielino called the deity; but the word looks suspiciously 
like the Luisefo term for shaman: pula. 

On the other side, to the north, there are some traces of a pantheon 
of six or seven deities, in part female, more or less associated with 
the Jimson-weed cult, though whether primarily or not is un- 
certain. Among the southern Yokuts these divinities present the 
appearance of being of foreign origin, and this determination is cor- 
roborated by their entrance into wider phases of life with the 
Gabrielino: the names are not only those of gods, but titles of chief- 
tainship. The information on this interesting little system of 
mythology is sadly fragmentary, but pieces together sufficiently to 


EEE el 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 623 


suggest some idea of the nature of the scheme. It is presented in the 
following table: 














oy goat YOKUTS. | FERNANDEXO. 
aan oy Ags In fixed order of | “G ods” in fever GABRIELINO. SERRANO, 
weed prayers. prayers. of mention. 
IM TURE TCE e IPT? HUAINUL. Sell ates Coee ee cals eo Leesetcces' ch eesace t 
SUMTER ITCUT IME WHAM UGS ge Ns Seite oo oot = al on eRe eas eee e 
RIAU Cote ey A tI Sot et ne os cite on ee Decco nce ws state 
BVCMPUle ee | ML PIIICHO Ol. fetes eo Ce reece rete 
Pitsuriut...... oh AS ind aa'g Vide fro Cetin sagem he Ff sieht 
Tsukit ......| 3. Chukit....| Chukit (in myth, sis- 
ter oi 4 brothers). Six stones at 
Ukat (their I a WA | uaahont | paiemerep aay ean. deepen tee ie an Nanamiiyiat, 
sister). b \ ; Little Bear 
2. Tamur....| Tomar (title of oldest Valley, were 
son of chief). “oods,)? 
6. Manisar | Manisar (title of old- 
(wife of est daughter of 
5). chief). 








Formvuta: 7 Yokuts (-t, prayers)—3 Yokuts (-t, Jimson weed)+2 Gabrielino 
(-r, chiefs) —6 Fernandefio (-t, -r, gods) =6 Serrano (7). 


The Fernandeno list is from San Fernando in mission times, and might 
therefore go back to a Kitanemuk Serrano source. The Kitanemuk at any rate 
would have carried the religion to the Yokuts, who would not be praying to 
native gods under names that contain the sound vr, which is lacking from 
their own language. How far the Chumash, Alliklik, Kawaiisu, and Vanyume 
shared in this complex is entirely undetermined. 

It is observable that there is a distinction of function between the gods 
whose names end in -¢ and those whose names end in —’, and that this 
distinction coincides with tribal distribution. 

South of the Gabrielino, this mythic-ritual-social six god system has not 
been reported. Whether it and the Chungichnish complex excluded each other 
or stood in relation remains to be ascertained by future investigations. But 
there is an approximation to the Gabrielino plan anyong the Juaneno, who 
possessed animal names as titles for their chiefs and chieftainesses; thus 
“coyote” and “ladybug.” It is also possible that the Juaneno female mytho- 
logical character Ikaiut is to be connected with Ukat. 

The meanings of the deities’ name are obscure. Manisar is very likely 
from mani-t, Jimson weed. Pitsuriut or Pichurut suggests Juaneno piuts or 
piuch, the breath of life. The names Tiiiishiut and Yohahait, which have been 
reported only from the Yokuts, are translated by these people with some hesi- 
tation as “maker” and “crusher;” but these may be only folk etymologies 
of foreign terms, like their rendering of Ukat as “looker, seer.” It is not 
impossible that Tiitishiut is connected with the tosaut or tushaut stone so 
important in Chumash ritual and Juanefio myth. 

The creative mythology of the Gabrielino has been preserved only in the 
veriest scraps. The reputed creator of the world—he may or may not have 


3625°—25——_41 


624 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [RULL. 78 


been such to the Indians—was called Kwawar (“ Qua-o-ar”) by his sacred 
name, and ‘“ Y-yo-ha-riv-gnina” otherwise. Neither epithet yields to anal- 
ysis. He fixed the earth on seven giants whose stirrings cause earthquakes. 
The first man was Tobohar, his mate Pabavit. Tobohar is from a widespread 
Shoshonean stem for “ earth; among the Gabrielino themselves tobanga means 
“the world.” Perhaps Tobohar and Pabavit should be interchanged. Every- 
where else in southern California the earth is the first mother, 


Porpoises were believed to watch the world, circling around it to 
see that it was safe and in good order. The crow was thought to 
advise of the approach of strangers. This sounds much like beliefs 
associated with the Chungichnish cult. Still more significant in this 
direction is the report that a surpassingly wise “chief,” before 
dying, told the people that he would become an eagle so that they 
might have his feathers for dances; and that consequently ceremonies 
were made to the eagle. This is surely the dying god of whom all 
the southern Californians know; perhaps even the very Wiyot of 
the Juaneno and Luiseho; and the ceremony must be their eagle 
killing mourning rite. 

The origin of mankind was attributed, as by all the Shoshoneans 
of southern California, to the north, whence a great divinity, who 
still exists, led the people to their present seats. Perhaps this “ capi- 
tan general” was the just-mentioned eagle, perhaps Wiyot or his 
equivalent. 

Chukit, the virgin sister of four unnamed brothers, probably all 
members of the six-god pantheon, was married by the lightning 
flash, and gave birth to a wonderful boy who spoke when his navel 
string was cut. 

Coyote raced with water, and ended exhausted and ashamed. 
Whether he entered also into less trivial traditions is not recorded. 

The Pleiades are “seven” sisters—six seems a more likely native 
version—married to as many brothers, who, however, cheated them 
of the game they killed, until the women rose to the sky. The 
youngest alone had been good to his wife; he was allowed to follow 
them, and is now in the constellation Taurus. 


A woman of Muhu-vit, married at Hahamo, lazy, gluttonous, and stingy, is 
said to have been fed with game stuffed with toads and vermin, and given urine 
to drink by her husband’s people. Sick and with her hair fallen out, she 
returned to her parents, destroying her child on the way. Secretly she was 
nourished back to health by the old people, until her brother, finding hairs in 
his bathing pool, discovered her unrecognized presence, and threw her out. 
Ashamed, she started for the seashore, and drowned herself from a cliff. 

Her father threw his gaming hoop in four directions; when it reached the 
sea, it rolled in, and he knew his daughter’s fate. First he revenged himself 
on his own son, whom, in the form of the Kuwot bird, he carried off and 
destroyed. Then, taking the shape of an eagle, he allowed himself to be caught 
by the people of Hahamo; but when they touched him, pestilence spread from 
him, and xilled every one except an old woman and two children. 


ea” tr eee tr” 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 625 


An inconsequential appendix follows. The two children grow up and marry: 
then the woman maltreats the old grandmother, but is killed by her. The 
husband mourns his wife and follows her spirit to the land of the dead, 
where his experiences are like those of the Yokuts Orpheus. Like him, also, 
he brings his partner back, but loses her once more and irrevocably at the 
last moment. 

The ethical inconsistency of this story is marked to our feelings. 
The heroine certainly is blameworthy, but those who rid themselves 
of her, even more so. Hardly is sympathy aroused for her when 
she dispels it by dashing out her child’s brains. Then she becomes 
beautiful once more, and elicits interest through the disgraceful 
treatment accorded her by her brother. But this hardly seems 
sufficient cause for suicide. Her brother, too, committed the offense 
unwittingly; and his fatal punishment by his father comes to us 
as a shock. That the old chief should cruelly revenge himself by 
his magical powers on the foreigners who had first attempted his 
daughter’s destruction seems natural enough; but the focus of in- 
terest is suddenly shifted from his means of vengeance to the suc- 
cessful escape from it of the old woman and her grandchildren. 
Then these, brother and sister as they are, marry. Now it is the 
old lady who is abused; but suddenly it is her granddaughter who 
is persecuted and finally slain; after which follows the episode in 
which the loving and grieving husband is the central character. 

Nothing can be imagined farther from a plot according to the 
thoughts of a civilized people than this one; it appears to revel in 
acmes of purposeless contradictions. And yet, this trait is un- 
doubtedly the accompaniment of an effect that, however obscure to 
us, was sought for; since it reappears in traditions, following an en- 
tirely different thread, told by the Luiseho and Diegueno, and is 
marked in the long tales of the Mohave. This deliberate or artistic 
incoherence, both as regards personages and plot, is thus a definite 
quality of the mythology of the southern Californian tribes. It has 
some partial resemblances in the Southwest, but scarcely any in 
central or northern California except in the loosely composite coyote 
tales. In central California we have the well-defined hero and villain 
of the normal folk tale of the world over; and however much the 
oppressed endure, there is never any doubt as to who is good and who 
wicked, and that before the end is reached the wicked will be prop- 
erly punished. That in the southern California traditions this simple 
and almost universal scheme is departed from, is of course not due 
to absence of aesthetic feeling, but rather an evidence of subtle refine- 
ment of emotion, of decorative overelaboration of some literary 
quality, to such a degree that the ordinary rules of satisfaction in 
balance and moral proportion become inconsequential. The traits 
that shock us ethically and artistically were the very ones, we may be 


626 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


sure, that gave the keenest satisfaction to the craftsmen that told 
these tales and the accustomed public that delighted to listen to them. 

Most likely, as among the Mohave, stories like this one are little 
else than a web that carries a rich embroidery of songs, which yield 
their own emotional stimulus, and at the same time endow the plot, 
when sensed through their medium, with a brillant and profound 
luminousness that makes immaterial the presence or absence of every- 
thing else. 


RITUAL. 


Almost nothing specific is on record concerning the Gabrielino 
Jimson-weed cult, except that it is reported that the plant, called 
manit, was drunk mixed with salt water, in order to give strength, 
impenetrability to arrows, immunity from bear and snake bites, and 
fortune in the hunt. These very practical aims in no way indicate 
that the drinking was not also part of the sacred and esoteric ritual 
that we know to have been associated with it. 

Among the Fernandefio a four-sided and roped-off ground paint- 
ing was made, in the middle of which a man stood, holding twelve 
radiating strings, the ends of which were in the hands of as many 
assistants. When he shook the cords, the earth quaked, and what- 
ever person he had in mind became sick. The setting of this rite is 
obscure. It suggests the Chumash use of charm stones more than 
any Luiseho ceremonial act; but the sand painting is Luiseno and 
not, so far as known, Chumash. 

The mourning commemoration was held in the yoda enclosure. 
For eight days songs and perhaps dances were rehearsed outside. 
The ceremony itself endured another eight days. 

On the first, the enclosure was erected or consecrated. 

From the second to the seventh day men and boys danced inside the enclosure 
and women sat in a circle and sang. The dancers’ faces, necks, arms, and 
thoraxes were painted; which makes it seem that their feather costume was 
the feather crown and skirt of the Luiseno and Juanenho. The songs related 
to the deceased, or perhaps to the god who first died; some were sung “to the 
destruction of his enemies.” Each song or verse ended with a sort of growl. 
A pole with a feather streamer was erected at each of the four cardinal points. 

On the eighth day the old women made ready more food than usual; about 
noon it was distributed. A deep hole was then dug and a fire kindled in it, 
whereupon the articles reserved at the time of death were committed to the 
flames. Baskets, shell money, and seeds were thrown to the spectators or 
out-of-town visitors. During the burning, one of the old men, reciting mystical 
words, kept stirring up the fire to insure the total destruction of the property. 
The hole was then filled with earth and well trodden down. 


The end of this ceremony allies it with the Luiseho yunish mata- 
kish, maade for a dead initiate. The rehearsing, the participation 
of boys, and the type of costume, all point to the existence of the 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 627 


kind of initiatory organization which the Juanefo and Luisefio 
possessed and in fact believed that they derived from the Gabrielino. 
The four poles suggest the one erected in the Luisefio notush mourn- 
ing, to which, again, they attribute a Gabrielino origin. The cursing 
songs of hate are also southern. All that fails of mention is the 
image of the dead; and with the Kitanemuk on one side and the 
Luiseno on the other employing this, it is practically certain that 
the Gabrielino knew it. 

It must be said once more that the frequent mention of the Juaneno 
and Luiseno in connections like the present one must not lead to an 
inference that the Gabrielino were in any sense dependent upon 
them. The influence was positively the other way. It merely happens 
that for the Juanefo a fuller account of the religion, and among the 
Luiseno the ceremonies themselves, have been preserved; so that 
the knowledge of the borrowed rites of the southerners must be 
drawn upon for an understanding of the recorded fragments of the 
older and probably more elaborate Gabrielino cult. Thus, something 
is known of the Luiseno notush and its kutumit pole; for the Gab- 
rielino there is no record other than that at San Fernando a similar 
pole was called kotumut. 

Several round stones, perforated, hafted on the ends of rather slender sticks, 
and feather decorated, have been discovered in a cave in Gabrielino territory. 
Such stones, which abound most among the Chumash, are ordinarily digging 
stick weights; but in this case the character of the handles precludes any 
employment as a tool. An unknown ritualistic use is therefore indicated. 

That the Gabrielino word for ‘“‘ tobacco,” shuki, is not from the usual southern 
Californian stem piva, but borrowed from Yokuts shogon, sohon, which has 
penetrated also into the Mono, Koso, and Ttibatulabal dialects, suggests that 
the plant was perhaps more widely used, at least in religious connections, by 
the Yokuts, and that the neighboring Shoshoneans came under their influence 
in this matter. 

The number most endowed with significance to the Gabrielino 
seems to have been four, or its double, eight. Six, seven, and ten 
are also referred to in connections that make probable a certain 
degree of sacredness or suggestive value; but five, which predomi- 
nates among the Juanefo, has not been reported here. 


SHAMANISM. 


The removal of disease was by sucking blood and perhaps the dis- 
ease object. Smoking, manipulation, and singing preceded. ‘The 
words of the songs appear to have been descriptive of the practices 
applied, as among the Mohave. It may be conjectured that the doc- 
tor sang not so much of what he was doing as of what had been 
done to a god in the far past, or what he in a dream had seen a deity 
or animal perform. 


628 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


Diseases were also treated by a variety of remedies. Jimsonweed was drunk 
for paralysis, debility, and stagnation. Whipping with nettles was resorted to 
in the same cases, as also for side pains. Eating red ants or letting the insects 
bite the skin, a favorite Yokuts remedy, were remedies for body pains. For 
local inflammations, blood was drawn. Tobacco, with or without an admixture 
of shell lime, was eaten for fever, strangury, wounds, stomach aches, and 
whenever vomiting was desired. Whether the old men habitually ate tobacco 
and lime, as was customary among the Kitanemuk and Yokuts, is not clear. 
Against rheumatism, blisters were burned with nettle or wild hemp furze and 
at once opened. Anise was for purging; kayat, ‘“‘chuchupate,” for headache; 
ihaiish, HEchinocystis, for inflammations, eye disease, suppressed periods, 
wounds, and urinary troubles; when boiled it was taken to produce sweating, 

Medicine men were called ahubsuvoirot. 

The bear doctor was a Gabrielino institution, although more than the naked 
fact is not known. 


BUILDINGS. 


The house was of tule mats on a framework of poles: size and 
shape have not been recorded. On the islands and in the hills thatch 
of other materials may sometimes have been used. Earth-covered 
dwellings have not been mentioned. The sweat house had a roof of 
soil; but it was small, and a true sudatory, heated by fire and smoke, 
of course, as in all California, and not by steam. The sweat house 
of the Serrano or Pass Cahuilla (PI. 60) probably serves as a repre- 
sentative. 

The place of assembly for any occasion not savoring too formally 
of ritual was presumably any large dwelling, such as the chief’s, or 
the open brush shade. Religious gatherings took place in the open 
air ceremonial enclosure, the Juaneno wankech, Luiseho wamkish, 
Diegueiio Aimak. The Gabrielino seem to have called it yoba 
(“ yobare,” “yobagnar”) and to have built it circularly of willows 
inserted wicker fashion among stakes. It was consecrated for each 
ceremony. A similar structure, without sanctity, was used for re- 
hearsals and the instruction of children, Each village had one yoda. 


BASKETRY AND POTTERY. 


Few if any baskets authentically assignable to the Gabrielino have 
been preserved. The type of the tribal ware was that common to 
all southern California and usually known as “ Mission basketry ”’; it 
is described in the chapter on the Cahuilla. The pitched water 
bottle is specifically mentioned. 

Pottery had come into use by the end of the mission period. But 
it is stated positively that clay was not worked in aboriginal days. 
Archeology confirms: no pottery has been found in ancient remains 
in the Gabrielino habitat. 


af 


KROEBER } HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 629 
STEATITE. 


In the soapstone ledges of Santa Catalina the Gabrielino possessed 
the best available supply of this serviceable material in California; 
or at any rate the source most extensively utilized. The discoverers 
found them using stone vessels for cooking; and the condition of the 
island quarries, with half-finished pieces and tools still on the sur- 
face, is evidence that the industry was only interrupted after the 
importation of our civilization. From Santa Catalina the pots, and 
perhaps the raw material, were carried to the villages at Redondo 
and San Pedro and gradually distributed to the inland towns. The 
eastern Chumash may have got them from the people of Santa 
Monica and Topanga and from the Fernandeno. But the presence 
of steatite articles in fair abundance on Santa Cruz and the other 
northern channel islands suggests also a direct maritime dispersion 
to these Chumash, and from them to their kinsmen of the Santa 
Barbara coast. Inland the vessels penetrated at least sporadically 
as far as the Yokuts of Tulare Lake, if scant archeological records 
may be trusted. It is not sure that this entire area was served 
from Santa Catalina. But much of the supply evidently came from 
the island. 

It is interesting that the steatite and the pottery areas of south- 
ern California substantially exclude each other. Gabrielino and 
Chumash were flooded with the one material, and did not touch 
clay. Juaneno, Luiseno, Cahuilla, Diegueno, Serrano, Mohave, and 
Yuma made pots; and it is only now and then that small or orna- 
mental pieces of steatite were to be found among them. 

When the soapstone pots broke, their pieces were bored at one 
corner to allow of the insertion of a stick to handle them by, and 
utilized as baking slabs or frying pans. Hundreds of such salvaged 
fragments have been found in old village sites. The occasional fine 
vessels of stone were not cook pots, but religious receptacles— 
possibly to drink toloache from. They are shell inlaid and un- 
touched by fire. The shape, too, is that of an open bowl, not a jar. 
They have sometimes been taken for mortars, on account of their 
general form; but it 1s obvious that one blow with a pestle would 
have destroyed irreparably most of these delicately walled, polished, 
symmetrical, and ornamented objects of sandstone or waxlike steatite. 

Most abundantly on Santa Catalina, but also on the coast immedi- 
ately opposite, on the Chumash islands, and even on the Santa Bar- 
bara shore, a profusion of soapstone artifacts have been found. 
Besides recognizable ornaments and beads, there are several types 
whose evident lack of any utilitarian purpose has caused them to be 
generally classed as made with ceremonial intent. Besides peculiar 


630 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


objects of the shape of hooks, spades, and scoops, there are carvings of 
whales, which are of particular interest as one of the very few 
instances, in all aboriginal California, of anything like a represen- 
tation. They are as simple as the stone is easy to work, but 
suggest a dorsally finned cetacean with considerable fidelity and no 
shadow of doubt. They may be plastic figures of the porpoises 
that guarded the Gabrielino world. The hooks and other shapes 
range from a fraction of an ounce to several pounds in weight, and 
pass through a transition of shapes which retain indeed a certain 
decorative or symbolic likeness that makes their unity of class cer- 
tain, but are so variant in structural features as to dispel any 
possibility of each type having possessed a common utilitarian pur- 
pose. They served a religious purpose, then; and as their source 
corresponded with that ascribed by evidence and tradition alike to 
the Chungichnish cult—the balmy island of Santa Catalina—the 
conclusion is very hard to avoid that the worship and the art 
forms must have been associated. From this conviction we can 
argue, with somewhat less confidence, but yet with probability, that 
something of the same specific Chungichnish ritual and mythology 
traveled with the figures from Santa Catalina to the Chumash 
islanders and mainlanders. That the Chumash drank Jimson weed 
we know; the present reasoning establishes some likelihood that 
their cult of it was not a particular one. 


TRADE AND MONEY. 


For the islanders’ journeys, canoes of the kind described by the 
discoverers, and known also from fragments in Chumash graves, 
were employed. ‘The canoe may at times have been dug out from a 
log, but owing to the scarcity of suitable timber, especially on the 
islands, was usually built up out of planks, lashed and asphalted 
together. For lagoon navigation the rush balsa may also have 
been used. 

Between the coast and interior trade was considerable. The shore 
people gave shell beads, dried fish, sea-otter furs, and soapstone ves- 
sels. They received deerskins, seeds, and perhaps acorns. 

The standard currency was the disk bead, of clamshell, from one-half to 
three-quarters of an inch in diameter, and the thicker the better. The unit of 
measurement was the ponko. This reached from the base to the tip of the 
middle finger, thence around the outside of the hand past the wrist back to the 
point of the middle finger, and then once more not quite to the wrist. The 
length, about 380 inches, is half of the scant fathom reach of a man of small 
stature. The various local manners of this type of money measuring have been 
brought together in Table 6 in the chapter on the Chumash. 


The next highest unit was four ponko, called a sayako. Two sayako were 
reckoned, in mission times, a Mexican peso or dollar; which made the ponko 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 631 


a real. This equivalation to the Spanish standard obtained also among the 
Chumash and Salinans, but the reckoning of values by doubling and quad- 
rupling is probably native. ; 

It is curious that the heavy clamshell beads are rare in ancient 
Gabrielino and Chumash graves, thin convex disks of Olivella being 
the common prehistoric type. These have also been found among 
the modern Luiseno and Cahuilla. The Qlivella shell was known 
throughout central and northern California, but little esteemed; it 
ranked as beads rather than money. In the south it was more fre- 
quently ground into disks; but at that, it must have been secondary 
to the heavy clam bead, whose broad edge is susceptible of a much 
higher polish. 

Both types are represented among the Southwestern tribes. The 
modern Zuni bead is prevailingly of Olivella. The Pueblo, however, 
never distinguished as sharply between a mere necklace and cur- 
rency as the Californian; he thought in terms of property rather 
than of standardized money. 


FOOD. 


When the Gabrielino first met the Spaniards they politely ac- 
cepted every gift, but every scrap of food was held in such abhor- 
rence as to be buried secretly. It was not that the natives feared 
deliberate poisoning, but they were evidently imbued with a strong 
conviction similar to that of the Mohave, who believed that every 
nation had its own pecuhar food and that for one to partake of the 
characteristic nourishment of the other or to mingle with its women, 
or in fact associate in any prolonged contact, was bound in the very 
nature of things to bring sickness. 

The native foods rejected are not known. They can not have 
been many, as dogs, coyotes, all birds whatsoever, and even rattle- 
snakes are mentioned as having been eaten. Whether the omission 
of the bear from the list of edible animals is significant or not must 
remain doubtful. 

The Gabrielino are the first people of all those passed in review to 
use movable stone mortars to any great extent for the ordinary pur- 
pose of grinding acorns and plant foods, at least in historic time. 
The soil of northern California is studded with pot-shaped mortars, 
but the natives misunderstand their purpose or regard them as magi- 
cal objects, and pound on slabs or in holes worn into natural sur- 
faces of rock. In the central part of the State the portable mortar 
begins to appear, and the basket hopper, the accompaniment of the 
pounded slab, commences to go out of use, but the bedrock mortar 
hole remains the standard, at least for acorns. From the Gabrielino 
on, however, south to the Diegueno, east to the Mohave, and west, 


632 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


perhaps, to the Chumash, the stone mortar is not merely a buried 
relic from a remote prehistoric age but a utensil of everyday 
modern use. Some of these southern tribes cement a basket to the 
rim of the stone; the Chumash asphalt it also to slabs; but the 
mortar can often be used just as successfully, and sometimes per- 
haps more conveniently, without this extension. Perhaps this is. 
why the hopper has not been reported from the Gabrielino. ‘That 
they knew the device is nearly certain from their location between 
groups that employed it. 


VARIOUS IMPLEMENTS. 


The Gabrielino war club ranged from a straight heavy stick to 
a shorter form with a definitely marked cylindrical end—the south- 
western type. 

A curved flat stick, called makana, for throwing at rabbits and 
birds, is another southwestern type that pervades all southern Calli- 
fornia and seems to have come 
to the limit of its distribution 
among the Gabrielino. (Fig.55.) 

Rattles in the Spanish period 
were made of gourd or rawhide. 
These are almost certainly re- 
cent modifications of the old 
turtle-shell rattle still employed 
by the Luiseho and Diegueno, 
and, as a knee attachment, used 
from time immemorial by the 
Pueblo Indians. The modern 
Mohave rattle is a gourd; but it 
is not sure that this 1s native; in 
any event, the Mohave were an 
Fic. 55.—‘ Boomerang” rabbit killers of agricultural people, while the 

southern California, From above down- (Jqabrielino and other southern 

ward, Cupeno, Luiseno, Mohave. 4 A 

Californians were not. 

A wooden clapper rattle has been reported from the Gabrielino. 
This is the most southerly occurrence recorded for this universal 
north and central Californian implement. At that, the Gabrielino 
rattle is not a half-split stick, as elsewhere, but two boards bound 
and cemented together at one end. 

Meat was cut with a splint of cane and not with a stone knife. 
Practicability or habit rather than any religious reason appears to 
have been the motive. 

Tor arrow poison, gall was boiled down. 





KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 633 
SOCIAL PRACTICES. 


As in the whole of southern California, social institutions con- 
stitute the least known side of Gabrielino culture. Marriage was 
by purchase, but more was made of the wedding rite than of the 
payment; chiefs and prominent men often had several wives. All 
this is typical Juaneno procedure. The wife seems to have lived in 
the husband’s village. It is said that he was at hberty to punish 
her at will for infidelity, even by death; but that the usual solu- 
tion was to leave her to the seducer and appropriate the latter’s 
spouse, with which practice no interference was tolerated. Deliber- 
ate incest was punished by shooting to death. There was a chief in 
each village. If any exercised wider influence, the fact has not 
been reported. To judge by Juanenfo analogues, as well as the above- 
mentioned titles for the chieftain’s children, the position conveyed 
much deference and respect. Each chief was known by the name of 
his town plus the suffix -pzh or -vik. The rank was hereditary, ap- 
parently in the male line. It is said that the chief took no action 
against sorcerers, other than to leave punishment to the magical 
machinations of the medicine men of his own town. As an absolute 
negative, this statement may be doubted. It is likely to have been 
true under the outward restraints of mission life. 

Captives taken in battle were tortured and killed. 

The hair was at times plastered with clay for 24 hours, to impart 
gloss and keep it from splitting. The Mohave mix in a vegetable 
dye for this purpose; plain mud is applied by them to kill vermin. 

The dead were burned by both Fernandeno and Gabrielino proper 
until the padres introduced interment. On Santa Catalina many 
skeletons have been found, but few if any evidences of cremation. 
Burial must therefore have been the prevalent manner on this island 
through most of its history. The mainland, on the other hand, is 
remarkably free of ancient human bones, except at immediate coast 
points opposite Santa Catalina, such as Topanga, Santa Monica, 
Redondo, and San Pedro. It seems, therefore, that an ancient differ- 
ence of custom separated the islanders from the bulk of the Gabri- 
elino on this point. 


Tue San NICOLENO. 


San Nicolas, the farthest seaward of the Santa Barbara Islands, 
foggy and wind blown, harbored a tribe of which the last survivor 
died more than 60 years ago. Four badly spelled words are all that 
has been preserved of their speech. These suffice to prove it Shosho- 
nean: they do not establish its dialectic relation. A divergent idiom 


may well have developed in the isolation of this sand-swept and 


634 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


rocky island. It is stated that when the last survivor was brought 
to Santa Barbara her speech was thoroughly unintelligible not only 
to the Chumash of the vicinity but to the “ Pepimaros” of Santa 
Catalina (Pimu, Pipimar, the name of the island), of whom some 
were sent for from Los Angeles. 

The last handful of the natives, who are said to have suffered 
previously in quarrels with Aleuts imported by Russian fur hunters, 
and whose numbers had probably been diminished by drafts to the 
missions, were taken to the mainland in 1835, soon after seculariza- 
tion. A woman who at the last moment missed her child was left 
behind. Eighteen years later, when California was American, she 
was discovered. Her romantic case aroused the greatest interest, and 
she was given the best of treatment in her new home at Santa Bar- 
bara; but she died in a few months. More attention was bestowed 
on her humble belongings than on the panoply of many a tribe; and 
while the objects themselves seem all to have been scattered and 
lost—the last traceable piece perished in the San Francisco fire of 
1906—the descriptions, together with random but rather full recov- 
eries from ancient village sites, enable a partial insight into the life 
of this remote little group, the most westerly of all Uto-Aztekans. 

Wood was scarce and small on the island. There was enough brush 
for huts, but most dwellings were reared on a frame of whale ribs and 
jaws, either covered with sea-lion hides or wattled with brush or 
rushes. Bone implements were very numerous, and the use of sev- 
eral varieties is far from clear. The island may have afforded suffi- 
cient timber for plank canoes, or dugouts may have been burned from 
drift logs. Steatite was imported from Santa Catalina, but is repre- 
sented by small ornaments or charms rather than heavy bowls. 
Whales must have been very abundant and frequently stranded; 
there is nothing to indicate that they were hunted. Sea otters were 
to be had in comparative profusion, and, to judge from the habits of 
other tribes, their furs formed the most prized dress and the chief 
export in a trade on which the San Nicolefo must have depended for 
many necessities. Seals, water birds, fish, and mollusks were no 
doubt the principal food; but roots were dug industriously. Baskets 
are spoken of as of the type ordinary in southern California. They 
were often asphalted, hot pebbles being employed to melt and spread 
the lumps. Water baskets were in plain twining, as among the 
Chumash; but the neck was long, much as in our wine bottles. The 
lone woman wore a sort of gown of squares of bird skin sewn to- 
gether; but this does not seem wholly aboriginal. The usual dress 
may be conjectured to have been the scant costume of all California, 
with capes or blankets of woven strips of bird skin added at need. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 635 


The cylinder-headed wooden war club was in use. The dead were 
buried, as by all the islanders, not cremated as on the Shoshonean 
mainland. Of religion we only know that there were weather invo- 
cations and hunting charms; whether the toloache cult or the image 
form of mourning anniversary had reached the island must remain in 
abeyance; and as to society, there is total ignorance. 

Ghalas-at has been given as the name of the island. This is per- 
haps the native or the Chumash pronunciation of Gabrielino 
Haras-nga, 


Carter 45, 
THE JUANENO. 


Extension, 636; mythology, 637; cults, 689; the ceremonial structure, 639; 
ritual dress, 640; initiation ceremonies, 640; girls’ rite, 641; mourning 
ceremonies, 641; shamanism, 643; ordinances and beliefs, 643; calendar, 
644; social ranks, 645; marriage and birth, 646; war, 647. 


EXTENSION. 


The Juanefio Indians are so named after the mission of San Juan 
Capistrano in their territory. They were wedged in between the 
Gabrielino and the Luisefo; but their speech was a dialect of the 
latter language, not a transition between the two. Their land ex- 
tended from the sea to the crest of the southern continuation of the 
Sierra Santa Ana. Southward, toward the Luiseno, the boundary 
ran between San Onofre and Las Pulgas; on the north, toward the 
Gabrielino, it is said to have followed Alisos Creek. The known 
settlements of the group are shown in Plate 57. 

For Ahachmai, Akagchemem and Kwanisa-vit have also been given 
as dialectic variant or name of an associated site; for Pu-tuid-em, 
Niwiti. 

The population may have been a thousand; the Breen survivors 
may be three or four. 

Father Geronimo Boscana’s “ Chinigchinich,” easily the most 
intensive and best written account of the customs and religion of any 
eroup of California Indians in the mission days, relates to San Juan 
Capistrano; and the pages that follow are almost wholly based on 
his careful statements. It has been generally assumed that this 
work referred to the Juaneno; but analysis of its native terms and 
designations of place leave a doubtful impression. A large part, 
possibly the bulk, of the information conveyed by the assiduous and 
sympathetic priest is certainly of Gabrielino origin. What is ques- 
tionable is whether the lore was taken over by the Juanefio from the 
Gabrielino of their own accord and in premission times, as part 
of the Chungichnish cult or as the effect of still earlier streams 
of Gabrielino culture; or whether the father reported data from local 
Juanenos and imported Gabrielinos side by side without thinking 
it worth while for his purposes to specify the tribal differences. On 
the one hand, we know that the Gabrielino influence existed, for it 
prevails among the more distant Luisefio. On the other hand, the 

636 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 637 


mission was but a very few miles from the Juaneno boundary, and’ 
southern Gabrielino converts must have become attached to the 
establishment in considerable numbers. The problem can not be 
answered with exactness; the only recourse is to present the informa- 
tion as a whole and preserve the mental caution called for by the 
circumstances. 

MYTHOLOGY. 


The Juaneno story of the creation has been preserved in two 
versions, one from the inhabitants of the interior, the other from 
the coast. The former is more similar to the Luiseno account. 


According to this version, the first things in the universe were the sky and 
the earth, brother and sister. From their union were born, first, earth and 
sand, next, stone and flint, then trees, next herbs, after that animals, and 
finally Wiyot (Ouiot). From Wiyot were born men, or rather a first race of 
beings that preceded mankind. As they multiplied in number, the Earth, 
Wiyot’s mother, grew southward, and the people followed. They used soil 
as food. 

Wiyot was plotted against and poisoned. His mother prepared a remedy, 
but this was spilled and lost through the curiosity of the Coyote. After a 
sickness of some duration, Wiyot died, predicting his return. After some 
discussion his cremation was decided upon, but the people feared Coyote, and 
attempted to conduct the funeral in his absence. He appeared, however, and 
professing his affection for Wiyot, leaped upon the pyre, tore off a piece of 
flesh from the body, and swallowed it. Coyote had been the eyake or assistant 
chief to Wiyot. 

After this, a new being appeared, who revealed himself as Chingichnich 
(“ Chinigchinich ”), with his habitation in the sky, or rather throughout the 
world. Chingichnich converted the first people into animals and plants, or 
into spirits having power over animals and plants, and caused them to seatter 
over the earth. In their place he made a new race, the present human species, 
out of earth, and taught them their laws and institutions, including the build- 
ing of the wankech (vanquech) or ceremonial inclosure. 

The coast Juanefio attributed the creation of the world, the sea, and animals 
and plants to “ Night,’ Tukma or Tokuma (‘‘ Nocuma’’). He fastened the 
earth by means of the smooth, black, hard rock called tosaut. The ocean at 
first was small and overcrowded with beings until a large fish brought the 
tosaut, the center of which was filled with gall. This being emptied into the 
water, it became salt and welled up until the ocean attained its present size. 
Tukma then created the first human being called Ehoni. 

To two of Ehoni’s descendants, Sirout (“ handful of tobacco’’) and his wife 
Ikaiut (‘ above,’ )Wiyot was born as son, at Pubu-na, to the northwest of 
San Juan Capistrano, in Gabrielino territory. Wiyot ruled the people, but 
according to this story also was plotted against, and poisoned by means of the 
tosaut stone. He sickened, died, and was burned. 

In this version also a new divinity appears after Wiyot’s death, but under 
the name of Atahen, “man,” who gave to certain of the people and their de- 
scendants the power to make rain, cause seeds to grow, and bring about the 
productivity of game animals. 

Still later there was born at “ Pubuna ’—Pubu-nga, Los Alamitos, in Gabriel- 
ino territory—to Taku and Ausar, Wiamot (“ Ouiamot’), who is said to have 


638 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


been Chingichnich. He announced that he had come from the stars, gave to 
the people the feather costume for dancing, instructed them in its use, thus 
constituting the order of puplem or initiated, and gave orders for the cere- 
monial inclosure to be built. 

Wiamot or Chingichnich is also said to have become sick and to have an- 
nounced that after his death he should ascend to the stars to watch the people; 
to punish by bears, rattlesnakes, famine, and sickness those who disobeyed his 
commandments; and to reward the faithful. 


There is evidently some confusion in this story. Atahen, the 
second of the great leaders, is perhaps merely a synonym of either 
Wiyot, the first, or Chingichnich, the third. The appearance of 
Chingichnich under the name Wiamot, so similar to Wiyot, is also 
peculiar. Three other names of Chingichnich are given. He was 
called Tobet, which is the name of the ceremonial costume worn by 
those initiated into his cult; Saor, which denotes the uninitiated; 
and Kwawar, his appellation among the stars. The last name was 
In use among the Gabrielino also. The close association of myth 
and ritual at these points is evident. The use of the name of the 
dance costume for the deity himself, or vice versa, is a fusion parallel 
to that which has taken place in regard to the Kuksu in the religion 
of the Sacramento Valley. _ 2 

The prominence of the tosaut stone in the creation myth of the 
coast Juanefo is partly cleared up by the fact that this word oc- 
curs among the entirely alien Chumash as the name of the charm 
stones used by medicine men, and probably in public ritual also. 
It follows that the intervening Gabrielino must have had similar 
sacred stones and given them the identical appellation. In fact it 
is not unlikely that the practice as well as the name, which is of 
undetermined etymology, are of Gabrielino origin. It is probably 
more than a coincidence that all indications of the tosaut cult come 
from coast points. 

Tradition further told of a flood which submerged the whole earth 
except one mountain peak. This event is placed in the time of 
Chingichnich’s appearance, subsequent to the death of Wiyot, and 
has parallels in Mohave belief. In general, the concept of primeval 
water is central Californian. In northwestern and in southern 
California the world is believed to have existed first, and the subse- 
quent flood to have been temporary. Of all the southerners, only 
the Yuman tribes tend to begin their cosmology with the waters. 

Another legend has been preserved which, although trivial and limited in 
its range, is of interest as evidencing the presence among these people of a 
migration tradition of the type characteristic of parts of southern California, 
but entirely without analogues in the central and northern portions of the 
State. It begins at Sehat, at Los Nietos, a Gabrielino village some 30 or 


more miles northwest of San Juan Capistrano. Here lived the Chief Oyaison, 
with his wife Sirorum. After the death of the latter, Oyaison escorted 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 639 


one of his three children, his daughter Korone, together with a portion of 
his people, southward to Niwiti, not far from San Juan Capistrano. Here, 
after the return of her father, Korone established a settlement which was 
named Pu-tuid-em after an enlargement of her abdomen or navel. She was 
enormously fat, and never married. The newcomers spread out into neigh- 
boring settlements and changed their speech from the original Gabrielino 
tongue which they had brought with them. Korone’s body finally swelled up 
to such a degree, during her sleep, that it turned into a mound or small hill 
which remains to-day. The inhabitants of Pu-tuid-em then moved to Ahachmai 
or Akagchemem, a mile or two distant, at the spot where the mission was 
subsequently founded. They spent their first night in their new home huddled 
and piled together like a Heap of insects, or other animated things, to which 
fact the name of this new and final settlement refers. 

This is almost certainly a true Juanefio story, as shown by its location; but 
it is noteworthy that it begins in the land of the Gabrielino. 

The general cast and tone of this tradition is similar to a number 
of Mohave legends, although the particular incidents differ through- 
out; and it obviously recalls the tribal and clan migration legends 
of the Pueblos, just as southwestern suggestions crop out in Juanefio 
cosmogony. 

CULTS. 


Juanenho ceremonies are primarily of two classes: initiatory or 
puberty rites, and mourning rituals. They were held in a sacred 
enclosure, and there appears to have been but one standard religious 
costume. 

THE CEREMONIAL STRUCTURE. 


The wankech or ceremonial chamber was an inclosure of brush, 
open to the sky, apparently with a subdivision or smaller inclosure. 
Near or in the latter place was placed the skin of a coyote, filled with 
feathers, horns, claws, and beaks, inciuding particularly parts of the 
condor, and a number of arrows. ‘This image or figure has no known 
parallels in California. It is said to have been the god Chingich- 
nich. At any rate, it constituted an altar, in front of which was made 
a rude drawing or sand painting. Great respect’ was shown this 
sacred place. Conversation did not rise above a whisper, and the 
uninitiated were not even permitted to enter the outer inclosure. 

It is specifically said that the altar in the wankech was an invio- 
lable sanctuary, at which murderers, deposed chiefs, and all in fear 
of punishment found safe refuge. The practice is likely to have been 
actual, but the formulation of the idea of a recognized sanctuary 
seems un-Indian; there is nothing like it among any California 
tribe. It can hardly be doubted that the sanctity of the spot was 
creat enough to prevent a killing or struggle. No matter what the 
provocation, punishment might be deferred until a more suitable 
occasion. ? 

3625 °—25—42 


640 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 
RITUAL DRESS. 


The tobet or ceremonial costume comprised the palet (“ paelt”) 
skirt of eagle or condor feathers, reaching from the waist to the 
knees. On the head was fastened, by means of a cord of human hair, 
the emech, described as a pad or wig. Into this feathers were stuck, 
or an upright bunch of feathers called eneat was attached to it. The 
body was painted red and black, or sometimes white. 


INITIATION CEREMONIES. 


The Gabrielino Jimson-weed ceremonies were practiced by the 
Juaneno, who in turn helped to convey them to the Luisefo. As 
among the Luisefio, these were clearly initiation rites, and under the 
inspiration of the god Chingichnich. Young children were given 
the drug. From the fact that this is described as pzvat, which is the 
native name for tobacco, it seems possible that a mixture of narcotic 
or stimulating plants was employed. In the visions caused by the 
drug the children expected to see an animal. In this they were in- 
structed to place entire confidence, and it would defend them from 
all future dangers in war or otherwise. The animals mentioned are 
the coyote, the bear, the crow or raven, and the rattlesnake—all ex- 
cept the first specifically associated with Chingichnich among the 
Luisefio. 

The suggestion of a personal guardian spirit in these beliefs must 
not be overestimated into their interpretation as a part of shamanism, 
since the protective animals were acquired not through involuntary 
dreams or individual seeking, but during a state of intoxication pro- 
duced in a communal ritual. 

The term touch, still translated by the Juanefio as “ diablo,” is mentioned 
by Father Boscana in connection with the Jimson-weed vision, but the con- 
text does not leave it entirely clear whether towch signified a form or ap- 
parition of Chingichnich, or was the generic name of the protecting animal. 
The Luisefio towish means “ ghost.” 

There was another initiatory rite which is said to have been un- 
dergone by chieftains’ sons and others of high rank who did not 
partake of the Jimson weed. But it is possible that the account 
may really refer to a subsequent and higher stage of the initiation, 
or perhaps to a second initiation leading to a higher degree. This 
is confirmed by the fact that this ceremony is mentioned as having 
been undergone by young men. These were painted black and red 
and wore feathers—a description given also of the initiated wearers 
of the tobet—were led in procession to the wankech, and placed 
at the side of the Chingichnich image or altar, Before them, then, 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF GALIFORNIA 641 


the older initiates made a sand painting—of an animal, it is said— 
by which the novices fasted and refrained from drink for a period 
of about three days. 

As among the Luisefio, trials of endurance followed the general 
drinking of the Jimson weed. The novices were blistered with fire, 
whipped with nettles, and laid on ant hills. These ordeals hardened 
them, and any who might fail to undergo them were looked upon 
as unfortunate, feeble, and easily conquered in war. 

About the same period of life the boys or young men were pro- 
hibited certain foods, both meat and seeds. Some of these re- 
strictions were maintained during manhood. 

When boys were initiated—not into manhood, but into the use 
of the tobet dance costume—they were one after another arrayed 
in this, and danced with a turtle-shell rattle in their right hands. 
If a boy became totally exhausted from the duration of the cere- 
mony he was carried upon the shoulder of one of the older men, 
who danced for him. At the conclusion a female relative danced 
naked. It is not certain whether all young men underwent this 
initiation, or only those who were of higher social status, or attained 
a specially advanced religious rank. The nude dancing by women is 
mentioned as having taken place on other occasions. 


GIRLS’ RITE. 


Girls at their adolescence underwent a ceremony much like that 
practiced by the Luisefio, except that no mention is made of a ground 
painting. The girl was laid on branches of “ estafiate” (paksil) 
placed in a pit lined with stones that had been heated. The hole 
is said to have resembled a grave in shape, a circumstance that is 
paralleled in the Luisefo puberty rite for boys and appears to be 
symbolic. Here the girl lay for several days fasting, while old 
women with their faces painted sang, and young women at intervals 
danced about her. 

Girls were tattooed as part of their adolescent training shortly 
before puberty, from the eyes or mouth down to the breast, and 
on the arms. Agave charcoal was rubbed into bleeding punctures 
made with a cactus spine. 


MOURNING CEREMONIES. 


The dead were cremated, usually within a few hours after their 
decease. The pyre was lit by certain persons who derived their 
office by descent, and were paid for the service like the Yokuts 
tongochim. It is said that all but these personages withdrew from 
the actual cremation, which was followed by several days of wailing 
and singing. The words of the songs are stated to have related the 


642 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


cause, location, progress, and completion of the disease that had re- 
sulted fatally. It is not probable that the illness of the departed 
was thus described. Such reference to anything savoring of the 
person of the dead would certainly have been extremely repugnant 
to all other Californian tribes. The Luiseno on the same occasion 
sing similar songs about the sickness and approaching death of 
Wiyot; the Mohave have parallel practices; and it may therefore be 
concluded that the burden of the Juanefio mourning also referred to 
the fate of their dying god. 

As in all parts of California and nearly all regions of America, 
the hair was cut in sign of mourning, the length removed being pro- 
portional to the proximity of kinship or degree of affection. 

The hearts of those of the initiated whose flesh was eaten by the 
takwe were thought to go to the sky and become stars. The hearts 
or souls of all other persons went to an underground region called 
tolmer (Luiseno tolmal), where they spent their existence at ease in 
constant dancing and feasting. 

The usual commemorative mourning ceremony was made for chiefs 
and prominent persons, although Father Boscana has left no specific 
account of it, and we do not therefore know whether, as seems prob- 
able, it included the burning of an image of the dead. It was, how- 
ever, an exact anniversary, the precise condition of the moon at the 
time of death being observed, and the rite held when the moon at- 
tained the same size in the month of the same name in the following 
year. 

Father Boscana describes a ceremony similar to the eagle-killing 
rite of the Luiseno and Diegueno. Although he does not mention 
it as a funerary observance, it can hardly have been anything else. 
The bird employed he names panes, which has not been identified, but 
from its description appears to have been the condor. It was carried 
in procession to the wankech, placed upon a sort of altar, and danced 
to by the initiated, while young women raced or ran about. Later 
the bird was killed without the loss of any blood. The skin was 
drawn off and preserved for making pa/et skirts, while the body was 
interred within the wankech, while old women made offerings to it, 
wept, and addressed it, after which dancing was resumed. This cere- 
mony was definitely associated with Chingichnich. The very iden- 
tical reincarnated panes was believed to be killed not only each year 
but in every village. 

The fire dance was another act which has southern analogues, 
and is likely to have been introduced sometimes into mourning cere- 
monies. ‘The dancers leaped into a large fire, which they trod until 
every spark was extinguished. 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 643 


On the death of one of the fully initiated a personage called either 
ano, “coyote,” or takwe, “eater,” cut off from the back or shoulder 
of the deceased a piece of flesh and devoured or appeared to consume 
it in the presence of the crowd. This character was much feared 
and was heavily paid for his act by contributions from the populace. 
The natives specifically connect the ceremony with their myth of the 
eating of part of Wiyot’s body by the coyote. 

Nothing like this astounding rite is known from any other region 
of California nor from any part of the Pacific coast, until the Ha- 
matsa practices of British Columbia are reached, except for a mention 
that Pomo mourners now and then snatched and ate pieces of the 
dead. 


SHAMANISM. 


The source of power of the medicine man and his method of ac- 
quiring it are not known with exactness, either for the Juaneno or 
for the other Shoshoneans of southern California. Besides sucking, 
blowing was resorted to. The word for shaman is pu/, which appears 
to be the unreduplicated singular of puplem,* the initiated.” ‘There 
would thus seem to have been a certain lack of differentiation between 
the shaman proper and the man who had been fully instructed in 
sacred tribal lore. 


ORDINANCES AND BELIEFS. 


The regulation that a hunter must not partake of his own game or 
fish was adhered to tenaciously. Infractionebrought failure of luck 
and perhaps sickness. Often two men went out together, in order 
to exchange with each other what they caught. It would appear 
that this rule applied chiefly or only to young men. At any rate, 
there must have been limitations to its enforcement, since it is stated 
that sickness resulted only when the game was consumed secretly. 

At the appearance of the new moon, old men danced, while the 
boys and youths raced. The words of the songs used on this ocva- 
sion referred to the death and resurrection of the moon and were 
symbolic, although whether of a return to life of human beings in 
general, or only Wiyot, is not certain. 

At eclipses every one shouted and made all possible noise to 
frighten away the monster thought to be devouring the sun or moon. 
It is probable that this custom was common to all the Indians in 
California. 

Lakwich or meteors were much feared. Young women fell upon 
the ground and covered their heads, fearing to become ugly or ill 
if looked upon by the spirit. Takwich or Takwish is prominent in 


644 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


the mythology of the Luisefo and Cahuilla and the name is pre- 
sumably connected with takwe, the designation of the ceremonial 
eater of human flesh. The latter functionary has not been reported 
from the Luiseno or Cahuilla, but the traditions of these people con- 
sistently depict Takwish as a cannibal spirit. 

Of immaterial essences, the piuch (“ piuts”) or breath was dis- 
tinguished from the shun (“ pu-sunti”) or heart. The former cor- 
responded somewhat to our idea of life, the latter rather to the soul. 

The ritualistic number of the Juanefio is not clear. Among the 
Luiseno, Gabrielino, and Diegueno there is also some variability 
and hesitance of formulation. Five seems to have been used with 
significance at least as often as any other number by the Juanefo. 

The Gabrielino origin of a large share of Juanefo ritual and 
myth is clear, not only from the fact that both creation and migra- 
tion traditions commence in Gabrielino territory, but especially 
from the names of religious import. 

A considerable number of Juanenho ceremonial designations contain the sound 
“r,.” and very few contain “ll.” Now “7” is the Juanefo and Luisefio sound 
that corresponds to Gabrielino ‘ 7,” especially at the end of words. ‘“‘R” does 
occur in these two dialects, but is searce and obviously a development from 
some other sound, since it appears only in the middle of native words. At least 
the majority of Juaneno terms containing ‘‘ 7” must therefore be from a Gabrie- 
lino source. Such are: Saor, Kwawar, Sirout, Ausar, tolmer, Sirorum, Korone. 
The only question that arises in this connection is the one already raised 
whether the larger part of the information extant concerning the Juanefio in the 
work of Father Boscana may not really relate to the southern Gabrielino 
themselves rather than to the Juaneno. Even if this possibility be answered 
affirmatively it indicates the cultural leadership of the Gabrielino; since 
although San Juan Capistrano lay not far distant from Gabrielino territory, it 
was nevertheless in Juaneno land, and for an observer to have slighted the 
natives in behalf of imported foreigners detached from their soil and with their 
institutions correspondingly weakened, conveys in itself a strong suggestion 
of the greater development of the latter. 


CALENDAR, 


The Juaneno calendar seems to have been unusually definite for 
California, and it is exceedingly regrettable that the account of it 
which has been preserved is not altogether clear. Ten months are 
named, and these are said to have been all that there were. The year 
was definitely divided by the solstices. The month or moon in which 
the solstice fell was somewhat longer than the others, after which there 
followed four regular lunations. If the number of these subsequent 
moons was really four and not five, then each of the solstitial months 
must have averaged somewhat over two moons in duration. Nothing 
hike this attempt to combine a lunar and solar count has yet been 
reported from any other people in California. <A similar plan is, 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 645 


however, the basis of the Pueblo calendar. We have here, therefore, 
one more of the many instances of the influence of the tribes of the 
Southwest upon those of southern California, and it can not be 
doubted that many others would be discovered if our knowledge 
were deeper. It is significant that these parallels to the southwest 
are most abundant in religion; but it is equally striking that they 
are detached ceremonial elements which ususally crop out in southern 
California in a quite different setting and organization. 

The names of the “ months,” whose form suggests that they are in 
part of Gabrielino and in part of Juaneno or Luiseno origin, are the 
following: 


A’apkomil (winter solstice). Sintekar (summer solstice). 
Peret. Kukwat. 

Yarmar. Lalavaich. 

Alasowil. Awitskomel, 

Tokoboaich, A’awit. 


SOCIAL RANKS. 


Chieftainship was hereditary in the male line. In default of 
sons, the title remained in abeyance until a daughter gave birth to 
a son, a collateral relative meanwhile exercising the power of office. 
Neither the daughter nor her husband, it is expressly said, acted 
as chief. The chief was known as Vu and his lieutenant or assistant 
as Hyake. The wife of the former bore the title of Aorone, and 
of the latter that of Zep2. Hyake occurs as the mythical name of 
the coyote; Aorone as that of a traditional chieftainess who led a 
migration to San Juan Capistrano. Further, both Aorone and Tepi 
are names of insects. Similar distinctive names, also appearing in 
mythology, are found connected with chieftainship among the Gabri- 
elino. There it is the chief’s son and daughter that are said to have 
borne the titles. Whether there was a real difference of detail be- 
tween Gabrielino and Juanefio custom, or whether the discrepancy 
is one of report, is not certain. 

In any event these names evidence a considerable development of 
the idea of rank, and according to all accounts chieftainship was 
invested with much prestige. This is confirmed by the fact that there 
was a specific ceremony for the installation of a new chief, who ap- 
peared in the wankech in the tobet costume, wearing also a feathered 
rod or slat bound to his forehead by a cord of human hair. 

The authority of the chief is likely to have been less than his 
dignity, and his power less than his authority. He is said to have 
decided on war, to have led on the march, and to have made peace. 
He also announced through a crier or speaker the date of dances, 
though the fixing of the time of these was in the hands either of the 


646 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


older medicine men or those of high rank among the religiously 
initiated. The chief received irregular, voluntary contributions of 
food from the people. When a communal hunt or food-gathering 
trip was undertaken, it was under his direction, and the larger part 
of what was secured was turned over to him. In return, he fed the 
needy and entertained visitors. There seems even to have been some 
notion of his being responsible for the satisfaction of his village in 
time of scarcity, through his ability to fall back upon such accumu- 
lated stores. Most chiefs also had two or more wives, who seem to 
have been thought necessary for the acquisition, or at any rate the 
proper preparation, of the food he was expected to dispense. On 
ordinary occasions it is specifically stated that the chief was obliged 
to hunt for his own sustenance. 

That the chief’s ranking was eonsiderable appears further from the 
fact that he was treated with the utmost deference, especially by the 
young; that it is stated, though probably with some exaggeration, that 
death was sometimes inflicted upon those of his younger people who 
had been disrespectful to him; and from the circumstance that war 
might be made upon another village because its chief had not returned 
adequate presents to the head of the home town. This last cause for - 
fighting has been reported also from the Chumash, and may therefore 
be regarded as authentic, although actual occasions perhaps occurred 
only sporadically. 


MARRIAGE AND BIRTH. 


The bestowing of gifts upon the bride’s family was customary. 
The amount of property, however, was small, and it was tendered 
when the marriage was first proposed rather than when it was con- 
summated. It is evident that the idea of purchase as such was feeble, 
but that custom required the gift as a token. 

It appears that the accepted suitor spent a certain period in his ~ 
bride’s house before marriage took place, hunting and working for 
his prospective parents-in-law. It would be rash to assume, from 
the vague reports that have been preserved, that this practice involved 
a trial of continence such as the Seri followed; but it is not impossible 
that this may have been the case. The wedding was a public affair, 
held under a shade in front of the bridegroom’s house, with a pro- 
longed feast and singing. The essential part of the marriage rite lay 
in the girl’s being conducted to her husband, disrobed, and seated 
on the ground beside him. Small children and even infants were 
sometimes betrothed by their parents. 

Children were named soon after birth, usually by a grandfather 
or grandmother, who bestowed upon it their own name, or that of 
another relative of the same sex. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 647 


The couvade was practiced for a period of half a month or more 
after birth. The father fasted from fish, meat, and tobacco, refused 
to gamble, work, or hunt, and did not leave the house if it was 
possible. 

As nearly everywhere in California, considerable occasion was 
made of the removal of the remnants of the umbilical cord from the 
child. This was taken off by old women, in the presence of a gather- 
ing of relatives, and buried in a hole either within or outside of the 
house, after which dancing took place. 

Habitual transvestites were called kw7t by the Juaneno of the coast, 
uluki by the mountaineers. That they were deliberately “selected ” 
in infancy, as stated, seems inconceivable; but it is extremely prob- 
able that under the lack of repression customary in Indian society 
against the involved inclination, the feminine tendencies sometimes 
revealed themselves in early youth and were readily recognized and 
encouraged to manifest themselves as natural. Such “ women” were 
prized as robust workers, and often publicly married. 


WAR. 


The Juaneno “never waged war for conquest, but for revenge; 
and in many cases for some affront given to their ancestors, which 
had remained unavenged.” Theft, a slight to a chief, the seizure of 
a woman, and perhaps also the conviction that witchcraft had been 
practiced, were causes. An assemblage of the initiated was held, 
over which the chief presided. Other villages were frequently 
asked to join in an attack. The women ground meal furnished by 
the chief, and accompanied the expedition, both as provision carriers 
and to gather up spent arrows. On the march the captain led the 
way, or delegated this position to another. No quarter was given, 
and any wounded who could be seized were at once decapitated. 
Women and children were kept as slaves and taken home without 
redemption. 

As soon as possible the captured heads were scalped. The skin 
was dressed and preserved as a trophy on certain public occasions. 
These scalps were hung from a pole near the wankech. Strenuous 
efforts were made by the relatives of the slain to recover the scalps, | 
heavy payment being resorted to if force failed. 


CuHaprer 46, 
THE LUISENO: ELEMENTS OF CIVILIZATION. 


Territory and numbers, 648; ethnobotany, 649; animal food, 652; implements, 
652; dress, 654; houses, 654; religious scheme, 656; songs, 657; dances, 
660; ground paintings, 661; ceremonial objects, 665; esoteric names, 667. 


TERRITORY AND NUMBERS, 


The Luisefio, named after the Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, 
occupied a somewhat irregular territory, considerably longer from 
north to south in the interior than on the coast and wholly west of 
the divide that extends south from Mount San Jacinto. To the 
northwest and north they had Juaneno, Gabrielino, and Serrano as 
neighbors; to the east the Cahuilla, and to the south the alien 
Diegueno of Yuman family. They were a hill rather than a moun- 
tain people. and scarcely anywhere reached the summit of the 
watershed. 

The Luisefio lack a native tribal name. Designations like Pay- 
amkuchum, ‘“‘ westerners,” were appled to the coast people by those 
of the interior, and perhaps by themselves in distinction from the 
more easterly Cahuilla and Cupeno. The Dieguefio know them as 
Kohwai; the Colorado River tribes seem to include them with the 
Cahuilla; if the Cahuilla, Serrano, and Gabrielino have a designa- 
tion for them it has not been recorded. 

Names like Kechi and Kech-am or Hecham, sometimes cited, either 
mean merely “house, village,’ or are native designations for the 
vicinity of the mission. 

Plate 57 shows some of the best identified places in Luisefo land. 
Most of these seem to have been villages, but with the concentra- 
tion and subsequent dispersal of the population the old continuity 
of habitation was broken, and to-day most of the names refer to 
districts, principally the various Spanish land grants. 

Place names additional to those listed on Plate 57 are: Topamai (Tapomai) ; 
Heish, Gheesh (Keish); Opila (Kwalam); Akipa, Hunalapa, Tutukwimai 
(near Kahpa); Washka (Woshha); Pa’auw, Wikyo (near Ta’i); Kome 
(Panakare) ; camp sites on Palomar Mountain: Wavam, Shoau, Shautushma, 
Malava, Wiya’, Chakuli, Ashachakwo, Pahamuk, Pavla, Tokamai, Mokwonmai., 


648 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 649 


San Clemente Island, Kinki, may have been Luisefio or Gabrielino. 
Statements conflict. Culturally, it was certainly dependent on Santa 
Catalina, of which it formed, in native opinion, a sort of annex. 

There are slight dialectic differences within the Luisenho range, 
especially between the extreme north and south, but on the whole 
the speech is remarkably uniform for so considerable a tract. 

The ancient population is difficult to estimate: 3,000 seems rather 
a low figure, 4,000 a liberally allowed maximum. In 1856 the Indian 
Office reported over 2,500; in 1870, 1,800; in 1885, 1,150; but tribal 
discrimination is likely to have been inaccurate. ‘To-day there are 
less than 500, according to the Federal census—an infinitely larger 
proportion of survivors than among the Gabrielino, but a distinctly 
smaller ratio than the Diegueno have succeeded in maintaining. 





ETHNOBOTANY. 


The following are the plants known to have been used for food 
by the Luiseno. It will be seen that seeds are the most numerous. 
Next in importance come plants whose foliage or shoots are eaten 
raw or boiled. In the third place are fruits and berries. Roots 
are of less consequence than other parts. 


Seeds: Artemisia dracunuloides, Layia glandulosa, Malacothrix californica, 
Helianthus annuus, Bigelovia parishti; Cucurbita foetidissima; Salvia cardu- 
acea, S. columbariae, Ramona stachyoides, R. polystachya; Opuntia (several 
sp.) ; Gilia staminea; Trifolium ciliolatum, T. tridentatum; Prunus ilicifolia ; 
Lepidium nitidum; Calandrina caulescens; Chenopodium californicum; Avena 
fatua, Bromus maximus. The seeds eaten by the California Indians are often 
spoken of as from grasses; but it appears that Composite and Labiatz are 
drawn upon more than Gramines. Some varieties were employed as flavoring 
rather than foods. 

With the seeds must be reckoned acorns, for which a grinding process is also 
required, though leaching replaces parching. In order of esteem, the acorns 
from these species are taken: Quercus californica; agrifolia (oily) ; chrysolepis 
(hard to grind) ; and engelmanni, wizlizeni, and duwmosa, used only when the 
others fail. The Luiseno are still essentially an acorn people; the Cahuilla 
are not. 

Stems and leaves, or parts of them, are sometimes cooked, sometimes eaten 
raw: Carduus sp., Sonchus asper; Solanum douglasii; Ramona polystachya;: 
Phacelia ramosissima; Philibertia heterophylla; Viola pedunculata; Sidalcea 
malvacflora; Psoralea orbicularis, Lotus strigosus, Lupinus sp., Trifolium 
ciliolatum, T. gracilentum, T. microcephalum, T. tridentatum, T. obtusifiorum ; 
Lepidium nitidum; Eschscholtzia californica; Portulaca oleracea, Calandrinia 
caulescens, Montia perfoliata; Chenopodium album; Scirpus sp.; Yucca whip- 
plei, the source of baked ‘‘ mescal,” may also be included. Clovers are perhaps 
the most important in this group. 

Pulpy fruits are small and not especially abundant in Luiseno habitat. Those 
eaten include Sambuscus glauca; Opuntia sp.; Arctostaphylos parryi; Vitis gir- 
diana; Rhus trilobata; Rubus parviflorus, R. vitifolius, Prunus demissa, P. 
élicifolia, Heteromeles arbutifolia; Mesembryanthemum aequilaterale; Yucca 


650 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


mohavensis (flowers boiled, pods roasted), Y. whippleit (flowers). Rosacese 
are the most numerous. 

Of edible roots, the country affords Orobanche tuberosa, Bloomeria aurea, 
Brodiaea capitata, Chlorogalum parviflorum, and probably others, but the 
variety is not great. 


All the California Indians used a considerable number of vegetal 
medicaments. Among the Luiseno, whose knowledge may be assumed 
typical, more than 20 species are known to have been employed. All 
these medicines appear to have been household remedies, whose use 
was not specifically associated with shamanistic practices. 


Ambrosia artemisiaefolia, a species of Adenostegia, and one of Malvastrum 
were emetics. Wounds, ulcers, and sores were washed with an infusion of the 
leaves of Baccharis douglasii, the roots of Psoralea macrostachya, galls from 
Quercus dumosa, or Woodwardia radicans root decoction. Hehinocystis macro- 
carpa, Mirabilis californica, and Sisyrinchium bellum roots served as pur- 
gatives. The flowers of Sambucus glauca were thought to cure women’s 
diseases. The sap of Solanum douglasii berries wags put on inflamed eyes. 
Erythraea venusta yielded a tea drunk in fever. Croton californica was re- 
puted to produce abortion, and Huphorbia polycarpa to be of aid after a rat- 
tlesnake bite. Ribes indecorum or malvaceum was employed against toothache, 
Other medicinal plants, whose specific virtues have not been reported, are 
Artemisia dracunuloides and heterophylla, Bigelovia parishii, Monardella lance- 
olata, Micromeria douglasii, Hriodictyon parryi and tomentosum or crassi- 
folium, Deweya arguta, Cneoridium dumosum, Houttuynia californica, Rumex 
sp., and Pellwa ornithopus. 


A combined pharmaceutical and botanical study would be required 
to reveal what plants of therapeutic value grew in the territory but 
were not employed by the Luisefo. Such a determination, particu- 
larly if prosecuted to the point of an understanding of the motives 
which led to their neglect, would be extremely interesting. 

Although knowledge is far from complete; a review of the plants 
used in technology may not be wasted. 


Houses were thatched with Pluchea borealis or Croton californicum; near 
the coast, with tule, probably a species of Scirpus. These may be considered 
the typical materials; but it is scarcely open to doubt that others were also 
employed. 

Bows were of willow, elder, ash, mountain ash, and an undetermined moun- 
tain shrub. Willow was perhaps the least esteemed but commonest for light 
hunting bows. Neither juniper nor cedar are mentioned. The bowstring was 
either of sinew or of any of the fiber cords. 

The characteristic arrow was of cane, Hlymus condensatus, with a foreshaft 
of greasewood, Adenostoma fasciculatum. This is the south central and south- 
ern Californian arrow with which the grooved straightener of soapstone is 
used, although different species may have replaced the above elsewhere. In- 
ferior or smaller Luiseho arrows had the mainshaft of Heterotheca grandi- 
folia or Artemisia heterophylla. These were straightened with the same im- 
plement. <A totally distinct type of arrow, especially characteristic of the 
Yuman tribes of the Colorado River, was made by the Luisefio of Pluchea, 
borealis, This was not foreshafted and presumably without stone point. 


‘ 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 651 


For string, the outer fibers of the two plants most commonly used in Cali- 
fornia, Asclepias eriocarpa (perhaps other species also) and Apocynum canna- 
binum, milkweed and Indian hemp, were of prime importance. The stinging 
nettle, Urtica holosericea, was also used, but less prized. Yucea mohavensis 
fiber was less employed by the Luisefo than that of Agave deserti by the 
Cahuilla, whose environment rendered them largely dependent on it. 

The main or back petticoat of the women was made of the soft inner bark 
of either cottonwood or willow, as among the Mohave. The smaller front piece 
may sometimes have been constructed of the same material, but its standard 
form was a sheet of cords of the usual string materials. 

Coiled baskets were made, as by all the Shoshoneans of southern California, 
on a foundation of Hpicampes rigens grass stems, wrapped either with splints 
of sumac, Rhus trilobata, or with the stems of a species of rush, Juncus. The 
same rush was made into mats for wrapping ceremonial paraphernalia, while 
mats for household use were presumably of tule, where this could be obtained, 
although none such have been preserved. Twined baskets were apparently 
of another species of rush, Juncus mertensianus. These served for gathering 
food; as “sieves” or leachers; and, it is said, for cooking acorn meal. The 
latter type, which is entirely unknown except from description, must have 
been closely woven; the two former were openwork. (PI. 73, b.) The seed 
beater was of sumac stems. The complete restriction of the entire art of 
basketry to three or four materials is Significant; the attitude involved, char- 
acteristic of the California Indian generally. The Luiseno lacked the favorite 
hazel and redbud of the northern and central groups; but there was nothing 
to prevent them from employing conifer roots and willow shoots and splints. 

The brush auxiliary to meal grinding was made, as in nearly all of California, 
of the bulb fibers of soap weed, Chlorogalum pomeridianum, but there is no 
mention of the plant for lather. Instead, the root of Chenopodium californicum 
and the ripe fruit of Cucurbita foetidissima served as soap. 

Several woods appear to have been employed for drilling fire, but Baccharis 
douglasii was usual. Both hearth and drill were of the same material. 
Although such a practice is contrary to current theories among ourselves, 
which demand variant hardness in the two parts, it seems to have been fre- 
quent in California. The Yana and Maidu availed themselves of buckeye in 
this way. 

The only known vegetal dye of importance was a yellow obtained by boiling 
the roots of Psoralea macrostachya. There may have been others. Blackberry 
juice was sometimes used to stain wooden objects. A red for rock paintings 
and perhaps other purposes consisted of scum from iron springs mixed with 
pine turpentine and oil from ground Hchinocystis macrocarpa seeds. This mix- 
ture, which resisted weather admirably, suggests imitation of civilized technique, 
but the Luisefio declare that they never mixed their pigments with fat. The 
black of basket patterns was mineral; splints were boiled with mud and iron 
scum. 

The juice of the berries of the black nightshade, Solanum douwglasii, is said 
to have been used for tattooing. All other records for California refer to 
charcoal. 

Gum came from pines, or more frequently from an exudation caused by a 
scale on the chamisal or greasewood, Adenostoma fasciculatum. Where it 
could be obtained, asphalt was probably used more than either. 

The only plants known to have been employed ceremonially are tobacco, an 
undetermined species of Nicotiana; and the Jimson weed or toloache, Datura 
meteloides, mentioned in connection with so many Californian tribes. 


652 - BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 
ANIMAL FOOD. 


The animals not eaten by the Luiseno included the dog, coyote, 
bear, tree squirrel, pigeon, dove, mud hen, eagle, buzzard, raven, 
lizards, frogs, and turtles. It is probably significant that snakes 
are not mentioned. Deer were shot, with or without decoy, or snared. 
A. noose was laid in a runway, fastened to a bent sapling. Rabbits 
furnished a more regular supply of food. They were shot, knocked 
over with the curved stick called wakut, driven into long nets, or 
snared. Wood rats, ground squirrels, and mice were not disdained. 
They were sometimes taken in a deadfall of two stones held apart 
by a short stick stood on an acorn. Quails were shot, attracted at 
night by blazing cholla cactus and knocked down, or run down by 
boys in cold, rainy weather. Ducks were killed with the wakut or 
arrows: nets are not mentioned, and would not have been of service 
in the Luiseho country except on the lagoons at the entrance of 
streams into the sea. 

Small game was broiled on coals; sometimes, too, venison and 
rabbits. The two latter were also cooked in an earth oven, whatever 
was not immediately eaten being crushed in a mortar—bones included 
in the case of rabbits—dried, and stored. The pounding of flesh 
is a habit common to most of the California Indians, Venison was 
sometimes boiled, though not often. 

When grasshoppers were abundant in the wingless stage they 
were driven with branches into a pit, into which fire was then 
thrown. 

The coast people fished from canoes or balsas with dip nets, seines, 
and lines of yucca fiber. The hook was of bone or cut from the cen- 
tral portions of haliotis shell where the gram twists. A harpoon 
was also used, no doubt of the customary type. Mollusks, of course, 
were important. 

The mountain people had only a few trout and minnows, which 
they took by poisoning or with dip nets. 


IMPLEMENTS. 


The bow and arrow were of the usual southern Californian types: 
the one long, narrow, and unbacked, the other often of cane and 
generally foreshafted. Bow strings were of Apocynum or other 
cord materials, which in this case were sometimes three and four ply. 
Sinew bowstrings were regularly three ply, as among the Cahuilla 
and Mohave. The arrow hold is specifically described as the Medi- 
terranean one; the primary release was employed only for unfore- 
shafted or small arrows. The Mediterranean release has heretofore 
not been reported from North America except among the Eskimo. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 653 


Pottery and basketry need no description, being substantially 
identical with that of the Cahuilla. 

The pipe, hukapish, was chiefly smoked lying down, presumably 
at bedtime. This is the favorite occasion for smoking among most 
California Indians. The pipe is described as most commonly of 
pottery, but shamans used ancient stone pipes in their practices. 

Chisels, perhaps more accurately described as wedges, were of deer 
antler, driven by a stone. The present is the most southerly occur- 
rence reported for this tool, which is the universal Californian sub- 
stitute for the ax. 

The Luisefo use the bedrock mortar of the northern tribes, and 
add a movable one. Zopal and arusut are native names. The port- 
able mortar was usually excavated in a large bowlder, that might 
weigh 200 pounds or more, and was evidently not intended to be 
carried away every time residence was shifted. A coiled basket 
hopper set on the stone is described as intended for new and shallow 
mortars, being discarded as the hollow deepens. If this is correct, 
the southern California mortar basket is a device to save labor in 
stone working. The northern California form, whose twining indi- 
cates an independent origin, is an outright substitute for the mortar, 
never being set on anything but a flat slab. 

The toloache mortar, tamyush, was more symmetrical, often finely 
polished, and sometimes ornamented with exterior grooves. It was 
not used for profane purposes. Its pestle, too, was neatly shaped, 
instead of being merely a convenient bowlder. Paint mortars, also 
having religious association, were equally well finished, and were 
called “ little tamyush,” tamya-mal. 

Some of the Luiseno profess that the metate is a Spanish importa- 
tion, but their statements, which employ the name ngohilish, prob- 
ably refer to the well-made three-legged article, introduced by the 
Mexicans and used by the Indians at the missions. This interpreta- 
tion is confirmed by the designation of the muller, po-ma, “ its 
hand,” Spanish “mano.” The crude grinding slab is undoubtedly 
native among all the tribes of southern California. The Luiseno 
name it madal, which is the same word as “ metate,” Aztec metlatl. 
It has been indicated above, in the chapter on the Maidu, that there 
is some evidence for believing the concept of the metate to have been 
introduced into California from Mexico. If this had happened after 
the Luisefio were in their present seats, they would not be designat- 
ing the article by a word formed from an ancient common Uto- 
Aztekan stem. Nor, on the other hand, would they know the name 
if they had come as a metateless people into California after the 
metate was established there. It seems, therefore, that they always 
had the implement and brought it with them; in fact, it may possibly 


654 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Run 78 


have been the Shoshonean drift of which the Luiseno were part that 
introduced the metate to California; but our uncertain chronologies 
of national migrations and archeology forbid such a hypothesis being 
taken very seriously. 

Besides the balsa, the coast Luiseho knew the canoe, which they 
called pauhit, “yellow pine.” The same name was given to boxes 
hollowed out of wood as receptacles for ceremonial feathers—an- 
other of the many cultural reminiscences of the Southwest. Inci- 
dentally, the name suggests that the canoe was a dugout, not a plank- 
built boat as among the Gabrielino and Chumash. It is said that 
canoe voyages were sometimes made to San Clemente Island. 


DRESS. 


Clothing was of the common type—nothing for men, a back and 
front apron for women, with yucca fiber sandals and caps on oc- 
casion. The cap was worn chiefly with loads. The Luiseho women 
of to-day do not habitually wear it; and it seems that this is the 
old fashion. A twined cap of Juncus is described besides the stiff 
coiled one that is stil] to be seen. The Diegueno knew both kinds 
also. As everywhere, there were two names among the Luisefo for 
the two pieces of skirt: shehevish, the larger, made of inner bark, and 
pishkwut, the front piece,.of twine, and partly netted. Both sexes 
in cold weather wore long capes or robes of woven rabbit fur, deer- 
skins, or sea-otter furs. The latter were highly prized. 


HOUSES. 


The permanent houses of the Luiseno were earth covered and 
built over an excavation some 2 feet deep. As in the case of the 
Cahuilla, accounts vary between descriptions of a conical roof rest- 
ing on a few logs leaned together, and of a less peaked top supported 
by one or two planted posts. The inference is that both construc- 
tions were employed, the latter especially for large dwellings. For 
less permanent residences, the ground might not be dug out, and the 
dirt covering was presumably also omitted. The earth was kept 
from dropping through the framework of the roof by a layer of cedar 
bark in the mountains, of stems in the lower belt, and of tule or 
sedges on the coast. There was a smoke hole in the middle of the 
roof, but entrance was by a door, which sometimes had a short tun- 
nel built before it. Cooking was done outdoors when possible, on 
the central hearth when necessary. People slept with their feet 
toward this. 

Except for its smaller size and lack of a roof entrance, this dwell- 
ing resembles the earth house of the Wintun, Maidu, and Miwok. No 
direct relationship may, however, be inferred until the steps of the 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 655 


connection have been ascertained. The intervening Yokuts and 
Gabrielino had no earth-covered lodges. The immediate linkage of 
the Luiseno is through the Cahuilla and Dieguefto with the Mohave 
and Yuma structure; but the latter, which has several center posts 
and definite though low walls instead of an excavation, is a more ad- 
vanced type. On the other hand, the conical form of the Luisefio 
earth lodge seems to have been rather similar to the Navaho hogan. 

The sweat house was similar to the dwelling, except that it was 
smaller, elliptical, and had the door in one of the long sides. It 
rested on two forked posts connected by a ridge log. Men sweated 
in the evening, perhaps in the morning also, but did not regularly 
sleep in the sweat house. Perhaps it was too small an edifice to 
serve as a club. The heat was produced, as almost everywhere in 
California, directly by a wood fire. 

The wamkish or “temple” or religious edifice was a mere round 
fence or hotahish of brush. The opening was usually to the north, 
although some accounts mention the east. On both sides were 
narrower openings for the dancers. The more esoteric actions were 
carried on toward the rear, if possible. Spectators looked in at the 
main entrance or saw what they could through and over the fence. 
No particular sanctity appears to have extended to the structure 
when not in use. Performers prepared and dressed in another but 
smaller circle, which stood some distance off on the side toward 
which the opening faced. 

This unroofed ceremonial inclosure is found as far north as the 
Yokuts, and, for the mourning anniversary, even among the Maidu. 
It seems also to be distributed through the Shoshonean Plateau, and 
may have an ultimate connection with the Sun dance lodge of the 
Plains, although this, in turn, resembles the Missouri Valley earth 
lodge minus walls and covering, and may therefore be compared, 
in type if not in origin, with the Sacramento Valley ceremonial 
chamber and house. In California, however, the inclosure is, as its 
distribution shows, definitely associated with the mourning anni- 
versary and the toloache religion. Both these religious cycles are 
quite undeveloped among the Colorado River tribes, especially the 
Mohave, and the inclosure is not known to them. It is therefore 
doubtful how closely the Navaho ceremonial inclosure may be his- 
torically connected with that of the southern Californians. 

With the Mohave and Yuma, as with the Yokuts, the shade roof 
appears as a place for singing or religious exhibition, though ap- 
parently more as a convenience than with any attached idea of a 
definitely ritualistic structure. The shade was much used by the 
Luiseno and their neighbors in daily hfe, but not in ceremonial 
connections. 


3625°—25-—43 


656 BUREAU Of AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (pune. 78 
RELIGIOUS SCHEME, 


On the side of its plan, the religious life of the Luisefio comprises 
two classes of ceremonies: initiations and mourning rites. These 
seem to be of distinct origin, but have come to be interrelated at 
several points. This interrelation appears to be due to their asso- 
ciation with a relatively late form of the Jimson-weed cult, the form 
built around the deity Chungichnish or Changichnish, and carried 
to the Luisefo through the Juaneno, among whom it has already 
been mentioned, from its Gabrielino source, ascribed by tradition 
to Santa Catalina Island. Among the Luisefio this version of the 
Jimson-weed religion has touched the girls’ adolescence rites, whose 
basis seems to be independent of it; and has colored the mourn- 
ing observances, and even allowed these to react in some measure on 
itself. The god of this religion seems to be forced rather lamely into 
the cosmogony of the Gabrielino and Juaneno: what is said of him 
lacks the true mythological ring, the color of incident; the statements 
are abstract or rationalizing. Among the Luisefio he enters hardly if 
at all into narrative. The Diegueno, finally, though they have taken 
over most of the Luiseno practices, do not seem to know the god: at 
least his name has never been recorded among them, nor any synonym. 

But with the Luiseno, Chungichnish is still the god who ordained 
the sacred practices, except the mourning ceremonies, which were 
instituted on the death of the more mythological divinity Wiyot; 
and he is also a living god, who watches and punishes. He is dis- 
tinctly a Jehovah; and if it were not for the wholly native flavor 
of the ideas connected with the cult, and the absence of European 
symbols, it might be possible to think of missionary influence. At 
that, Christianity may well be the indirect stimulus at the root of 
the Chungichnish movement, since its spread into Luisefio territory 
went on at least in part, and may have occurred entirely, during the 
mission period. 

This idea of a present and tremendously powerful god, dictating 
not only ritual but the conduct of daily life—a truly universal deity 
and not merely one of a class of spirits or animals—is certainly a 
remarkable phenomenon to have appeared natively among any Amer- 
ican group north of Mexico. 

It ts clear that the Chungichnish cults are totally diverse from the 
elaborate rituals of the north that have been described as the Auksu 
ceremonials, in spite of the fact that the central feature of both sets 
of practices is the initiation into a kind of esoteric society. The 
Sacramento Valley religion is conceptual only in spots; its cults as 
such, not any single idea permeated with some quality of grandeur, 
are its fundamental and subsuming element. 


kK ROPBER HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 657 


This conclusion of separate developments is borne out by the dis- 
tribution of the two religions. They are separated by a tract of the 
magnitude of a third the length of California, in which indeed tolo- 
ache is used in religion but Chungichnish and the symbols peculiar 
to him are unknown. 

But before the initiation rites and then the mourning observances 
are described it is necessary to examine certain definite religious de- 
vices or forms, which have, it is true, become embodied in the 
Chungichnish cult, but seem to be neither an intrinsic nor an origi- 
nal part of it. 

SONGS, 


Luiseno ritual is complicated by the coexistence of two currents of 
expression. Until the relation of these is more exactly determined, 
the organization of the tribal religion will remain obscure at many 
points. On the one hand, there are ceremonies; on the other, songs. 
The more important ceremonies have each a set of its own songs. 
But there are series or kinds of songs that do not pertain specifically 
to any ceremony. These, as well as songs from other ceremonies, 
are freely introduced into almost any rite. 

Thus, in the 7'auchanish, there are sung in order the following: 
Pimukvul, Temenganesh, Cham-towi, Kamalum, Kish, Anut, Nok- 
wanish, Totawish, Monival, Nyachish. In the Wekenish, the Ashish 
or Wekenish songs proper are followed by the Cham-towi set. 


Songs forming part of @ ceremony. 


Totawish, name given the dancer in the Morahash. 

Anut, ‘‘ant,”’ from the initiatory ant ordeal. 

Ashwut, ‘‘ eagle,” from the eagle killing. 

Ashish, “ first menses,” from the Wekenish or adolescence ceremony. 
Tauchanish, the memorial mourning rite with figures. 

Shungamish, sung as the figures burn in the mourning ceremony. 


Songs not belonging to specific ceremonies. 


Pimukvul, ‘ death.” 

Cham-towi, “ our spirit,’ or Kiinamish, *‘ root, origin.” 
Kamalum, ‘*“‘ sons,” referring to the first people. 
Temenganesh, ‘‘ season” (teme-t is ‘*sun”’), 
Nokwanish, sung for men dancing. First sung by the rabbit. 
Tapa’sash, sung for men dancing. 

Kish, “ house.” 

Monival, ‘‘ travel, tracks.” 

Nyachish, containing maledictions of foes. 

Chatish, shamans’ songs. 

Numkish, shamans’ songs to cause the growth of food. 
Tuknish, the same in puropse, but distinct. 


The “ death ” songs all refer to the death of Wiyot, and many are 
put in his mouth. Wiyot counsels the people before his departure, 


658 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 78 


or enumerates the months in which he may die. Others allude to 
Wiyot’s death through the frog, or the digging of the pit for his 
funeral pyre. 

“ Our spirit ” songs contain passages such as these: 


“North, east, south, west, the hair lives.” Hair is symbolie for spirit; and 
there is allusion to hair ropes at the four ends of the sand painting repre- 
senting the world. 

‘North, the hair, the wanawut, lives tied, fastened. My origin lives there.” 
Presumably the other directions are also mentioned. The wanawut is the 
sacred rope in the initiation rite. 

“T thought (‘hearted’) at the hayish-racing at the moon, I thought with 
surprise at the moon.” Death is connoted. 

Another song refers to sky’s heart as well as the iwanaivut and sand painting. 


Irom songs of “ Season ”: 


“All named wanaiwut.” 


$9 


“ Hid the season in the water,” an act of frog and earthworm. 


“The ant has his speech, 
“The butterfly has his wamkish inclosure, 
“The chipmunk has his hollow log for acorn storage.” 


‘““T am doing something.” The month Nemoyil, when the animals grow 
fat, is mentioned or connoted. 


* North the wehanut bears young, 

* North the elk bears young, 

“Hast the mountain sheep bears young, 

* Kast the horned toad bears young, 

‘South the awawut bears young, 

“South the tamyasowut bears young, 

* West (the ocean) tosses. 

* In the middle here the deer sheds its hair, 

‘The sky sheds its hair (changes color).” The reference is to the 
month Pahopil. 

‘**At Malmus rose the son Sun.” 

“See ye that San Gorgonio mountain.” Cahuilla Valley, Kupa, Volcan, 
Pine Mountain, and Malava on Palomar Mountain are also mentioned. 

Part of a “ Travel” song: 

“Then I do not know the tracks, 

“Then I err in the tracks.” 

A number of places are mentioned, apparently beginning with the spot near 
San Gorgonio Mountain at which the ancient people could not pass through a 
defile and their language became different, and proceeding southward to 
Temecula. 


An Ashish song beginning with the words: “I am adolescent” 
seems to name a similar series of mountains: San Gorgonio, San 
Jacinto, Kupa, Volcan, Cuyamaca, Cahuilla Valley, Pine Mountain, 
Palomar. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 659 


The closing song of the same series begins near Bonsall, proceeds 
to Santa Margarita, and ends at Elsinore, where Swift and Kingbird 
were the first girls to be adolescent. 

Another Ashish. song refers to Deer’s desire and failure to escape 
from death, which he found waiting at the north, east, south, and 
west. The same idea, but with Kagle as character, inspires a recita- 
tive in the Wiyot myth. Eagle goes from Temecula to mount San 
Gorgonio, Cuyamaca, Palomar, and returns to Temecula to die: the 
directional circuit agrees. 

An “Ant” song: 

“They did not wish to give their kill that they had.’ Puma, Jaguar (?), and 
Thunder Cloud seem to be referred to; Deer is their game. 


A Toloache drinking song: 


“Tamyush walked twisting.” Tamyush is the sacred mortar from which the 
Jimson weed is drunk. 


From shamans’ Chatish songs: 


“From my feet, from my hands, was drawn, was drawn.” 

‘Something thundered from their feet, from their hands.” This and the 
last refer to curative power. 

“To me it comes, Towut comes, Yawut comes.’ Towut and Yawut are 
names for a fine dust or mist. This is evidently a weather shaman’s song. 

“Shot, shot, towauya.” This word is from the stem of towish, spirit. The 
reference is to killing by means of the shaman’s stick, 


It appears that nearly all the songs except those of a specific 
shamanistic character consist of mythological allusions. They may 
be said to float in a web of tradition. Those that are not mytho- 
logical are directly descriptive of the ritual to which they pertain. 

Further, the songs of different series are similar not only in char- 
acter but in detailed content. The rising of constellations is men- 
tioned in 7'auchanish, Death, and Season songs. Long enumerations 
of places are frequent, whatever the connection; and these frequently 
begin or end at the same spot, such as Mount San Gorgonio or Teme- 
cula. Ashish and Ant songs both refer to Deer; Death and Season 
songs enumerate or allude to months. The indiscriminate prevalence 
of a certain ritualistic phraseology is thus obvious; and this must be 
admitted as being patterned in a fashion that can only be called 
highly decorative, in the sense that it 1s symbolic, abbreviated, and 
only conventionally representative. 

This strong uniformity explains the frequent transfer of Luiseno 
songs from one ceremony to another. 

All these traits recur in undiminished or exaggerated vigor in 
Mohave, Yuma, and Dieguefio songs. As to their northward and 
westward distribution, enough is indicated by the statement that 


660 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY “TBULD. 78 


a large proportion of the songs sung by the Luisefo are in the 
Gabrielino language. Yokuts songs, on the other hand, as the 
examples quoted establish, lack all the peculiar traits of those of the 
south: they are more concretely picturesque, but are unmythological, 
ungeographical, and nearly lacking in astronomy and symbolism. 

Precisely to what extent the Luisefio and Gabrielino songs of each 
kind constitute a series strung on a single plot can not yet be said. 
But is is clear that they approach closely to the song cycles of the 
Mohave and Yuma. On the coast, song and ceremony are two 
parallel developments, interconnected at innumerable points, yet 
essentially pursuing separate courses. In the Colorado Valley 
ritual has been nearly effaced, or has come to consist essentially of 
singing, with the choice of series dependent on the singer rather than 
the occasion. This allows the>Mohave songs to be dreamed by the 
individual, in native theory, in place of being acquired by avowed 
tradition. ‘The Mohave songs seem also to have reached a greater 
extremity of dependence on myth and wealth of geographic allu- 
sion; but, as might be anticipated from the greater poverty of ritual 
accompanying them, they are less eee by metaphoric sym- 
bolism. 


DANCES. 


Much as songs of various kinds were introduced into the most 
diverse rituals, so the Luiseno had two or three standard dances 
which they performed on several occasions as part of their initiation 
as well as the mourning rites. It seems, therefore, that the dances, 
like the songs and in a measure the sand painting, were fixed ele- 
ments upon which the ceremonies as larger wholes were built up. 

The paucity of dances and abundance of song types among the 
Luiseno marks an approach to the method of religion of the Mohave 
and Yuma. 

The commonest Luiseno dance to-day is the Tatahuila, which is 
always made by a single performer. 7Z'atahuila is uniformly re- 

garded by the Indians a a Spanish word. The Luisefio word is 
M orahash, which means “ whirling for;” the dancer is called totaw- 
ish, hick may perhaps be regarded as a dialectic form of tobet 
(Spanien for tow-et), the name the Juaneno are said to have given the 
costume. The Dieguefio say Tapakwirp. Besides the headdress, the 
principal apparel is a skirt of eagle feathers, which swing effectively 
in the very characteristic motion of the dance, a continued and very 
rapid whirling. The body was painted; probably as by the Dieguefio, 
with horizontal white bands. 

The fire dance, of which the native name is not known, served 
as a climax and was part of the magical stock in trade of the 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 661 


toloache initiates. A large fire was danced out, the performers ap- 
proaching the edges, stamping the embers, falling back, rushing up 
once more, and sitting down to kick the blazing coals inward. The 
feet were bare and there seems to have been no treatment or mechan- 
ical preparation, but a certain amount of earth was pushed on the 
flames with the feet and when possible unobtrusively thrown on with 
the hands. As each dancer’s attack lasted only a few seconds at a 
time, while he was in rapid motion, and the number of performers 
was great, it is probable that most of the blaze was extinguished by 
actual stamping. There is nothing astounding or cryptic about this 
exhibition, but it unquestionably was spectacular, and is described 
as impressive even to white people. No public fire dance is known 
anywhere to the north in California, and eastward it seems not to be 
encountered again until the Pueblos are reached. 

Like the fire dance, the Morahash appears to have been in the 


hands of the toloache initiates, but both were certainly made as 


part of mourning rites. 

The Diegueno add to these two dances a third, the Hortloz, which 
can probably be identified with the Luiseno Z’anish, since the latter 
is described as the dance of the initiates or pumal-uwm in mass, 
which accords with the performance of the Hortloz; also because 
the songs of the latter are in the Gabrielino language. This Die- 
gueno exhibition is the one that Americans have come to know 
as the “ war dance,” but it appears to have no reference whatever 
to war. The step is a forward jump with both feet, followed by a 
stride. To successive songs the dancers circle contraclockwise, 


stamp standing, and jump backward in line. 


GROUND PAINTINGS. 


With the Luisefo we encounter for the first time detailed refer- 
ences to a ritualistic device of the greatest interest, which is known 
to have been used also by the Juaneno, Gabrielino, and Fernandeno: 
the ground or sand painting. The Diegueno sand painting has also 
been recorded, and the Cupeno apparently used it. The Cahuilla 
and Chumash are in doubt. It is therefore rather clearly a develop- 
ment of the Shoshoneans of the coast region. It is connected with 
the Chungichnish form of the Jimson-weed cult, and about coterm1- 
nous with it. | 

This sand painting of southern California is unquestionably con- 
nected with that of the Pueblos and Navahos. There can also 
be little doubt that it originated in the much more complex cere- 
monialism of these southwestern nations. But it is not a recent 
importation; and the history of its diffusion can only be appre- 
ciated properly with reference to the fact that not even a trace of 
the custom exists among the intervening tribes of the Colorado 


662 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


River, nor apparently among the Pima. Like the Chungichnish 
religion with which it is associated, it is clear that the Californian 
‘sand painting rests upon old cultural materials common to the 
Southwest and southern California and probably evolved chiefly in 
the former region, but that its actual essential form is a purely local 
erowth. This is not only indicated by its geographical distribution 
but confirmed by its subject matter, symbolism, and style, which 
reveal scarcely anything specifically southwestern. 

The painting was made in the wamkish or ceremonial enclosure, the 
“temple” of older authors. The Luiseno brought it into the Jimson- 
weed initiation for boys; the Yunish Matakish or death rite for initi- 
ates; and the girls’ adolescence ceremony. With the Dieguefio the 
latter ceremony belongs to an old native stratum and has not been 
colored by Chungichnish influences as among the Luisefio. They 
therefore do not use the painting in this connection. 

The Luisefio call the sand painting torohaish or tarohaish, or in 
ritualistic speech, following their usage of doubling terms. eskanish 
tarohaish., . 

Figure 56 shows all known restorations of Luisefio and Dieguefio 
ground paintings. In spite of the variability, which may have been 
nearly as great in practice as in these reproductions, a distinct tribal 
style as well as a fundamental uniformity are apparent. This fact 
renders it highly probable that the lost paintings of the Juanefio 
and Gabrielino were similar in tenor but also distinctive in manner, 

The elements in the Luisefio and Dieguefio ground paintings shown in 
Yigure 56 are as follows: 1, Milky way. 2, Night (or sky). 3, Root (of ex- 
istence), kwinamish. 4, Our spirit or soul. 5, World. 6, Hands (arms) of 
the world. 7, Blood. 8, Rattlesnake. 9, Spider. 10, Raven. 11, Bear. 12, 
Puma. 13, Wolf.2 14, Apmikat. 15, ‘“ Breaker.’ 16, Stick, wood. 17, Coyote. 
18-21, Black, gopher, garter, red racer snake. 22, Sun. 23-24, New and full 
moon. 25, Pleiades. 26, Orion. 27, Altair. 28-29, ‘‘ Cross” and ‘ Shooting ” 
constellations. 380, Sea. 381, Mountains. 32, Hill of hulwul plant. 33, Boil, 
abscess. 384, Coronado Island. 35, Mountain of creation. 36, San Bernardino 
(Gorgonio?) Mountain. 387, Santa Catalina Island. 38, Four avenging 
animals. 389, Ceremonial baskets. 40, Toloache mortar and pestle. (The last 
two may be the actual objects rather than representations.) P, Pit in center. 
S, Spitting hole. . 

In all cases, it is clear that the essential subject of the depiction 
is the world. The Luisefio, however, are chiefly concerned with re- 
vealing its subtler manifestations—the mysterious encircling Milky 
“Way, the all-encompassing night or sky—or its still more spiritual 
phases as expressed in a symbolism of human personality: the arms, 
the blood, our root or origin, the spirit. Within this frame are in- 
dicated—depicted would be an exaggerated word—the punishers 
sent by the invisible Chungichnish: the raven, rattlesnake, spider, 
bear, wolf,) mountain hon, and the cryptic Apmikat and “ breaker.” 


2Or jaguar (?). 


KROBBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 663 











Fie. 56.—Southern California ground paintings (altars). a—d, Luisefio; e—f, Dieguefio. 


664 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY - [put 78 


In the very center is the hole symbolical of death and of the burial 
of human ashes: called tolmar or tolmal, the abode of the dead; or 
the navel—of the universe. 

To the Dieguefio this abstruseness and mystic craving are foreign. 
They paint the world indeed; but it is the visible universe. The en- 
closing circle is merely the horizon or the edge of the earth. The 
figures within it are a downright map of the mundane surface and the 
celestial sphere. The Milky Way stretches across the middle as it 
bisects the heavens. On one side are the summer constellations 
Aquila and Cygnus, on the other Orion and the Pleiades of winter— 
each group identifiable by its form. The sun and moon are too con- 
spicuously visible overhead to be omitted: so they are represented. 
T’'o the Luiseno the luminaries mean nothing, because Chungichnish 
symbolism does not include them. The navel of death, again, is an 
idea, not a feature of land or sky—the Dieguefio omits it. His 
mountains, too, are not vague harborers of the messengers and aveng- 
ers of a cult, but actual named peaks; and the four in figure e stand in 
very nearly the relative geographical position, with Dieguefo land 
as a center, that they occupy in the painting. 

Having mapped his world, the Dieguefo proceeds to fill it with 
living beings. These are not mere heaps of pigment to which an 
old man can point while naming dangerous animals in his sermon 
on the punishment of disobedience, but actual representations: 
excessively crude, it is true, even’ abbreviated to a few strokes, but 
still pictures. The spider can be distinguished from the snake, 
the snake from the wolf. This is not the case in any Luisefio paint- 
ing. For good measure, as it were, perhaps because their drawing 
is easily effective, the Diegueno add to the dread rattlesnake (whose 
eyes are of haliotis and whose diamond-back pattern is carefully 
indicated) sketches of several harmless species, whose symbolic sig- 
nificance is unknown and probably slighter. 

Among the Luisefo, two styles of painting are discernible, which ap- 
pear to pertain respectively to the girls’ adolescence rite and to the boys’ 
initiation. The painting for the girls (a and probably 0b) has three concentric 
circles, open to the north; within, the several avengers are indicated in a 
more or less circular arrangement. The painting for the boys (¢, d) perhaps 
lacks the gateway to the north, has only one or possibly two enclosing circles, 
and is quartered. The representations of the avengers seem to predominate 
in the western half. At the same time the network of interior lines in @ 
and c is not very different, and may be intended for an identical pattern. 

The diameter of the ground painting is described as being 2 to 38 feet for 
the girls’ painting (a), and 4 (c), 12, 15, or 18 feet (d, e, f) for the boys. 
The materials include ashes and powdered soapstone for white; charcoal; 
reddish iron rust or scum; yellow may also have been used; and variously 
colored “sands” and ‘‘earths” are mentioned more vaguely. The harmless 
snakes in the Dieguefio paintings were of “ seeds.” 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULER TING 7S PEAT E63 





DIEGUENO “TATAHUILA” PERFORMER, IN THE 
STANDARD DANCE COSTUME OF SOUTHERN 
CALIFORNIA 





POMO WOMAN PARCHING CATERPILLARS 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 62 





CAHUILLA SANDAL OF YUCCA FIBER 





CAHUILLA PAINTED POTTERY JAR 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 665 


There is some mention of cords of human hair leading from the Luiseno 
painting to sticks or canes planted in four little mounds on each of the cardi- 
nal sides: these tied the world and probably the human spirit also. It is not 
certain whether these objects were actual or only painted: the former seems 
more likely, since ropes that were pulled are mentioned of the Fernandeno 
ground painting. 


~ CEREMONIAL OBJECTS. 


The palut was perhaps the most showy of Luisefio religious regalia. This 
was a net tied around the waist, from the lowest loops of which hung eagle 
or condor feathers. It was worn in the morahash dance, as part of what 
the Juanefo would call the tobet costume, and its free swishing added to the 
effect of the rapidly turning dancer. (Pls. 42, c; 61.) 

Headdresses are simple, but the native recognition of types is not altogether 
clear. The commonest form was a bunch of owl or spotted hawk feathers, more 
or less slashed, and. mounted on a stick. These appear to be called cheyat. 
They were worn in pairs, one at each side of the head, held by a band. The 
hainit, Juaneno eneat, apparently was a band or upright row of feathers en- 
circling the head. The apuma is mentioned as an erect eagle feather head- 
dress. Not one of these pieces was notably brilliant, large, or elaborate. 

The yukish was an ancient headdress of human hair, held in place by a 
cord of the same material. Its form is not clear. It may have corresponded 
to the Juanefio emech. Hair was very sacred to the southern Californians, and 
the Luisefio used it with evident reference to the idea of human personality 
and employed the name yula as a constant metaphor for “ spirit.” 

The yellow-hammer forehead band typical of central California is not found 
in most of the southern part of the State. The Luisefio, however, made 
tuminut, long bandoliers of dark feathers, less trimmed than in the central 
Californian ornament, but, like them, laid in opposite directions and sewn 
through. (PI. 58.) Similar pieces have been found among the Koso and in an 
ancient cave cache in Gabrielino territory. The occasions on which they were 
worn are not known. 

The paviut was a hand wand a foot and a half long, associated with the 
Chungichnish cult. It consisted of a board more or less pointed below, some- 
what flaring at the upper end, where it was inlaid with haliotis, and tipped 
with a crystal or large flint. 

The elat was also a board, a foot long, painted red, with snake rattles 
or the like attached, held upright by the feathered cheyat band against the 
forehead of the pula, when he doctored, made rain, or juggled. The employ- 
ment of this standardized piece of costume by the shaman is one of many 
links that closely ally him with the initiate or pumal. 

Wooden “swords,” that is, really, flexible wands, were swallowed either 
by the pula or the pumal, probably the former. This is a southwestern trick 
of which little is heard in central and northern California. 

The rattle was a turtle shell on a stick, the openings wound with cord. 
‘Wild cherry pits made the sound. The deer-hoof rattle associated in northern 
SJalifornia with the girls’ adolescence ceremony was known to the Luisefio, 
but used only, it seems, in hunters’ rites. Neither the clap stick nor the cocoon 
rattle of central California was employed. 

The whistle of huikish, Elymus cane, stopped with asphalt, was blown by 
the men who sang and danced about the boys undergoing the ant ordeal. It 
was called pahal. 


666 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The bull-roarer, momlahpish, is a crude board, whirled as a summons to 
religious assembly and as a starting and stopping signal. Its size—from 1 foot 
to nearly 2—stamps it as an iniplement for outdoor use. (PI. 44.) 

Two traits characterize the religious regalia of the southern Cali- 
fornians as typified by the Luiseno. 

First, they are simple and comparatively somber. Although of 
feathers, they lack the bright colors and showy forms that character- 
ize the area of the Kuksu religion and of the northwestern open- 
air dances. There is not a trace of anything like a mask or a dis- 
guise of the performer. These qualities are a reflex of the toloache 
religion, which at least in its Luiseno form knew a god too lofty and 
pervading to be impersonated, but no nearer spirits other than 
animals. Hence while the initiates constituted a body that must 
unquestionably be considered as a sort of organization, they did 
without the masking which is so frequent an accompaniment of the 
esoteric society in aboriginal America. The comparative simplicity 
of dance costume is already observable among the Yokuts, the most 
northerly of the toloache-using tribes. 

Second, the powerful psychic effect of the Jimson weed caused 
the cult based upon it to take on a specifically inward character. 
There are innumerable references to the human spirit, to the rela- 
tion of life and death. What we should call the soul is constantly 
being symbolized or alluded to. The Maidu and Wintun have very 
little to say about the soul of man, but more about the spirits or 
minor gods that populate the world or helped to shape it. Thus 
their ritual is comparatively dramatic, representative, spectacular, 
its costuming diversified, picturesque, impressive; but both are sym- 
bolic in only minimum degree. The southerners thought of life as 
such, not of events. Their concepts must of needs be ritualized; yet 
as their abstractions were better expressible in the sand painting, 
in the wanawut representation of the grave, or in the burying of 
the dead pumal’s badge than in any apparel of feathers and sticks, 
the costume, like their dance movements and cries, became wholly 
unrepresentative. It was worn because ancient tradition so ordained; 
not because it illustrated. Its form, therefore, crystallized largely 
along lines of simple convenience, and it came to matter little whether 
the regalia were diverse or the same for all occasions, as long as 
their conformity to custom indicated the sanctity of the occasion. 
The history of dance costume in southern California can accordingly 
not be traced from anything intrinsic to religious thought or feeling. 

In general, then, ceremonial paraphernalia and dance actions 
stand apart from religious beliefs in southern California. Songs 
and ground paintings directly reflect concepts and myths, but run 
a course largely independent of ritualistic actions. Hence all four 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 667 


sets of elements are made use of in the scheme or organization of 
religion almost as if they were foreign matter. 


ESOTERIC NAMES. 


The Luisefo consistently employ a distinctive device in their ritual- 
istic designations. A double name, consisting of a pair of juxta- 
posed synonyms or approximate synonyms, is given to many ideas. 
So strong is this inclination that where two words are not available, 
as for animals, two of these are coupled as if they were one: compare 
“bear mountain-lion” in the little sermon quoted in the section 
headed Morality. The cosmogonies outlined also offer abundant 
illustrations. Yunish matakish, eskanish tarohaish, wanal wanawut, 
antish tivihayish, kimal chehenish are other examples; also the star 
names piwish ahuta and ngoiwut chawochmush,; and sivut paviut, 
the crystal-tipped stick. There are indications of a similar habit 
among the Juanefo, as in the various names of Chingichnich: 
Wiamot, Kwawar, Saor, Tobet, and in the two terms ano and takwe 
applied to the ceremonial cannibal. Among the Luisefo even place 
names are usually coupled in myth or song: Pawt Chawimai, 
Cahuilla Valley, Aupa Kawimal, “ Kupa little hill,” Khoa Temeku, 
Temecula; two spots in the same vicinity appear to be treated as one. 


CHAPTER 47, 
THE LUISENO: ORGANIZATION OF CIVILIZATION. 


The toloache initiation, 668; the wanawut, 671; the ant ordeal, 672; the Yunish 
Matakish, 672; the girls’ ceremony, 673; mourning ceremonies, 675; cos- 
mogony, 677; the soul, 679; shamanism, 680; calendar and astronomy, 682; 
morality, 688; society, 685. 


THE TOLOACHE INITIATION. 


The toloache ritual is the heart of the Chungichnish religion. In 
the main, it consists of a series of acts initiating boys, but there is 
also a feature that is rather uncommon in American Indian esoteric 
associations, a mourning observance for dead members. As is fre- 
quent, however, among primitive people, there is no formal ritual 
tor adherents as such. The normal function of the society is to per- 
petuate itself rather than accomplish some clearly realized end. 

The initial and most significant proceeding in the initiation, as the 
natives seem to see it, is the taking of the Datura drug. This act is 
called pwnish mani, or mani pwash, or simply mani. As pa— means 
“to drink,” mant appears to denote Jimson weed, which in fact is 
the meaning of the stem throughout the Shoshonean dialects of 
southern California. The Luisefio, it is true, call the plant itself 
naktomush. It is therefore probable either that mani has become 
with them a synonym of exclusively religious denotation or that 
mani means the principle or decoction. 

The drinking takes place at night. All uninitiated boys are gath- 
ered and brought together. Small boys are sometimes carried in 
asleep. Any man who may have escaped initiation in his youth, or 
alien resident, is given the drug with the youngsters. A fire is 
lighted in the wamkish, and the people begin to gather there. The 
various tamyush or toloache mortars are dug from their hiding 
places, repainted, and set in the wamkish. Only the mortar actually 
to be used, together with a tukmal or flat basket, are brought to the 
small or preparatory enclosure which stands near the wamkish. It 
is in this smaller place, unlit and without audience of the uniniti- 
ated, that the toloache is drunk, and there the boys are taken. One 
of the paha’, ceremonial chiefs or managers, pounds the dried roots 
in the reserved mortar, to a sacred song or recitative, after which 


668 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 669 


the potion is prepared with hot water. The usual way seems to 
have been to sift the powder from the basket back into the mortar 
and add the water, which was allowed to stand for a while. In other 
cases the hot water was poured over the basket, or the powder boiled 
in a pottery jar. The drinking itself, however, was from the mortar 
in which the plant was crushed, the boys kneeling before it. The 
manager held the forehead of each in turn, to pull it back when he 
had drunk enough. The drug was powerful, and the Luisefo tell of 
cases of fatal result. 

Meanwhile one of the managers has gone three times to the large 
inclosure to notify the people there that manz is coming. Each boy, 
after the drinking, is taken in charge by a man who appears to direct 
and steady him. ‘The procession to the wamkish seems to be per- 
formed crawling on hands and knees, by the men at least, each of 
whom utters the cry of an animal. Possibly this act takes place 
on later days of the ceremony. ‘The mortar and baskets are believed 
to march along. There may have been a simple legerdemain to 
produce this effect. The party divides in two, each half making 
a three-quarter turn about the enclosure and entering by one of the 
side gates. They then march or stand the boys around the fire, 
apparently dancing the tanish. The youths soon begin to sway and 
reel and have to be supported under the armpits. Before long they 
fall and become entirely unconscious, and are then carried to the 
smaller enclosure, where they he in complete stupefaction, watched 
only by a few men. The other adult members remain in the wam- 
kish, dancing the tanish until morning. They seem to stand in a 
semicircle back of the fire, with a line of seated men singers facing 
them across it, and women, also singing, behind the men. Still far- 
ther back, outside the main entrance, stand the spectators. 

The duration of complete narcosis is not quite certain. The Die- 
gueho appear to reckon it one night, and speak of quantities of 
warm water being given the boys in the morning to remove the re- 
maining effect of the drug. A Luisefo account speaks of two or 
three nights, and of a stupefaction of four being excessive. It is 
probable that the period was variable: there was no definite measure 
to the bulk of root used nor was accurate contro] possible of the 
quantity of liquid drunk by each novice; besides which, the boys were 
of different ages and their constitutional resistance to the drug must 
have varied individually. It may be added that the ceremony was 
not performed annually or at a fixed season, but every few years, as 
the old men might decide that there was a sufficient crop of fresh 
boys. Nor did anyone drink toloache twice. 

The so-called intoxication is in any event the cardinal feature of 
the entire initiation, and therefore the heart of the cult. There is 


670 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY LBULL. 78 


no doubt that its sacredness and supernatural basis le to the native 
mind in the physiological effect of the drug. It produces visions or 
dreams as well as stupor; and what the boys see in their sleep be- 
comes of lifelong intimate sanctity to them. This vision is usually 
an animal, and at least at times they learn from it a song which they 
keep as their own. It seems also that they will not kill any individual 
of the species. It is clear that the concept of the vision corresponds 
exactly with what among certain primitive tribes has been unfortu- 
nately denominated the “personal totem.” It is certain that a spe- 
cial and individual relation of a supernatural kind is believed to 
exist forever after between the dreamer and the dream. The simi- 
larity to shamanism is also obvious; but it would be as misleading to 
name the Luisefo institution outright “shamanistic” or “ totemic.” 

The duration of the ceremony is not clear, and may not have been 
fixed. A Luisefio account speaks of men from other villages dancing 
with the boys for four or five nights after the first one, painting and 
instructing them, and teaching them their songs. A Dieguefio ver- 
sion is to the same effect, adding that each boy thus acquired a kind 
of proprietorship over certain alien songs in addition to those given 
him by his kinsmen; but this account makes the visitors come in only 
after six nights of dancing with the home people. 

At any rate, a fast is observed by all the boys for about six days, 
complete at first, and relaxed later to a limited amount of acorn 
mush, but no meat or salt under any circumstances; and they dance— 
apparently the tanish—nightly and sleep during the day. 

The first period is followed by a more temperate one of perhaps a 
month, and a third and still milder one of another month, during 
which the night dancing continues, but for briefer hours, and the 
novices are allowed all the acorn or sage-meal gruel they wish. 

Kven after this time has elapsed, the boys are forbidden meat for 
several months, and are then encouraged to refrain from it, or at 
least to eat it sparingly, for as much longer as possible. This com- 
mencement with the main act of the ceremony and gradual dying 
away of the ritualistic observances without definite end, instead of 
a climax, recurs also in the girl’s initiation, and seems characteristic 
of Luiseno procedure. 

Various other things are taught or half revealed to the boys, 
probably during the first intensive period of initiation. These include 
the fire dance, with its appearance of magic; the putting of feather 
headdresses into the flames and taking them out whole; the shooting 
of men; the cutting off of one’s tongue; and the like. These tricks 
are at any rate performed; and while it is not likely that they are 
deliberately and wholly exposed to the youths at this time, they are no 
doubt carried out for them to know something about. 


KROEBER J HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 671 


That some sort of progress in knowledge is made by the boys is 
likely from a Diegueno account of the boys instead of the men crawl- 
ing to the wamkish on the second, third, and fourth days of the 
initiation. 

A month or so after the toloache drinking, the boys dispose of the 
belts which they have heretofore worn on account of their hunger, 
and run a foot race back to the wamkish. At the end of the second 
month they are presented each with a feather headdress and a 
painted dance stick, which, though lacking the sacred crystal, is a 
sort of imitation of the paviut. After this the ground painting is 
made and then comes the final rite of the wanawut. A different 
account speaks of this being performed three days after the drinking, 
but all other informants agree that the wanawut act takes place after 
the period of fasting. 

The ground painting is made in the wamkish, and has been de- 
scribed before. As its meaning 1s explained, the boys are given an 
elaborate lecture, passages from which are quoted below in the section 
on Morality. At the last, a lump of sage meal and salt is put in each 
boy’s mouth, after having been touched against several parts of his 
body as in the girls’ rite, and is spat by him into the central hole of 
the painting. This is then erased by pushing the pigments into the 
hole, so that no uninitiated may see the figure. 


THE WANAWOUT. 


Hither the same day or the next, toward the end of the afternoon, 
the wanawut rite takes place. Ceremonially this object is called 
wanal wanawut or yula wanawut, wanal being a seine or long net, 
yula hair or spirit. The wanawut is a long mesh of milkweed. or 
nettle twine, the size of a man, and having head, legs, arms, and per- 
haps a tail. Its name is undoubtedly a derivative from wanal, its 
association with yula is probably only symbolic of spirituality, but 
may mean that the object was sometimes made of hair. In the net 
are three flat stones, or according to another statement, four are set 
upon it. The entire figure is laid in a trench, the feet apparently to 
the north: the Dieguefio say east. 

Each boy in turn now enters the trench, supported by the old man 
who has acted as his sponsor, and at a signal leaps from stone to 
stone. Should he slip, it is an indication that he will die soon. Very 
small boys are partially assisted by the old men. When all have 
jumped, they help the old men push the earth into the trench, burying 
the figure. 

The symbolism of this strange rite clearly refers to life and death. 
The trench represents the grave: the Luiseno cremated their corpses 
over a pit which was filled when the embers and bones had sunk in. 


8625 °—25——_44 


672 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY - [BuLL, 78 


The figure is human. It is specifically said to denote the Milky 
Way—otherwise a symbol of the spirit or soul. There seems also to 
be present the idea that the spirit of the dead is to be tied, perhaps 
to the sky, at any rate away from earth; and the cordage of the ob- 
ject is probably significant in this regard. It is obvious that there 
existed a rich though perhaps but half-expressed symbolism in con- 
nection with the wanawut, of which only fragments are known to us. 

When the wanawut is finally buried, the tantsh is commenced for 
the last time and danced through the night, ending toward daybreak 
with the fire dance. There are some references to burning the wam- 
kish about this time, or part of it for the whole. It may be con- 
jectured that it is the brush enclosure that furnishes the fuel for the 
final fire dance. At any rate, this destruction of the sacred enclosure 
marks the termination of the collective acts of the initiation. 


THE ANT ORDEAL. 


The Antish (literally “anting,’ from anut, “red ant”), also called 
Tivthayish, was an ordeal for boys or young men, probably made 
within the toloache initiation, but perhaps held as a separate supple- 
ment. In the latter event, many features of the initiation were re- 
peated, such as fasting, the foot race, and the ground painting. The 
rite itself was carried out with secrecy toward the public. . 

The boys were laid on ant hills, or put into a hole containing ants. 
More of the insects were shaken over them from baskets in which 
they had been gathered. The sting or bite of the large ant smarts 
intensely, and the ordeal was a severe one, and rather doubtfully 
ameliorated when at the conclusion the ants were whipped from the 
body with nettles. 

There are special anut or antish songs, whose use, however, follow- 
ing Luisefo custom, is not restricted to this ceremony. 

Ant bites were used medicinally as far away as the Yokuts, but an 
ant ceremony has not been reported from farther north than the 
Juaneno and probably did not extend beyond the Gabrielino at most. 
The animal is, however, very distinctive of southwestern ceremonial- 
ism. Many of the Pueblos have ant fraternities, and among probably 
all of them there exist esoteric rituals for curing sickness brought on 
by ants. These particular concepts are of course not Luisefio; but 
there can be little doubt that the southern California ordeal has at 
least received its impetus from the same source that caused the 
growth of the Pueblo ant ceremonies. 


THE YUNISH MATAKISH. 


The Yunish Matakish appears to be held as part of the mourning 
anniversary, but is a specific Chungichnish rite, of which the cen- 
tral feature is the burial, in the central hole of the ground painting, 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 673 


of the feather headdress and other cermonial paraphernalia which 
the dead man has had since initiation. The ritual seems to come 
on the last afternoon of the mourning, just preceding the night in 
which the images are burned. The painting is made in the wam- 
kish, the sacred toloache mortars and baskets are set out, and the 
general aspect of events is similar to those which marked the en- 
trance of the member into the religious life of his people years 
before. 

His late companions have gathered at the small enclosure, and 
amid wailing by the spectators approach one by one toward the 
wamkish, imitating the deceased as well as they can. Finally, among 
the Diegueno, the whole membership crawls into the wamkish, each 
man painted with the footprint of the animal that he saw in his own 
toloache vision, and uttering its cry. It is very probable that the 
practice of the Luiseno is the same. 

After the men are seated about the ground painting they grunt and 
blow, the feathers are placed in the central pit, and then the company 
buries them by pushing the painting into the hole. 

The “ grunting” is an element of all Luiseno ceremonies. It is a 
ritualistic sound, sometimes described as a groan or growl, ending 
in a marked expulsion of the breath, and accompanied by an exclama- 
tion mwau or wiau. It seems always to occur in threes and to have 
symbolic reference to the spirit or soul. 


THE GIRLS’ CEREMONY. 


The Wekendsh or girls’ ceremony has as its central feature an 
act practiced by all the Shoshoneans of southern California: the 
“roasting.” 

The ceremony, according to established Luiseno practice, was called 
and financed by the home village, but its direction was in the hands 
of the ceremonial head of another village or “clan.” Several girls 
of one “clan” were usually treated at once, only one, however, being 
at the actual physiological period indicated by the word ash. As it 
is said that they did not undergo the rite a second time, the number 
of performances of the ceremony in each locality can have been only 
a fraction as numerous as the arrivals at womanhood. Perhaps the 
wealthiest or most prominent men had the ritual made as their daugh- 
ters reached the requisite period, while other parents availed them- 
selves of the opportunity thus offered their younger girls to participate. 
Among small and poor hill tribes, having few public rituals to occupy 
them, the coming to age of each young woman may have furnished a 
welcome occasion for a general gathering. To relatively populous 
groups like those of southern California, with wider range of ac- 
quaintance and alliance and frequent festivals produced on a large 


674 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 


scale, an equal attention accorded to every female member of the 
tribe would be likely to be monotonous, if not burdensome. Two 
alternatives are open: to maintain the ceremony as an important one 
but reduce its frequency by grouping the girls, or to minimize the 
significance of the rite, leaving it an affair for kinsmen and fellow 
residents rather than the larger community. The southern Cali- 
fornians followed the former plan; the Yurok and Hupa, and the 
Mohave, the latter. 

The first step in the ceremony was to make the girls swallow balls 
of tobacco as an ordeal. Only those who did not vomit were con- 
sidered virtuous. As the Indians say, this was a hard test. 

The girls were then placed on their backs in a pit that had pre- 
viously been lined with stones, heated, and then carpeted with tus- 
sock grass and sedge. *IT'wo warmed flat stones were put on the 
abdomen of each maiden. The girls lay as still as possible for 
three days. At night men and in the day women danced around 
the pit. Each girl had her head covered with an openwork basket . 
to keep the flies off, the Luisefio say—perhaps to prevent undue and 
prejudicial movement. Northern Californians give as the reason 
for a similar veiling the balefulness of the young woman’s glance 
at this time. Such ideas are, however, in the background if they 
enter the southern Californian’s mind at all. It is an interesting 
case of an identical act having almost contrary import according to 
cultural attitude. 

Scratching with the finger nails would be very bad. In former 
days the girls were therefore furnished with scratchers of haliotis. 

The girls did not wholly fast, but refrained from meat, fish, and 
salt. Once every 24 hours they left the pit, which was then reheated. 

When finally taken out the girls had their faces painted by the 
wife of the officiating chief. Bracelets and anklets of human hair 
and necklaces of Hchinocystis macrocarpa were put upon them. 
They were now free to go about, but the food restrictions endured 
another month or several, and might be voluntarily prolonged for a 
year or two. Cold water was especially to be avoided. 

At the end of the first month the sand painting is made, and its 
explanation is combined with a sermon by the ceremonial chief on 
the subject of good conduct in life and its rewards, as quoted below. 
Each girl then has her head, shoulders, arms, breast, and knees 
touched with a ball of sage meal and salt, whereupon this is put in 
her mouth. Leaning on hands and knees she spits this mess into 
the central hole of the painting. The painting itself is then shoved 
into the hole by the men seated about it, exactly as in the yunish 
matakish for dead initiates, and as the wanawut trench is filled in 
the boys’ initiation. 


a 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 675 





- The girls, accompanied by friends, thereupon run a race—another 
ceremonial device of which the Luiseno are fond. The chief’s wife 
then again paints them. With the same paint she makes a large 
geometrical pattern upon a rock, or according to another account, 
the girls themselves do so. Their hair ornaments are deposited on 
the rock. 

This face and rock painting is performed monthly three or four 
times. The last occasion marks the final act of the ceremony. 

At some time in the period of the observances the girls are tattooed. 


MOURNING CEREMONIES. 


The impress of death is heavy on the mind of the California Indian. 
He thinks of it, speaks of it, tries to die where he has lived, saves 
property for years for his funeral, weeps unrestrainedly when the 
recollection of his dear ones makes him think of his own end. He 
wails for days for his kin, cuts his hair, and shudders at their men- 
tion, but lavishes his wealth in their memory. It is no wonder that 
he institutes public observances for them. In the north, indeed, these 
are scarcely developed; but from the Maidu south, the mourning 
anniversary has followed the course of our description with growing 
intensity. The Luisefo practiced at least half a dozen mourning 
ceremonies after the cremation of the body. 

The relation of these is not altogether clear. The 7wvish appears 
to be first in order and simplest. This hinges about a ritualistic 
washing of the clothes of the deceased, as part of a night of singing, 
declaiming, and dancing in the ceremonial inclosure. Kin and 
fellow residents participate; the rite is for an individual. It is held 
soon after death, and its purpose is to banish the spirit from its 
familiar haunts. 

The Chuchamish came next and ran a similar course. Here the 
clothing was burned and the dead instructed to depart to the sky. 

The Zauchanish is the great public observance for the dead of the 
year, or several years, marked, as among many other tribes, by the 
exhibition and burning of images of the dead, rude figures of rushes, 
but often hung with valuable clothing and beads. The signal to 
start and stop the songs to which the images are carried is given with 
a bull-roarer. The rite is instituted and provided for by the chief, 
but conducted by the ceremonial leaders of invited clans or villages. 
The guests receive presents, and are privileged to despoil the images. 
This observance is not part of the Chungichnish cult, and is prob- 
ably far older: in fact according to the Diegueno it was the first 
ceremony in the world; but, like almost everything in Luiseno re- 
ligion, it has been affected by the Chungichnish worship. 


676 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The Notush was a local correlative of the 7auchanish, perhaps in- 
troduced from the Gabrielino to the northern Luiseno. It does not 
seem to have become established among the southern Luiseno in the 
mountains, but was brought to mission San Luis Rey probably in the 
time of the padres. It is described as a more elaborate and costly 
rite than the Zauchanish. The use of images is not mentioned. The 
characteristic feature was a tall painted pole representing the spirit 
of the dead person and called kutumit, Fernandeno kotwmut, in 
Luiseno esoteric language kimal chehenish, that is, “little-house appear- 
ances.” Each portion of the pole denoted a part of the body, but 
there seems to have been no attempt at actual representation. The 
top was painted white and bore a raven skin, called levalwush, 
“wide; below this were baskets and other valuables, which ap- 
parently became the property of those who succeeded in climbing to 
them. Contests were a distinctive feature of the Votush. as the fol- 
lowing “ origin ” tradition of the ritual reveals. 

The first Notush ceremony was held between Pala and Temecula. Sea fog 
erected the great pole, and the uplanders of the east gathered to contend with 
the westerners of the coast. Squirrel alone climbed to the top, cut the string, 
and won the baskets for his mountain companions. Mechish, who crawls in the 
sea, carried off the great sack in which was all the gathered food, but this 
victory was in turn balanced by wide-mouthed Nighthawk, who was the only 
one able to devour the mass. Then the owl and a fish stared at each other; 
but at last the bird blinked and the west was victorious. The raven skin was 
hanging on the pole, the two sides were getting angry, and a fight portended. 
Thunder cloud roared, but failed to uproot Sea fog’s house, but when Sea fog’s 
wind blew, the mountain houses went down. They then raced to La Jolla 
in the mountains. Many became exhausted, but Hagle, Chickenhawk, and 
Raven now won for the east from Butterfly and Grasshopper. Another race 
was north to San Gorgonio Mountain, through the open country, and Antelope 
of the plains beat Deer of the mountains. A second match led through the 
rugged hills. and Deer earned his revenge. So they contested in the first 
Notush. The Yokuts have faintly reminiscent tales of contests between hill 
and valley people. 


The Ashwut maknash or eagle killing was an anniversary held for 
chiefs—the Dieguefio say for their dance leaders. Probably both 
accounts are correct for both tribes. Eagle and condor nests were 
personal and hereditary property. The young were taken from them 
and reared. In the ceremony, made at night in the wamkish, the 
eagle was danced with, and finally “shot” to death with a magic 
stick. Actually his heart was pressed in, but the trick was known only 
to the toloache initiates. The relatives of the dead man wailed and 
his successor gave away property to the invited performers. This 
arrangement pervades all Luiseno mourning rites: the home village 
issues the invitation and provides food and gifts, the guests perform 


re. 


KROBBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 677 


the ceremony and receive the presents. The eagle’s body was ritu- 
ally burned or buried. 
The Yunish matakish has already been described. 


COSMOGONY. 


The basis of the Luisefio origin tradition is a group of ideas that 
are widespread in southern California. But in the ritualistic cos- 
mogony these appear in a very specialized shape. First, the concept 
of prime origins by birth, instead of a process of making, is more 
thoroughly worked out than by perhaps any other American tribe 
except possibly some of the Pueblos. Secondly, there is a remark- 
able attempt at abstract conceptualizing, which, though it falls short 
of success, leaves an impression of boldness and of a rude but vast 
grandeur of thought. The result is that the beginning of the 
Luiseno genesis reads far more, in spirit at least, like the opening 
of a Polynesian cosmogonic chant than like an American Indian 
tradition of the world origin. 

It is a gratification to record this fact, and perhaps worth while 
remembering it, since it reveals the cultural worth that hes exposed 
but overlooked in the achievements of many an obscure tribe. The 
civilization of the California Indians was so nearly equally rudimen- 
tary that the temptation is great to regard it as a unitary if not a neg- 
ligible datum. But we need only approach this civilization in a spirit 
free from haste, and it becomes apparent as endlessly diversified in- 
stead of monotonously homogeneous, flowering in the most unexpected 
places, and with all its childlikeness not devoid here and there of 
elements of subtlety and nobility. Few California tribes may have 
reached the attainments of the Luiseno; but each was possessed of its 
cultural individuality and endowed with potentialities that have now 
been cut off but which must continue to summon respect. 

This is the story: 

The first were Kyuvish, “ vacant,” and Atahvish, “ empty,’ male and female, 
brother and sister. Successively, these called themselves and became Omi, 
“not alive,” and Yamai, “not in existence”; Whaikut Piwkut, ‘“ white pale,” 
the Milky Way, and Harurai Chatutai, “ boring lowering”; Tukomit, “ night,” 
with the implication of “sky,” and T'amayowut, “earth.” She lay with her 
feet to the north; he sat by her right side; and she spoke: “I am stretched, 
I am extended. I shake, I resound. I am diminished, I am earthquake. I 
revolve, I roll. I disappear.” Then he answered: “I am night, I am inverted 
(the arch of the heavens). I cover. I rise, I ascend. I devour, I drain (as 
death). I seize, I send away (the souls of men). I cut, I sever (life).” 

These attributes were not yet; but they would be. The four double existences 
were not successive generations: they were transitions, manifestations of 
continuing beings. 

Then as the brother took hold of her and questioned, she named each part 
of her body, until they were united. He assisted the births with the sacred 


678 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


paviut stick, and the following came forth singly or in pairs, ceremonial ob- 
jects, religious acts, and avenging animals: 

Hair (symbolical of the spirit) and Nahut (the mystic wanawut figure?) 

Rush basket and throwing stick. 

Paint of rust from springs and paint of pond scum. 

Water and mud. 

Rose and blackberry, which sting for Chungichnish. 

Tussock grass and sedge, with which the sacred pits for girls were lined. 

Salt grass (and grass?) 

Bleeding and first periods, 

These were human; and so were the next born, the mountains and rocks 
and things of wood now on the earth; and then followed the badger; Altair 
the buzzard; the feared meteor Takwish; the subterranean water monster 
Chorwut; towish, the spirit of man that survives the corpse; the black oak; 
‘“ vellow-pine-canoe cottonwood” (a receptacle for feathers) ; kimal chehenish, 
the pole and offerings of the Notuwsh mourning; the ash tree; the plant 
isla; the large brake fern; the black rattlesnake; the red rattlesnake; spider ; 
tarantula hawk; raven; bear; sting ray; tukmal, the winnowing basket used in 
initiation; shomkul papaiwish, sea fish and urine for ceremonial sprinkling; 
topal tamyush, mortar and toloache mortar. 

All these were the first people, touching one another in the obscurity, far 
in the north. They traveled to Darkening Dusk, where something high 
stopped them; then to Hill Climbing, the impassably narrow canyon; then 
to the lake at Elsinore; then to Temecula. There Hainit Yunenkit made 
the sun and the first people raised him in a net four times to the sky. There 
also Wiyot, bewitched by Frog, sickened and after long illness died. Under 
the direction of Kingbird, he was burned, but only after Coyote had stolen 
his heart. Kingbird announced his return: “Wiyot rises, Wiyot the moon,” 
and all saw him in the west, soon to appear in the east. Eagle, knowing 
what was now in the world, went or sent his spirit north, east, south, west 
to escape, but finding pi’?’mukvul, death, everywhere, returned to Temecula, 
and, accepting his future fate of being danced with and killed, died. Deer, 
too, after a long evasion, resigned himself to death when he was told of the 
feathers that would wing the arrows sped after him. And last, Night, here 
at Temecula. divided the people, gave them the languages which they have now, 
and sent them to their fixed abodes. 


Other versions, as among almost all tribes, vary indefinitely in 
minor content. The long list of sacred births in particular is never 
given alike. But the tenor of the conceptualizing is always the 
same; and every old man knows at least phases of this cosmogony, 
and is aware of their place and significance. We face, in short, 
more than the philosophizing of a gifted individual endeavoring to 
rise above the concrete and naive crudities of his age and land. 
The cultural creation of a nation lies before us. 

Besides the migration legends embodied in the story of the origin 
of things, the Luisefo tell traditions that are primarily geographical. 

Nahachish, “glutton, the disease consumption, old age, or male,” a great 
man at Temecula, had the hook broken down on which he hung his abundance 
of food, and, starving, began to travel. Near Aguanga he was given gruel 
(which is light vray), so, saying “ My stomach is picha (whitish)” he named 
the place Pichanga. On Palomar he was again fed, until his belly burned, 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 679 


and he uttered “My stomach is nettle, shahishla,’ and the place became 
Shakishna. At Kayawahana he knelt and drank and left his footprints. 
Sovoyami he named because he was chilled, Pumai because he whistled, Yapi- 
chai for a feast witnessed, and Tomka because he was fed. Where he drank 
he called the place Pala, “ water,’ and Pamai, “small water,” and a muddy 
spot Yuhwamai. Below Pala, seeds were ground for him into meal too fine 
to handle, and he was poisoned. Perishing, he turned homeward, but died 
and became a rock just before he could arrive. 

There are probably many other tales of this strange character— 
trivial or meaningless to us, surcharged with associations to the 
native. 

THE SOUL. 


The life or soul was called shun, Juanefio -sunt, “heart.” This 
was the part of the person believed to go to the stars. 

The towish, Juaneno touch, was the ghost, and was apphed both 
to a corpse and to the spirit detached from it. Its translation as 
“ devil” is of course inaccurate, but yet not wholly of wrong impli- 
cation, since a haunting ghost would work harm; otherwise it would 
not have been feared so vigorously and directed to depart. It is 
probable that it was the towish which went into the ground to 
what was known as tolmar or tolmal, which was also the 
name given to the symbolic pit in the center of the ground painting. 
As to the meaning of tolmal, compare the phrase ha-tolmik, trans- 
lated as “ infierno,” but said literally to mean “he is gone.” 

Kwinamish, “root” or “ origin,’ 1s much used to designate the 
spirit, apparently as such, or in the living, without the implication 
of death which attaches to towish. 

Yula, “hair,” has already been mentioned as a frequent symbolic 
designation of the spiritual. 

The Juaneno pzuch or “ breath ” should, on the analogy of fouch- 
towish, appear in Luiseno as piwish. This word is actually found 
as a name of the Milky Way, particularly where this is coordinated, 
as in the ground painting, with the towish and kwinamesh. 

Huhlewish is said to have the signifiance of “ religion ” or “ sacred 
matters.” 

Potish is a dream. 'The shamans are said to have their “ dreams ” 
tell them how to proceed with the treatment of a patient. Just what 
this may or may not imply as to a conception of a guardian spirit 
is not certain. 

The word used in the sense of Algonkin manitou, Siouan wakan, 
Iroquois orenda, Yokuts tipin, and our “ supernatural,” is not known, 
except for one mention of towauya, evidently from the stem of 
towish. 

Takwish, literally “ eater” or “eating,” denotes not so much a class 
of spirits as one particular monster or divinity that makes his home 


680 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


on San Jacinto Mountain, carries off and devours human beings, and 
appears usually as a low-flying meteor or ball of lightning, but also 
in birdlike form or as a man in feathers. Sight of him portends 
disaster and death. He also enters prominently into myth, but as 
an independently acting being, unassociated either positively or 
negatively with Wivot or Chungichnish. His origin is thought to 
have been in Diegueno land, where he is known as Chaup, and Poway 
is mentioned as his birthplace. Part of his career was run among 
the Luiseno, especially in association with Temecula, so often men- 
tioned in song and story; and his final abode is the great peak San 
Jacinto, where Cahuilla, Serrano, and Luisefio territory met. The 
Luiseno leave the first part of his history to the Dieguefio, but nar- 
rate freely his later actions. There is a wideness of international 
outlook in these relations that is characteristic of the southern Cali- 
fornians, but unheard of elsewhere in the State. 

Wite, witiak, or witiako was a sort of greeting spoken when one 
encountered a raven, the messenger of Chungichnish. 


SHAMANISM. 


None of the several investigators who have recorded information 
on the Luiseno make very clear mention of a belief in the familiar 
or guardian spirit. The same holds true of all other southern Cali- 
fornia tribes, whereas north of Tehachapi the guardian spirit is regu- 
larly and specifically referred to as the source ef shamanistic power. 
Knowledge for the south is admittedly imperfect; but the tenor of 
the sources on the two regions is too uniformly distinct to allow of 
any inference but that the attitude of the cultures differed. For the 
Yuma and Mohave, indeed, it can be asserted positively that they did 
not know this class of spirits. Now it is interesting that no mention 
of personally owned spirits is made in any account of the several 
Pueblo groups. Nor is there anything definite from the Navaho. As 
to the Apache, there exists an extensive monograph on their medicine 
men; and it is significant that while this describes numerous charms, 
and discusses the practice of magic, it nowhere alludes in unmistak- 
able manner to guardian spirits. For the Pima, statements as to 
guardian spirits are also somewhat indefinite, whereas it is specifi- 
cally stated that the most important shamans are those who receive 
their ability from their fathers. 

It may be concluded, therefore, that in ‘fir area which includes the 
Southwest and ern Gobi enby the idea of the guardian spirit, 
which is so basic in the conception of shamanism among the Ameri- 
can Indians at large, is either lacking or very imperfectly developed. 

Among the Pueblos the organized fraternities cure disease and 
may fikele have crowded not only the guardian spirit belief but 


KROPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 681 


the shaman himself out of the culture. With the river Yumans, the 
shaman dreams indeed, but of an ancient divinity; and other men 
who do not practice medicine dream of him too, and quite similarly. 
For the Juaneno, Boscana reports that the toloache initiates had the 
animal or being visioned in their intoxication as protector through 
life. This is an undoubted approach to the guardian spirit, idea. 
But the drug was drunk as part of a cult, initiation into which 
marked civic and religious maturity; it was not taken by individuals 
to acquire medical faculties. It seems, therefore, that the factors 
which have displaced the guardian spirit belief vary locally. The 
inference is that the concept, for some unknown reason, lacked vigor 
throughout the area, and that in consequence substitutes for it arose 
independently among several groups. 

An alternative interpretation would be that the organizing of 
religion and intrusting of its exercise to official priests suppressed 
the guardian spirit type of individualistic shamanism among the 
Pueblos, and that this negative influence spread from this culturally 
most advanced group to other southwestern tribes as far as the 
Pacific, local groups of the tribes substituting diverse customs more 
or less of their own devising. 

There is, it is true, one Luisefio statement to the effect that shamans dream 
of ‘‘a rock, a mountain, a person, or something similar” and receive songs 
from this object of their dream. But this reference is too vague to count 
for much. The mountain or person might be mythological, as among the 
Mohave; that is, an ancient bestowing divinity rather than a present and con- 
trollable spirit. 

On the other hand, it is significant that of the three special classes of 
shamans known to all the Indians of central California, the bear doctors, rain 


doctors, and rattlesnake doctors, the latter are the only ones not known to the 
Luisefio and their neighbors. 


The practices of the curmg shamans are the conventional ones, in 
spite of the difference in conceptual attitude. They suck, blow to- 
bacco smoke, spurt water or saliva over the patient, rub, or wave 
feathers over him. Sickness is considered to be largely the result 
of witchcraft—that is, of malevolent shamans—and counter-bewitch- 
ings and outright slayings were frequent. Sympathetic and _ per- 
haps imitative magic were liberally practiced in this connection; 
hair, nails, and blood carefully concealed. As in the remainder of 
California, except on the Colorado, disease was thought to be caused 
by the presence of a physical object in the body rather than by an 
affection of the soul. Thus sucking was the foremost reliance of 
the physician. True, there are monsters or water spirits, the pava- 
wut, koyul, and yuyungviwut, that not only drown people but steal 
their souls and make them sick; but the immediate cause of the 


682 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


illness in native opinion is perhaps the diet of frogs that the 
yuyungrviwut imposes upon his or her captive and enforced spouse. 

The shaman, Spanish hechizero, is called pula; the toloache 
initiate, pumal. The probable etymological connection of these two 
words has already been commented on in the chapter on the Juaneno. 


CALENDAR AND ASTRONOMY. 


- The Luisefo had more star names than most Californians. This 
superiority may be connected with their belief that the dead turned 
into stars. In all southern California constellations are named in 
ritual, and particularly in song, much more frequently than in the 
northern part of the State, and play a more important part even than 
in the ceremonies of the Southwest. But where the Mohave and 
Yuma sing over and over of Orion and the Pleiades, the Luisefio 
appear to have had designations for all first-magnitude stars. The 
known appellations are: Hula’ch-uwm, Orion’s belt, and Chehay-am, 
the Pleiades, usually mentioned together; Vukulish, Antares; Nuku- 
lish po-ma, “his hand,” Arcturus; Yungavish, “buzzard,” Altair; 
Yungavish po-ma, Vega; Yungavish po-cheya, “his headdress,” a 
star near Altair; Waunish, Spica; Ngoiwut chawochmush, Fomal- 
haut; Zukmi iswut-um pom-shun, “night wolves’ their hearts,” the 
North Star, which does not move. The Pleiades were girls once, and 
Aldebaran is their pursuer Coyote. 

The only planet recognized was Venus, called Lluchah, “ leavings,” 
as of food over night. 

The Milky Way, piwish or ahuta, had several esoteric designa- 
tions, and was more than the mere ghosts’ road of most Californians. 
It was symbolically associated with the spirit of dead man, towish, 
with the sacred cord wanawut—itself representative of life—and 
probably with the mystic being Whazkut Piwkut, “ white grayish,” 
one of the preexistences of Night and Earth. 

The Luiseno calendar has been preserved, but is not well under- 
stood. Eight. periods are named. None of the terms has been trans- 
lated; and their season and order are not certain. They are 7Z'as- 
moyil (grass is green), Zawut, Tausanal (grass sere), Tovakal 
(fallen leaves), Vovanut, Pahoyil, Nemoyil (deer are fat), Somoyzl. 
Each has two divisions, the first designated by a diminutive form 
with alwmal, “ lean,’ the second by the addition of mokat, “large.” 
Thus, Zasmoi-mal alwmal and Tasmoyil mokat. The “lean” and 
“large” evidently refer to the appearance of the moon. If we 
add to eight lunar months two longer unnamed or overlooked periods 
at the solstices, we have a calendar similar in plan to the peculiar 


‘There are no wolves in southern California; but iswut is from the stem of. isil, 
coyote. Possibly the word has come to denote the jaguar. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 683 


one described from the Juaneno. But a comparison of the names 
of the periods fails to reveal the least verbal resemblance; and the 
Luiseho names may have been seasonal without exact lunar cor- 
relation. 

MORALITY. 


A nation’s ethical practices can best be judged by the foreigner ; 
its code, by its own statements. We are fortunate in possessing 
extended addresses, recorded in the native dialect, of the kind that 
the Luiseno were wont to deliver to their boys and girls. The oc- 
casion was ritualistic, but it marked also the entry of the young 
people into manhood and womanhood, and much of what is en- 
joined is purely ethical with reference to daily life. The avengers 
are supernatural and determined by the prevailing cult, the punish- 
ment is concretely physical. One must respect his elders, listen 
to them, give them food freely, not eat meals secretly, refrain from 
anger, be cordial and polite to one’s relatives-in-law. Then one will 
be stout, warm, and long haired, will grow old in good health and 
have children to whom to pass on counsel, be talked of when death 
comes, and have one’s spirit go to the sky to live. The disobedient 
and heedless will be bitten by the rattlesnake or spider, they will 
vomit blood, swell up, go lame, fall into wasting cough; their eyes 
will granulate, their children be sickly. Fortune or misfortune 
hangs over every act. Virtue is far from being its own reward— 
it is the only path that leads to prosperity. Back of all hovers the 
unnamed figure of Chungichnish, whose messengers and instruments 
execute many of the punishments. But the afflictions are stated as 
inevitable facts: there is no allusion to the deity’s will or pleasure, 
nor any outright reference to his anger. He is very far from 
being as personal as Yahweh; yet there is no concept of any law, 
nothing that we should call a principle, only an inexorable causality 
manifest in innumerable specific but endlessly varying instances. 
One does not reason about this sequence nor stop to bow before an 
omnipotent personality behind it. One merely adjusts himself 
to events as to the stress of nature, and takes measures for a wise 
arrangement of life instead of a series of troubles, in the same spirit 
as one might provide against storm and starvation. The Luiseno 
made efforts, indeed, to wrestle with the mysteries of the spiritual, 
but he attempted them through myth and religion; in his morality 
and aspect of life he is without exaltation, fatalistic, and a resigned 
materialist like most American Indians. 

On the purely ethical side, one trait stands out which is also a 
general American rather than a tribal characteristic. There is no 
provision against theft, assault, rape, witchcraft, or murder, nor any 


684 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


mention of them. Such violent extremes are too obvious for con- 
dlemnation, as incest was to the ancient Aryans. It is only with 
written codes that such horrid violations of the bases of morality 
seem to demand attention—not because they become more frequent, 
but because then silence concerning them would in the nature of 
things be an avowed condonation. The Indian, beyond taboos and 
cult observances, centers his attention on the trivial but unremitting 
factors of personal intercourse; affability, liberality, restraint of 
anger and jealousy, politeness. He, whom we are wont to regard as 
dark, reserved, and latent with cruelties and passions, sets up an 
open, even, unruffled, slow, and pleasant existence as his ideal. He 
preaches a code of manners rather than morals. He thinks of char- 
acter, of its expression in the innumerable but little relations of daily 
life, not of right or wrong in our sense. It is significant that these 
words do not exist in his language. In California, at least, the 
Indian speaks only of “ good” and “bad”; elsewhere he may add 
the terms “ straight ” and “ crooked.” 
A part of the sermon addressed to boys over the sand painting: 


See these, these are alive, this is bear-mountain lion; these are going to 
catch you if you are not good and do not respect your elder relatives and 
grown-up people. And if you do not believe, these are going to kill you; but 
if you do believe, everybody is going to see your goodness and you then will 
kill bear-mountain lion. And you will gain fame and be praised, and your 
name will be heard everywhere. 

See this, this is the raven, who will shoot you with bow and arrow if you 
do not put out your winnowing basket. Harken, do not be a dissembier, do 
not be heedless, do not eat food of overnight (i. e., do not secretly eat food 
left after the last meal of the day). Also you will not get angry when you 
eat, nor must you be angry with your elder relations. 

The earth hears you, the sky and wood mountain see you. If you will 
believe this you will grow old. And you will see your sons and daughters, and 
you will counsel them in this manner, when you reach your old age. And if 
when hunting you should kill a hare or rabbit or deer, and an old man should 
ask you for it, you will hand it to him at once. Do not be angry when you 
give it, and do not throw it to him. And when he goes home he will praise you, 
and you will kill many, and you will be able to shoot straight with the 
bow. =) 

When you die your spirit will rise to the sky and people will blow (three 
times) and will make rise your spirit. And everywhere it will be heard that 
you have died. And you will drink bitter medicine, and will vomit, and your 
inside will be clean, and illness will pass you by, and you will grow old, if you 
heed this speech. This is what the people of long ago used to talk, that they 
used to counsel their sons and daughters. In this manner you will counsel 
your sons and daughters. .. . 

This is the breaker; this will kill you. Heed this speech and you will grow 
old. And they will say of you: He grew old because he heeded what he was 
told. And when you die you will be spoken of as those of the sky, like the stars. 
Those it is said were people, who went to the sky and escaped death. And 
like those will rise your soul (towish).... 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 685 


The counsel to girls is similar: 


See, these are alive; these will think well of you if you believe; and if you 
do not believe, they are going to kill you; if you are heedless, a dissembler, or 
stingy. You must not look sideways, must not receive a person in your house 
with anger; it is not proper. You will drink hot water when you menstruate, 
and when you are pregnant you will drink bitter medicine. 

This will cause you to have your child quickly, as your inside will be clean. 
And you will roast yourself at the fire (after childbirth), and then your son 
or daughter will grow up quickly, and sickness will not approach you. But 
if you are heedless you will not bear your child quickly, and people will speak 
of your heedlessness. 

Your elder relatives you must think well of; you will also welcome your 
daughters-in-law and your brothers-in-law when they arrive at your house. 
Pay heed to this speech, and at some future time you will go to their house, and 
they are going to welcome you politely at their house. Do not rob food of over- 
night; if you have a child it will make him costive; it is also going to make 
your stomach swell; your eyes are also going to granulate. Pay attention to 
this speech; do not eat venison or jack rabbit, or your eyes will granulate, and 
people will know by your eyes what you have done. And as your son or 
daughter will grow up, you will bathe in water, and your hair will grow long, 
and you will not feel cold, and you will be fat, if you bathe in water. And 
after the adolescence rite you will not scratch yourself with your hands; you 
will scratch yourself with a stick; your body will have pimples if you scratch 
yourself with your hands. Do not neglect to paint yourself, and people will see, 
and you will grow old, if you pay attention to this speech, and you will see your 
sons and daughters. 

See these old men and women; these are those who paid attention to this 
counsel, which is of the grown-up people, and they have already reached old 
age. Do not forget this that I am telling you; pay heed to this speech, and 
when you are old like these old people, you will counsel your sons and daughters 
in like manner, and you will die old.. And your spirit will rise northwards to 
the sky, like the stars, moon, and sun. Perhaps they will speak of you and 
will blow (three times) and (thereby) cause to rise your spirit and soul to 
the sky. 


Sermons somewhat like those of the Luisefio were probably 
preached in other parts of California; but they have not been pre- 
served. The harangues of the Wintun chiefs are somewhat similar, 
but vaguer in tenor, fuller of repetitions, and thoroughly tedious to 
us for their unceasing injunctions to do what the occasion of itself 
demands to be done. The Luisefo did not revel quite so untiringly 
in the obvious when they talked to the young people for their good. 


SOCIETY, 


Luisefio society presents a somewhat confused picture. Some of its 
subdivisions exercise religious functions; their relations to the soil 
have been disturbed by the invasion of Spaniard and American; and 
wasting of numbers has caused an irregular consolidation of groups. 

The totemic moieties of the Serrano and of central California are 
lacking, except possibly on the northern border about Saboba, ‘here 


686 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


are patrilinear family groups, and unions of these into ceremonial 
groups. Both bear nontotemic names, which are totally different in 
each locality. 

The patrilinear family groups or “clans” are known as tunglam, 
“names,” or kamalum, “sons, children,’ in distinction from the 
kecham (“houses”?), the larger territorial or national groups. 
People married into neither the father’s nor the mother’s “ clan.” 
This suggests that these clans consisted of actual kinsmen. Their 
number confirms this interpretation; some 80 are known, with part 
of Luisefo territory unaccounted for. On this basis the average 
“clan” would comprise only 25 or 80 souls, a number well within 
the limits of traceable blood. The total distinctness of the “clan” 
names in each district also argues for their being families of local 
origin. ! 

The clan names are now borne by the Indians as if they were 
Spanish family names. They have a varied character. Many are 
verbal, some descriptive, some denote animals or objects, or occa- 
sionally places. 


>| 


Thus, at Rincon, there are the Omish, “ bloody,” Kalak, “ quickly,’ Michah, 
“rammed, stuffed,” Ngestkat, “‘ scrapers, grazers,” Shovenish, “ disagreeable,” 
Chevish, “pulling apart,’ and Kewewish, “fox”; at Pauma the Mahlanga, 
“palm place,’ Kengish, ‘ground squirrel,’ Shokchum, ‘ scratchers,” Chat, 
“white owl,” Ayal, “know(?),” and Pauwval. It may be that some of these 
appellations are of nickname quality. 


The religious groups or “ parties” are known to the Luisefio as 
not or nota (plural nonotum), which is also the word for “ chief.” 
They are described as consisting of a chief, his “clan,” members of 
other clans that are chief-less or greatly reduced, and individuals who 
have quarreled and broken with their proper “ party.” Their num- 
ber is therefore less, their size greater, than that of the “clans.” This 
may also have been true in ancient times. All ceremonies are in the 
hands of these “ parties,” each of which, however, generally performs 
the same rites as all the others. They might therefore be described 
as a series of parallel religious societies, resting on a clan basis, or 
more exactly, on consanguinity or personal affiliation with a chief 
who is at once head of a group of coresident kinsmen and a respon- 
sible undertaker of rituals. There is, however, no inherent relation 
between the social bodies and the ceremonies—nothing in any public 
rite that is peculiar to a social group. The families and parties 
built around them have merely been utilized as a means of executing 
ceremonies. 

The present Rincon and former Kuka organizations are: 

Anoyum, * coyotes,” so called on account of reputed greediness at gatherings; 
proper name, Kengichum, “ground squirrels.’ Omish clan or family; also 
Tovik and Swvish families, which formerly acted independently but now 
have no chiefs, 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 687 


Ivangawish, “sitting apart,” also a nickname; originally called Nahyam, 
from the ancestor of the Kalak family, Nahnahkwis—nahat means walking stick 
or cane. 

EHhvayum or Temekwiyum, “ Temeculas”’—Ehva and Temeku’ both denoting 
that place. Ngesikat family. 

Sengyum, “gravels,” or Seveyum. Shovenish family, said to have come 
from a gravelly place. 

Navyam, “ prickly pears,” or Siwakum. Siiwak family. Now extinct. 

The Michah, Chevish, and Kewewish families adhere to the foregoing cere- 
monial groups. . 


At Pauma the three parties are the Mahlangum, Sokchum, and 
Pauvalum, all named after families. Pichanga, which is said once to 
have had 17 families, has two religious organizations, the Seyingoish 
and the Azungahoish, the latter founded in 1915 and given the name 
of an extinct Temecula party. 

Occasionally rites are said to be the property of particular organi- 
zations. Thus at Rincon, the morahash dance belongs to the Ano- 
yum, the tanzsh to the Ivangawish. This condition seems to be a 
result of the dwindling of ceremonies, or their becoming identified, 
for a period and within a locality, with individuals of particular 
interest or ability. A division of function is clearly not the essential 
purpose of the “ parties.” The morahash is danced by the Luisefio 
of all districts, as well as by their neighbors, so that it can not be re- 
garded as the specific rite characteristic of one local society. So far 
as such association exists, it must be due to a temporary or recent 
loss of this or that ceremony by other societies. 

But the basic parallelism of the “ parties” did not prevent certain 
songs, localized migration traditions, landmarks, and perhaps terri- 
torial claims, from being the property of particular families or socie- 
ties. Such possessions seem eminently characteristic of “clans” or 
organizations centered on lines of descent. The public rituals were 
essentially communal or national, however completely their perform- 
ances may have been entrusted to family societies. 

It is clear that the chief was the fulcrum of Luiseno society. The 
religious group was called “a chief,” the social group was “the chil- 
dren.” <A chief ordered. ceremonies, his assistant, the paha’, exe- 
cuted them. A chief-less family was nothing but a body of individ- 
uals, dependent for religious activity on personal affiliation with 
other groups: a family with a chief was zpso facto a religious society. 
It is conceivable that many of the surnames which the Luisefio 
now possess are the personal names of chiefs in authority when this 
European habit was adopted. The one thing that is wholly obscure 
is the relation of the chief to the territorial or political group. 
There can scarcely have been several family chiefs of equal standing 
at the head of such a group, and the families were so small that they 


3625°—25 45 





688 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bunn 78 


could not have been the sole political units. Possibly there were 
always chief-less families, and in a large community the chief of a 
certain family may have been accorded primacy over his colleagues. 
The hereditary principle was strong. In default of male heirs, a 
woman sometimes succeeded, and a widow might exercise a sort of 
regency for her son. Nothing is on record concerning the chief’s 
riches. This omission is in itself significant. It is not unlikely 
that the chief was kept in position to entertain and lead by contribu- 
tions from his “children.” If so, his office brought him wealth. It 
is clear that it was not his property that made him chief. 

There was a definite installation of a new chief, a night rite called 
unanisha noti, held in the wamkish, with singing, dancing, eating, 
and no doubt long speeches. 

Gifts or payments were expected by a bride’s family, but a repu- 
tation for industry or ability in the hunt weighed for as much as the 
wealth formally tendered as basis to marriage. The usual Cali- 
fornian semicouvade was in force: fasting from meat and quiescence 
were enjoined on both parents for 20 to 40 days, on pain of the 
child’s physical welfare. The umbilical cord was buried. Women 
withdrew each month from the house and slept and ate apart for a 
few days. Parent-in-law taboos seem unknown. Hunters ate no 
game of their own killing, on pain of losing their luck. <A violation 
could be amended by public confession. 


CuartTer 48. 
THE CUPENO AND CAHUILLA. 


THE CuPENO: Tribal relations, 689; social organization, 690; religion, 691. Tur 
CAHUILLA: History and habitat, 692; plant foods, 694; mortar and metate, 
696; basketry, 698; pottery, 702; houses, 703; weapons, 704; various uten- 
sils, 704; society, 705; religion, 707. 


Tuer Cureno. 


TRIBAL RELATIONS, 


The Cupefo are one of the smallest distinct groups in California. 
‘They state that they possessed only two permanent villages: Kupa— 
whence their Spanish name—near the famous hot springs of War- 
ner’s ranch, usually called merely Agua Caliente, a designation that 
has also been applied to the tribe; and Wilakal, in Luisefo Wolak, 
at San Ysidro. The Dieguefio call the two sites Hakupin and Ephi. 
The entire territory controlled by the inhabitants of these two settle- 
ments is a mountainous district on the headwaters of the San Luis 
Rey, not over 10 miles by 5 in extent—a sort of Doris in an Indian 
Greece. 

The Cupeno appear to have no name for themselves, other than 
Kupa-ngakitom, “* Kupa-people,” and perhaps Wilaka-ngakitom. 
Their language they call Panahil. The Diegueno call them Hek- 
wach, which is a generic Yuman designation for the Cahuilla. The 
Cupefio name the Serrano Tamankamyam, the Cahuilla Tamiko- 
chem, the Diegueno Kichamkochem, the Luiseno Kawikochem, per- 
haps all of them terms based on the cardinal directions. 

The hot springs seem to have drawn the residence of various In- 
dians for two or three generations, and some years ago the Cupeno 
were removed, with several other settlements, to Pala. Indian cen- 
suses, being more frequently based on location than on exact tribal 
discrimination, have therefore either ignored the Cupeno or exagger- 
ated their strength. In 1910 there were not far from 200. <Anciently, 
500 must be set as their maximum. 

It is above all their speech that warrants a separate recognition of 
the Cupeno. This is of the Luisefio-Cahuilla branch of Shoshonean, 
but more than a mere dialect of either of these tongues. Luiseno 
and Cahuilla have many words in common which in Cupeno are quite 


689 


690 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


different. When Cupeno agrees with one and differs from the other, 
the resemblance is more frequently with Cahuilla. In accord with 
this fact is the Diegueho name of the tribe, which classes it with 
the Cahuilla. So small a body of people as the Cupefio could not, 
however, have developed so distinctive an idiom while in their re- 
cent intimate juxtaposition to two larger groups of the same origin. 
A former period of isolation, or of special contact with aliens, is in- 
dicated. We must infer, accordingly, that the Cupefio detached 
themselves from the still somewhat undifferentiated Lwuisefio- 
Cahuilla group at some former time, moved to their present abode, 
and later were overtaken by their more numerous kinsmen; or, 
that they represent a southerly advance guard which was crowded 
back into intimacy with its congeners by an expansion of the 
Diegueho. In either event, relations with the Dieguefio appear to 
have been an important factor in Cupefio tribal history. 


SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 


The Cupeno scheme of society is less disintegrated than the 
Luiseno, but appears also to have been modified in the past century. 
Its present form is this: 

















Toiohies Mas & Ceremonial 
Moieties. Clans. groups. 
leVauwilot.« body louse”). oa. (ee 
2. }CRERG OLN GOLIST at <. oe eee ee *"Partyetale 


latistamct ! Coyotes’). -2.. 
( ar ) So KRauvale® sits ese 1 £3) See aes 


4, Po-tama-toligish (“‘his tooth black’’)..| ‘‘ Party” 2. 
5. Aulingawish, Auliat (‘‘blood ——’’)... 
2: Pukium: (Wild -cats )\s2) Gi Sevmoaists - eke 2 eae. oe ere MC Darty”? 3, 
7 


vel) yuim boss He} Gate am - ate ee 








The totem of the moiety is called wala, “ great-great-grandparent,” 
but there is no belief in descent from the totem animal. A 
sort of good-natured opposition is recognized between the moieties, 
whose members frequently taunt each other with being unsteady and 
slow witted, respectively. Mourning ceremonies are made by moie- 
ties, but. the complementary moiety always participates. Through- 
out California the contact of the moiety scheme with religion was 
largely on the side of mourning rites. There is an association here 
which is undoubtedly of historical significance. 

The nature of the “ clans” is less clear. As there were several, and 
the Cupefio had only two villages, they can scarcely have been local 
bodies, Their appellations also do not seem to be based on place 


KROFBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 691 


names. They are used as outright family names by the modern 
Indians; but this can hardly be old practice. The functions of the 
clans are said to have been chiefly religious. In recent years, as 
some of them dwindled in numbers, their members ceased their own 
ceremonies and affiliated themselves with other clans, most of the 
Cupeno say: in this way the “parties” became established. Others 
regard the “clans” as only synonymous designations of the religious 
“party” units. At any rate, the Cupefio designate both clan and 
party by the latter term in speaking English, and call them both 
nout in their own language. This word also means chief, and is 
found, as nota and net, among the Luisefio and Cahuilla. Each clan 
had its chief, it is said, and there were neither village nor moiety 
chiefs. At present there is a chief for each “ party,” besides a tribal 
political head chosen at the instigation of the whites. Each nowt 
had a paha or ceremonial director, as among the Luisefio and Ser- 
rano; also a kutvovosh, who seems to have served as his speaker, 
messenger, fire tender, and assistant. 


RELIGION. 


The Cupefio call the toloache initiation manit paninil, “ Jimson 
weed drinking.” ‘The director of this holds his post through inherit- 
ance, it is said, and is also known as nowt. The morahash whirling 
dance was called pukavihat. The girls’ adolescence rite, au/inil or 
ulunika, included the usual “ roasting,” and a ring dance in which 
the people were grouped by moieties. This ceremony is described as 
made by the girl’s clan, but the statement may refer rather to her 
patrilinear kinsmen, who would generally constitute at least a con- 
siderable portion of a clan. Péiniwahat is the singing of maledictions | 
against “clan” enemies. 

The mourning ceremonies are the pisatuil, stishomnil, and nangaail, 
apparently corresponding to the Luisefo tuvish, chuchamish, and 
tauchanish. The moieties constantly function in these. Each rite is 
made by the moiety to which the dead person belonged, and the other 
is invited. In all of them the guests sing during the early part of 
the night, the rite makers after midnight. In both the siishomni/ and 
nangawil property is thrown away as well as burned, and this is 
seized and kept by members of the opposite moiety. The materials for 
the figures in the nangawd are prepared by the mourning moiety, and 
then assembled—for pay—by the invited one. This ceremony is said 
to last three days. The eagle killing ceremony is also in the hands of 
one moiety at a time, with the other present as guests. This organiza- 
tion by moieties must give the Cupeno mourning ceremonies a differ- 
ent color from those of the nonmoiety Luiseno, which in other respects 
they appear to resemble closely. 


692 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bunt 78 


Cupefio mythology is closest to that of the Cahuilla, it would seem, 
and even perhaps more closely related to that of the Serrano than to 
that of the adjacent Luisefio. Tumayowit (“earth”) and Mukat 
were the first deities and the creators or progenitors of everything in 
it. They led mankind southward to their approximate present seats. 
Either identified or associated with these two gods were Coyote and 
Wild Cat, who emerged from the halves of a primeval bag hanging in 
space. Mankind was already in existence, but in mud and darkness. 
‘Tumayowit and Mukat disagreed. The former wished death to be 
and finally descended to a lower world. Mukat caused people to 
quarrel, and was finally poisoned, by the wish of men, through Frog 
eating his voidings. Coyote was sent away on a pretext, but returned 
and seized Mukat’s heart from the funeral pyre. The Cupeno were 
exterminated by their neighbors, only one baby boy, Hiibiiyak, escap- 
ing with his Dieguefio mother. As he grew up, he rejoined his kins- 
men of Coyote moiety and Kauval clan who had remained at Saboba 
-(in historic Luisefo territory), returned to Kupa, slaughtered the 
destroyers of his people, and settled there with two Luiseno wives, 
to become the progenitor of the Cupefio of today. The Wild Cat 
moiety came to Kupa later. 

Mukat is obviously the equivalent of Wiyot, but Tumayowit, the 
earth mother, appears here, as among the Cahuilla, as a man, if there 
isnoerror. This part of the myth suggests the Dieguefo and Yuman 
belief in two first hostile brother gods. 


Tre *CAMUILUA® 
HISTORY AND HABITAT. 


The Cahuilla, with 750 souls, are to-day one of the important tribes 
of California. Originally they may have numbered 2,500. They are 
Catholic and speak Spanish; but, although generally included among 
the Mission Indians, they were only to a slight extent brought under 
mission control in the first third of the nineteenth century. The 
western division may have been partially affilated with the sub- 
mission at San Bernardino, and those from the vicinity of Cahuilla 
Valley, or some of them, appear to have been within the sphere of San 
Luis Rey or its station at Pala. After secularization, many of the 
Cahuiula entered into relations with the Spaniards on the grants 
in the fertile portion of southern California, either as seasonal visit- 
ors or more permanent peons. This brought them in some numbers 
into Serrano and Gabrielino territory and has led to the attribution 
of part of the habitat of the former people to the Cahuilla by some 
authorities. Of late years this westward movement from the desert 
and mountains has slackened. The Government has developed water 


KROERER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA. 693 


and protected Indian rights, and the Cahuilla live regularly in their 
old homes—an instance of the enduring attachment of the California 
nations to their ancestral soil. There are fewer reservations than 
there once were villages; but they are rather fairly distributed 
through the same regions. 

The name Cahuilla is in universal use, but its origin is obscure. 
Reid, our principal authority on the Gabrielino, says that the word 
means “masters”; but this has not been confirmed. Indians of 
all tribes regard the designation as of Spanish origin. The Yuman 
group about Ensenada Bay in Baja California, who are practically 
one people with the Diegueno, have sometimes been called Cahuillas; 
but whatever basis of local or official usage this appellation may have, 
it is unfortunate, since speech proves the Bajefios to have no connec- 
tion at all with the American Cahuilla. There is also a Yokuts 
Kawia tribe, on Kaweah River, whose name, however, seems to be 
a coincidence. The Yokuts say Ka’wia or Ga’wia, while Cahuilla 
is of course Kawi’a. This is its universal pronunciation. The 
spellings Coahuilla and Coahuila, although the more frequent and 
established in government usage, are therefore erroneous; they would 
be pronounced Kwawia or Kwawila. The latter seems a mere con- 
fusion with the name of the Mexican State of Coahuila. 

The Cahuilla are called Yuhikt-om or Kwimkuch-um (“ eastern- 
ers”) by the Luiseno, Tamikoch-em by the Cupefio, Kitanemun-um 
by the Serrano proper, Kwitanem-um by the Chemehuevi, Hakwicha 
by the Mohave, and a dialectic equivalent of Hakwicha by the other 
Yuman groups that know them. 

Cahuilla territory is somewhat irregular, but may be defined as the 
inland basin between the San Bernardino Range and the range ex- 
tending southward from Mount San Jacinto; with a few spillings 
over into the headwaters of coast drainage. There are three natural 
topographical divisions. 

The first comprises San Gorgonio Pass, lying nestled between the 
giant peaks of Mounts San Bernardino, San Gorgonio, and San 
Jacinto, all over 10,000 feet high. With this belongs Palms Springs 
Canyon, and the westward draining San Timoteo Canyon.t The 
elevation of the inhabited sites is between 1,500 and 2,500 feet. Ser- 
rano and Luisefio adjoin. The natives of this district, who are here 


1This is in error. San Gorgonio Pass and San Timoteo Canyon were in Serrano 
possession, as set forth in the footnote appended to the section on the Serrano. Palm 
Springs Canyon thus remains as the focus of this Cahuilla group, and their boundary 
should be run northward or northeastward from Mount San Jacinto instead of forming the 
westward arm shown in Plates 1 and 57. The hill near White Water probably marked 
their limit against the Serrano and not against the Desert Cahutila. The Serrano do 
not reckon the Palm Springs division as Cahuillas. They are said to call them Wanu- 
piapayum and Tiipamukiyam; which, however, appear also as names of Serrano local 
groups, 


694 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


designated as the Western or Pass Cahuilla, speak a somewhat dif- 
ferent though intelligible dialect to the remainder of the group. 
Their range extended to Kawishmu, a hill a little east of White 
Water. 

Southeastward is the Colorado Desert, partly below sea level, and 
forming an old arm of the Gulf of California. The southern end of 
this totally arid valley, occasionally watered by overflows from the 
great Colorado into New River—which looks on the map like an 
affluent but is really a spillway flowing in opposite direction from 
the main stream—was in the possession of the Kamia or other 
Yuman groups. The northern end, down to about Salton Sea, was 
Cahuilla. Most of this district is exceedingly fertile under irriga- 
tion, and has been partly reclaimed. In native times it appeared 
most forbiddingly desert. But its tremendous depression brought 
the ground waters near the surface, so that in many localities mes- 
quite trees throve and the Cahuilla obtained water in comparatively 
shallow wells. The people here are the Kitanemun-um of the Ser- 
rano, our Desert. Cahuilla. 

The third division lived in the mountains south of San Jacinto 

Peak, chiefly in fairly watered canyons well up the less favored side 
of the range, overlooking the inland desert, as at Santa Rosa, Los 
Coyotes, and San Ygnacio. At one point these people were across 
the divide, in Pacific Ocean drainage. This is the district centering 
in the patch now known as “ Coahuila Reservation ”’—though it har- 
bors only a small minority of the entire group—on the head of the 
Santa Margarita. The elevation of these habitats is from 3,000 to 
4,000 feet. The speech is said to be distinguishable from that of the 
desert; but the difference is insignificant, and the desert and moun- 
tain divisions might be grouped together. 
. Plate 57 shows a few important sites in part of the habitat of the Cahuilla. 
Other place names are: Kavinish, Indian Wells; Pal tewat, Indio; Pal seta, 
Cabezon ; Temalwahish, La Mesa; Sokut Menyil, Martinez; Lawilvan or Sivel, 
Alamo; Tova, Agua Dulce; Wewutnowhu, Santa Rosa. San Ygnacio is both 
Pachawal and Sapela. Most of these seem to be old names of specific villages, 
but now refer to tracts or reservations. Other sites are mentioned in the list 
of clans under “ Society ” below. 


PLANT FOODS. 


The principal supplies of food drawn from plants by the Cahuilla 
are rather accurately known, and while somewhat more varied than 
usual owing to the range of the group from low desert to high and 
fairly watered mountains, may be considered typical of the Indians 
of the southern part of the State. 


Oaks, of course, require reasonable precipitation and moderate elevation, so 
that they are available in quantities to only a part of the Cahuilla; but the 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 695 


acorns were utilized wherever obtainable and treated as by the other Cali- 
fornians. Quercus lobata was the species that the Cahuilla had most fre- 
quently accessible to them. 

In the sunken desert, where the roots of the mesquite can in many places 
penetrate to ground water, the fruit of this tree was the staple food. Both 
the bean or honey and the screw mesquite (Prosopis juliflora and pubescens) 
were employed, the whole fruits being ground in wooden mortars. The former 
variety was the more important; the latter is sweeter. 

Agaves and yuccas were less vital to the Cahuilla than to the mountain 
tribes of western Arizona and probably the Chemehuevi and Koso, but were 
made use of in the same way. The thick, short, succulent, sweet stalks were 
roasted in stone-lined and covered pits. The waxy 
flowers as well as the fruits of some species were 
eaten cooked. 

Nearly every variety of cactus was made use of. 
Most generally the fruit was consumed, but the 
fleshy stalks or leaves of some species helped out 
when diet became scant, and sometimes buds or seeds 
are edible. 

The native palm bears clusters of a small fruit 
which was not neglected. 

Nearly every conifer, from pine to juniper, had 
its seeds eaten. The most important variety is the 
Nevada nut pine, Pinus monophylla, seeds of which 
were harvested by the Cahuilla in the same manner 
as by the Koso, the cones being roasted to extract 
the nuts. ore 

Many plants furnished what is usually known by 
its Mexican name pinole—the Aztec original pinolli 
is significant of the wide distribution of the food 
habit—that is, seed flour. The most important kind 
was chia, Salvia columbariae, Cahuilla pasal. Other 
sages and a variety of plants were also made use of: 
Atriplex lentiformus, Artemisia tridentata, Sisim- 
brium canescens, Lasthenia glabrata, Chenopodium yy. 57 Gahuilla Saray 
fremontii. These were all gatliered with the seed beater. 
beater (Fig. 57), parched or roasted with coals 
shaken in a basket or pottery tray, and ground, The meal was eaten dry, boiled, 
or baked into heavy doughy cakes, according to species. 

California is nowhere a berry country. ‘The Cahuilla have available several 
varieties which are rather of the nature of small fruits. In some of these the 
seeds are perhaps of more food value than the flesh. Thus, in the wild plum, 
Prunus, Cahuilla chamish, Mexican yslay, the kernel of the pit is crushed, 
leached, and boiled like acorn flour. Manzanita, Arctostaphylos, is treated 
similarly. The berries of the elder, Sambucus mexicana, and of sumac, Rhus 
trilobata, are also dried. ‘The influence of acorn-seed processes in the use of 
these food materials is evident. The arid to subarid climate of California pro- 
duces fruits whose paucity of juicy pulp allows them to be made into meal; but 
a people unaccustomed to grinding would hardly have applied the process to 
varieties consumable otherwise. 

Root parts of plants are of little service to the Cahuilla, whose dry habitat 
allows but a sparse growth of the lily-like bulb plants that are important farther 
north in the State. Flowers, on the other hand, are often thick and sappy. 






es 






ee a 
EPMA, 
ant 
Ce 


ee c ~ 
1 f 


696 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


Those of species of yucca, agave, sumac, and ocatilla (Fouquiera spinosa) are 
boiled, either fresh or after drying. 
Altogether, more than 60 varieties of plants are known to have 
served the Cahuilla as food in one form or another, and the whole 
number may have been twice as great. It is obvious that a non- 
farming people living in a country of little game and limited fertility 
would be likely to leave no source of wild plant food idle which lay 


~ within their capacity to utilize. The value of ethnobotanical studies 


lies in a comprehension of the processes followed, and a determina- 
tion of the manner in which these have positively and negatively af- 
fected methods of securing food. It is clear that a few well-de- 
veloped processes were applied to the limits of applicability, rather 
than that the best possible method was independently devised for 
each product of nature. Thus grinding and drying stand out among 
the Cahuilla; the seed beater is more important than the digging 
stick. The true significance of the processes, of course, is clear only 
with the totality of the botanical environment in view. For this 
reason the plants and parts not utilized are as important to an 
interpretative understanding as those made use of; but on this side 
little information has been recorded. 


MORTAR AND METATE. 


The Cahuilla do not neatly square their metates, as the Mohave do, 
but use an irregularly rectangular or oval slab. Most specimens have 
only part of their surfaces worn, obviously by a circular motion. The 
rub stone sometimes is only a bowlder ground flat. Another form is 
dressed into an oval, and rather thin. This type could also be used 
for rotary grinding. In general, the implement is of the California 
type, as described in the chapters on the Maidu and Luisefio, and 
is more properly designated “ grinding slab” than “ metate.” 

But there are many “manos” that are as evenly squared as a brick, 
and even longer and narrower. ‘These can be utilized only with a 
back and forth motion. Some metates, too, show that they have been 
rubbed with such a stone. Now the Cahuilla of to-day often grind 
wheat; and it is therefore a question whether this southwestern type 
of metate was frequent among them anciently, or whether its use has 
been stimulated by contact with Mexicans. The settlers from Mexico 
must have brought many metates of lava with them, or manufactured 
them after their arrival. Apparently the utensil was in daily service 
in every poorer Spanish Californian household for several genera- 
tions; and from this source it penetrated, in its standard Mexican form 
with three legs, to the Indians. Occasional examples are still in use 
in Indian hands in central as well as southern California. Frag- 
ments have even been discovered in the surface layers of the San 


— al le 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 697 


Francisco Bay shell mounds and in graves on the Santa Barbara 
coast. 

The southern California mortar is a block of stone hollowed out, 
when new, some 2 or 3 inches, but gradually wearing deeper. The 
hopper is by no means always employed. If present, it is always at- 
tached with asphalt or gum. Neither of the two central and northern 
types of mortar 1s known—the bedrock hole and the slab with loose, 
superposed hopper. 

The pestle, as in central California, is frequently only a long cobble, 
sometimes slightly dressed at the grinding end or along one side 
(Fig. 58, d). | 

For mesquite beans and perhaps other foods, the desert Cahuilla 
use a deep wooden mortar sunk into the ground. This has its counter- 
part on the Colorado River; but the Cahuilla form appears to average 
a more extended section of log and deeper hole. <A. pestle of unusual 





Fig. 58.—Cahuilla stone pestles for weoden (a@) and for stone (0b) mortar. 


length, often 2 feet, is necessitated. To prevent undue weight, this 
must be made slender; and in turn, dressing is involved (Fig. 58, a). 
The pestle for the wooden mortar is therefore quite different from 
the much more roughly shaped form used on stone. 

It is doubtful if the Cahuilla-Mohave wooden mortar is connected 
with that of the valley Wintun and Yokuts. One is used for 
mesquite, the other for acorns. The former has a deep, pointed pit; 
the other contains a broad bowl-shaped basin, in the center of which 
is a small shallow excavation in which all the actual pounding is 
done. The southern mortar of wood is perhaps a device to meet some 
particular quality of the mesquite bean; that of central California is 
clearly a substitute for a more general form in stone. 

Somewhere in acornless southeastern California, probably from the 
Chemehuevi to the Eastern Mono, and in parts of Nevada, a very 
large and deep cone-shaped mortar of stone occurs, worked with a 
long and sharp but thick pestle of extraordinary weight. This seems 
to be connected with the wooden mortar of southern California. 


698 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The mountain Cahuilla, as well as the Luisefio and Diegueno, who 
have acorns but no mesquite, have not been observed to possess 
wooden mortars; and no pestle of wood has been reported from 
California except from the Mohave. 


BASKETRY. 


Cahuilla basketry is that of all the “ Mission Indians” of southern 
California. Chumash ware alone was somewhat different, though 
clearly of the same type. It is a rather heavy but regular basketry, 
coiled on bundles of /picampes grass stems, the wrapping being 
either sumac splints or Juncus rush. The varying shades of the lat- 
ter produce a mottled effect, which is pleasing to most civilized 
people, though it is not certain that the natives sought it equally. 
But they obviously appreciated the lustrous texture of the rush, 





Fig. 59.—Cahuilla carrying net. (Cf. Fig. 53.) 


which, as used for the groundwork, is normally buff in color, while 
red or brown lengths of stem serve for designs, and even olive and 
distinctly yellow shades can be obtained. Only black was produced 
by dyeing. The prevailing pattern arrangement is one of encircling 
bands. 

The forms are as standardized and nearly as few as the materials. 
They are nearly flat plates; shallow flaring bowls; a large deeper 
basket ; a small receptacle with slightly constricted mouth, the equiv- 
alent of the Chumash-Yokuts-Chemehuevi “ bottle-neck,” but with- 
out trace of a shoulder; and the woman’s cap. 

The large basket serves for storage and carriage. It differs funda- 
mentally from the carrying basket of all central and northern Cali- 
fornia. It is close coiled instead of open twined; is flat bottomed 
instead of an inverted cone; and broader than deep. It is obviously 
not a form that originated for transport, but a receptacle or pot put 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 699 


secondarily to burden use. The explanation is found in the carrying 
net, which renders the precise shape of the contained basket of little 
moment. 

The net has the form of a small hammock with a mesh of from 3 
to 5 inches, the ends being gathered on heavy loops, which are joined 
by an adjustable rope passing across the cap-protected forehead 
(Fig.59). Similar nets are found in central California to as far north 
as the Pomo without an accompanying alteration of the carrying 
basket from its conical form. ‘The inference is that the central Cali- 
fornians employed the net only occasionally, the southern Shosho- 
neans regularly. All that is actually known of the use of the im- 
plement corroborates this conclusion. The net must therefore be re- 
garded as of southern origin. It is a localized device: the adjacent 
Southwest reverts to the basket or employs the carrying frame; the 
Shoshonean Plateau appears to use the Californian cone basket. 

It may be added that the Pomo carrying net has the headband 
woven in, so that the capacity can not be altered—a fact which in- 
dicates that it is designed only for certain specific usages. 

The large, coiled, fairly deep storage and transport basket of the 
south may therefore be regarded as probably an original cooking 
vessel, and is certainly a form which elsewhere is used for cooking. 
It‘is not so used by the Cahuilla to-day, as indeed is not to be ex- 
pected of a pottery making people. The history of the vessel can 
hardly be understood in full without more precise knowledge of the 
baskets in which the inland Gabrielino—who made no pots and were 
too remote from steatite to use it generally—did their cooking. 

The same vessel undoubtedly served formerly, as it does to-day, 
for a general receptacle; but that it was not primarily a store basket 
is suggested by two circumstances. The first is that the ancient 
Chumash possessed a taller, larger, and distinctly bellied basket, simi- 
lar to that of northwestern California in form, but coiled instead of 
twined. This was indubitably made for storing only. The second 
fact is that the Cahuilla (PI. 60), the Mohave, and apparently the 
Luiseho also, make an outdoor granary. This is not set vertically 
and worked into posts, as among the Sierra tribes, but laid flat on the 
ground, on a rock, or on a scaffold. It is made of long stalks of 
wormwood, Artemisia, among the Cahuilla, or arrow weed, Pluchea, 
with the Mohave, and put together in bundles much on the plan of a 
bird’s nest, without textile process. The Mohave and desert Cahuilla 
form is up to 6 feet in diameter, generally low, and without bottom. 
This type is mostly used to hold mesquite. The mountain Cahuilla 
make a smaller but taller form with bottom for their acorns. The 
entire device is obviously one that is serviceable only in an arid cli- 
mate: there is no thatch or provision for cover except horizontally 


700 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


laid stalks that would not turn rain. This granary, together with 
the opportunities afforded by rock crevices in a dry country, make a 
true storage basket unnecessary in most of southern California. The 
large “ mission ” basket would be convenient to contain as much food 
as might be wanted about the house; it was not intended to hold pro- 
visions for the winter, nor was it serviceable for the purpose. 

The small and more or less globular basket of the Cahuilla and 
their neighbors was no doubt sometimes useful as a deposit for awls 
and other little things; it must also have served particularly as a 
gift and as an offering in the mourning anniversary. 

The basketry cap of southern California has the shape of a fairly 
tall frustum. Except for material and texture, it is identical with 
the Yokuts and Koso cap. This southern coiled form appears to 
have only a remote historical connection with the overlay-twined cap 
of northernmost California, which is low and more or less convex 
in profile, and whose range, toward the south. at least, is exactly co- 
terminous with that of the basket art that does not know coiling. 
The northern cap is worn habitually; southern women don.theirs 
when they carry a load. The intervening tribes, such as Maidu, 
Miwok, and Pomo, use no headwear. A third type is represented in 
California among the Chemehuevi, and appears to be representative 
of the Shoshonean Plateau. This is diagonally twined, peaked, and 
sometimes has the design painted on. It seems that this form lnks 
the northern and southern California types geographically, render- 
ing the distribution of the object continuous over an arc of terri- 
tory. This arc and the Pacific Ocean inclose the north central Cali- 
fornian capless area. <A distribution of this kind makes it obvious 
that it is a specific reason, and not mere failure of diffusion, that has 
kept the central Gilitonn ae from use of the cap; and eatanienen 
some possibility that they once wore it and subsequently abandoned 
the custom. 

The Great Basin type of cap is found among Cahuilla and 
Diegueno beside the coiled form. Both are shown in Plate 73, d. 

The mortar hopper of the Cahuilla and other southerners is started 
on a hoop. Here is a truly interrupted distribution. The north 
twines its hopper, the south coils, the middle area dispenses with 
the article. 

Uniformity of technique, material, pattern, and even fineness of 
finish of all coiled ware, irrespective of the nature of the basket, is 
almost absolute among the Cahuilla and their neighbors, and is one 
of the most marked traits of their art. 

The commonest twined basket of southern California is a small 
or moderate sized openwork vessel of Juncus stems, used both as a 
receptacle and, after lining with leaves or similar material, for 


a 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 701 


leaching. The weave is essentially simple twining, with considerable 
doubling and zigzagging of warp. The introduction of these vari- 
ants seems random, the only apparent purpose being to keep the 
interstices approximately equal in area. No attention is paid to 
uniformity of mesh or to an even surface. The result is a basket 
that seems deliberately crude and unworkmanlike. 

The seed beater has become a frame rather than a basket with the 
Cahuilla. It is nothing but a bundle of three, six, or a dozen 
sticks, wrapped together at one end to form a handle, and more or 
less spread fanwise at the other end over a hoop. A single cross- 
piece may bisect the circle and give stiffness, but is not always in- 
troduced. Modern pieces have the fan and hoop very roughly 
lashed together with cord, rag strips, or wire. As no old specimens 
have been preserved, this imperfect workmanship may possibly be 
ascribable to modern degeneracy. But the analogous crudeness of the 
openwork basket, as contrasted with the full maintenance of careful 
finish in all coiled ware to the present time, suggests that the Cahuilla 
beater was always made hastily and imperfectly. This is the more 
likely because on the one hand it is scarcely a true basket and on 
the other reaches its southernmost known range in southern Cali- 
fornia. The concept has become feeble, its execution half-hearted. 
(Fig. 57.) 

The only other twined vessel known to have been made in the 
region of “mission” basketry is the pitched or asphalted water jug 
with constricted neck, and the occurrence of this is doubtful for the 
Cabuilla. The Chemehuevi and Kawailisu manufacture a coated jug 


in diagonal twining and with pointed or round bottom, a type be- 


longing to the Shoshonean Plateau and the western part of the 
Southwest. The Chumash made a bellied bottle that would stand 
up, and used simple twining. The Gabrielino, who also had no pot- 
tery, may have had the same type; the preserved description of their 
water vessel unfortunately is not clear. The Chumash and Cheme- 
huevi forms probably met in the Serrano region, although here also 
exact knowledge fails. For Cahuilla, Luisefio, and Diegueno there 
is only a single and vague reference; and as these peoples made 
pottery, the occurrence of the basketry water bottle among them 
must be considered somewhat doubtful, and was pebably at most 
occasional,» 

The southern California basket art thus reveals fies traits. Twin- 
ing is remarkably undeveloped. Types that are twined elsewhere in 
the State are either lacking in the south, replaced by coiled substi- 
tutes, or amazingly crude. The center of the art rests in coiling to 
a much higher degree than elsewhere. The coiled ware is connected 
with that of central California, especially of the San Joaquin Valley, 
but is reduced to a single weil-maintained manner universally ap- 


702 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


plied. The occurrence of pottery among the Cahuilla, Luisefo, and 
Dieguefio has unquestionably contributed to this condition of their 
basketry. As soon as neighboring regions without pottery are en- 
tered, such as the Santa Barbara Channel or Tehachapi Mountain 
district, the rigid restriction to a single style ceases, and twining 
flourishes beside coiling. 


POTTERY. 


The pottery made by the Cahuilla, Luiseno, and Diegueno, which 
did not extend to the Gabrielino but probably to the Serrano, 
apparently had its immediate origin in the lower Colorado Valley, 
from which it continues also in the opposite direction to the Seri. 
It is a coiled and smoothed unslipped ware, made of clay that burns 
red, with tempering of crushed rock; very thin walled, light, but 
fragile and porous. Patterns are linear, solid areas being con- 
fined chiefly to filings in of the favorite acute angle; and are 
painted on in yellow ocher, which fires to a somewhat deeper red 
than the clay. The Cahuilla and Luiseho more frequently omit de- 
signs, but when they add them, do so in typical Mohave style, which 
is suggestive of tattoo and face-paint patterns; but they employ a 
red substance in place of yellow ocher. Black designs occur (Pl. 62), 
and though rare are of interest because unknown to the Mohave. 
They are said to have been produced with black mineral; the sur- 
face is more highly polished and the lines finer. The forms of ves- 
sels seem to have been less numerous than with the Mohave; at least, 
spoons, plates, and oval platters have not been found. The moderns 
occasionally make specialties, hke jars with three or four mouths, 
which do not occur among the Mohave, where the art remained 
vigorous in purely native condition until recently; but these may be 
fanciful inventions under American stimulus. Something similar 
has occurred among the Yuma, whose old pottery seems to have 
nearly disappeared before crude and bastard forms made as 
curiosities. | 

The introduction of this art from the Colorado River to the desert 
and the coast is not altogether recent, as the presence of sherds in 
the upper layers of an ancient site at La Jolla proves. The apparent 
absence of pottery from the lower deposits can not yet be stressed, 
because examination has been too far from exhaustive te make nega- 
tive conclusions dependable. On the other hand, it can not be 
doubted that the art came to the coast from the east at no very 
remote period. 

That the ultimate source of the pottery industry of the entire region 
is from the Southwest proper is also certain. But again, hasty con- 
clusions must be avoided. Nothing lke the Mohave-Luisefio ware 


KROPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 708 


has been found in any ancient or recent Pueblo culture; an area 
wholly or nearly without pottery separates the Colorado River from 
the westerly edge of the district of Pueblo architecture; and from 
the river to the coast there are no traces of any other form of the art. 

The ware most nearly resembling that of southern California 
seems to be a red pottery with one-colored pattern found up the 
Gila and at least as far into Sonora as the Papago country. This 
similarity, together with the modern Seri one, points to Sonora 
rather than the Pueblos as the specific source of the southern Cali- 


fornia art. 
HOUSES, 


The Cahuilla house 1s thatched. Its original form has not been 
satisfactorily determined. At present it is rectangular and set on 
forked posts. ‘There is a distinct ridge and considerable slope to 
the roof. The walls may be plastered with mud or adobe. his 
type of dwelling has unquestionably been influenced by the Mexican 
jacal or the American house; but to what degree is uncertain. On 
the desert larger and more nearly square houses with nearly flat 
roof and without sharp corners may be seen which somewhat suggest 
the Mohave house minus its covering of sand. ‘These are probably 
more nearly aboriginal. The mud coating of the walls of the 
pitched-roof houses is certainly not native. The Mohave follow the 
same practice, but it is positively known to be recent with them. 

In the mountains a type survived until recently which lacks walls. 
Two, four, or six posts are set up rather close together and connected 
across their crotched tops by short logs. From these, poles are then 
-vadiated to the ground, and some sort of thatch bound on. Such a 
dwelling suggests a reduction of the Miwok semisubterranean house 
or assembly chamber, but is probably more immediately connected 
with the Luiseno and Mohave houses; a covering of earth could be 
easily added or omitted. Stumps in abandoned settlements at the 
edge of the desert conform to this structural plan. But the question 
remains whether this type of house was built by all the Cahuilla 
or restricted to those in a certain topography; and further, whether 
it represents the standard house, or a form used in summer or for 
temporary purposes. 

Uncertainty also surrounds the sweat house. The Serrano and 
Pass Cahuilla made this chamber. For the Mountain Cahuilla the 
sweat house has not been mentioned; but they may have had it. 
For the Desert Cahuilla the case is more doubtful. The next tribes 
to the east, those of the Colorado River, do not know the sweat house.? 


* A recent study of the Cahuilla by L. Hooper (see bibliography) leaves the use of 
sweat houses and earth-covered houses somewhat obscure, but establishes the existence 
of sweat houses, 


3625 °—25 46 





704 ’ BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The sweat house of the Pass region is oval and small, about 12 
by 8 feet, and of a man’s height in the middle (PI. 60). The only 
opening is the door on ground level. Inside from this is the fire- 
place, and beyond, two center posts, connected by a transverse beam. 
From this poles run down to the edge of the rather shallow excava- 
tion. The whole is then laid with brush and earth. The structure 
is too small for dancing or assemblies: all through southern Cali- 
fornia the sweat house is used only for sweating. 

This sweat house agrees closely in plan with the old type of 
Cahuilla dwelling that has been discussed. 

The ramada or shade is of the usual type: a roof of foliage on posts, 
In the desert it forms a sort of porch in front of the door, and is 
frequently surrounded in whole or part by a windbreak—both 
devices known also to the Mohave. 

The brush inclosure for ceremonial purposes has not been reported 
from the Cahuilla, but may have been made by them. 


WEAPONS. 


The Cahuilla bow is that of all southern California—long, narrow, 
thick, and unbacked. It is made of mesquite, inferior specimens of 
willow, or palm-leaf stem; in the mountains probably of other ma- 
terials. The arrow is of two kinds: cane with a wooden foreshaft, 
as among the Chemehuevi and Yokuts, or a single sharpened stem of 
Artemisia, without head, the Mohave type. The grooved straightener 
and polisher of steatite, which was heated, occurs throughout the 
south, and has already been mentioned as the regular accompaniment 
of the cane or reed arrow. 

The thrusting war club with thick cylindrical head was used by 
the Cahuilla. This is a form found from the Pueblos to the Gabrie- 
lino. 

The curved flat rabbit-killing stick of southwestern type was known 
to all the southern Californians (Fig. 55). 


VARIOUS UTENSILS. 


The Cahuilla cradle was a ladderlike frame like that of the 
Mohave and Dieguefio. The relation of this generic southern Cali- 
fornia type to the other forms found in California has been discussed 
in the section dealing with the Yokuts. Whether the Cahuilla used 
a hooplike wickerwork hood of splints such as the Mohave attach to 
their frames is not recorded, but seems hkely. (Pl. 39, 0.) 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 705 


The hammock-shaped carrying net (Fig. 59) is often suspended 
in the house to hold a sleeping baby. This may be an aboriginal 
custom, but there is no certainty on the point. 

The desert habitat of most of the Cahuilla is probably responsible 
for their nonuse of the two commonest Californian string materials, 
Apocynum and Asclepias. Instead they employ the leaf fibers of 
the mescal, Agave deserti, and the bark of the reed, Phragmites com- 
munis. The latter plant is called wish, but this word in Luiseno de- 
notes A pocynum cannabinum. 

The mealing brush of soaproot fibers, Chlorogalum pomeridianum, 
is also replaced by one of agave among the Cahuilla. 

The straight flute has four holes usually set roughly in two 
pairs by rule of thumb or eye, and therefore productive of arbitrary 
intervals rendering the instrument unsuited for accompaniment to 
the voice. 

For strung shell money the Cahuilla are known to have used the 
Olivella type of thin, curving disks, but the more massive currency of 
clam must also have reached them. 


SOCIETY. 


The social organization of the Cahuilla has been less broken and 
altered in the past century than that of the Luisefo, and may there- 
fore afford a truer picture of the society of the latter people than their 
own present institutions. At the same time the information about 
the Cahuilla is not wholly clear. As among the Serrano, the moieties 
stand out definitely, the “clans” are less certain. 

The Cahuilla moieties are patrilinear, totemic, and exogamous. 
They are called /stam, after zsz/, the coyote, and 7'uktwm, after the 
wild cat, tukut,; -am, -wm, is the plural ending. Endogamy occurs 
now and then, as among the Miwok; it may or may not have been 
tolerated in native days. 

The “ clans ” are very numerous, small, and associated with locali- 
ties or named after places. All clan members insist on their direct 
kinship and descent in the male line from a comparatively recent 
ancestor. No recorded clan names and village names agree. ‘Two 
or more clans might inhabit one village. The members of a single 
clan sometimes live in different villages, and the Cahuilla do not 
seem to regard this condition as a modern innovation. All this leaves 
it doubtful whether the clans are bodies of the kind usually implied 
by this term, or only families of actual blood kindred named after 
a spot with which they are or once were associated. Their moiety 
affiliations prove nothing in this matter, since under patrilinear 
moieties either patrilinear clans or patrilinear families must auto- 
matically form part of the moieties. 


706 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The recorded Cahuilla clans are nearly all from the desert 
division: 
Coyote moiety. 


Sawala-kiktum. Formerly with the Wild Cat Nanha-yuwm and Ayelmukut 
and Coyote Ikoni-kiktum in the village of Ekwawinet at La Mesa, 2 miles 
south of Coachella. Now at Torros Reservation. 

Tkoni-kiktum. See last. 

Taukat-im. Southwest of Coachella. 

Worai-kiktum. At Indio. 

Sewakil. South of Indio. 

Masuvich-um, On Martinez Reservation. The name is said to refer to a 
sandy place. 

Wiit-am, “ grasshoppers.” On Martinez Reservation. 

Mumlait-im. On Martinez Reservation. 

Wansau-wum. On Martinez Reservation. Named from awanyish, stream, 
because once flooded out. 

Iviat-um. At Agua Dulce. 

Sasalma-yum. At Agua Dulce. 

Kaunakal-kiktum. At Agua Dulce. This group is said once to have lived 
at a place where kaunakal shrubs grew. 

Kauwistamila-kiktum. At Agua Dulce, 

A’atsat-um, “ good ones.” Formerly at Indian Wells. 

Wanisiwau-yam. At Mecca. 

Tevi-nga-kiktum. At Alamo. 

Wiyist-am. At San Ysidro. 

Havinawich-um. At Palm Springs. 

Amnadavich-um, “large ones.” Northwest of Palm Springs. 

Hunavati-kiktum. Southeast of Banning. Perhaps Serrano. 


Wild Cat moiety. 


Palkausinakela, “ seepage from a spring.” Figtree John, west of Salton Sea. 

Panatka-kiktum. Now at Thermal; came from west of there. 

Tui-kiktum. Southeast of Thermal. 

Tsil-sivayauwich-um. South of Coachella. 

Wankinga-kiktum. South of Coachella. 

Nanha-yum, Tel-kiktum, and Ayelmukut. At La Mesa, south of Coachella. 

Panasa-kiktum. Southeast of Coachella. 

Wansinga-tamyangahuch-um. Northeast of Coachella. 

Walpunidi-kiktum. At Alamo, 

Palpunivikt-um.. At Alamo, 

Tamula-kiktum. Near Alamo. 

Tamolanich-im. At Agua Dulce. 

Awal-im, “ dogs,” a nickname. At Martinez. 

Autaat-em. West or southwest of Coachella; now at Martinez. 

Wavicht-em—wavish, mesquite. At Indian Wells; now at Thermal and 
Mecca. 

Kauwis-paumiyawich-em, “living in the rocks at Kauwis,” 7. e. at Palm 
Springs. Now at Mecca. 

Kauwis-i-kiktum, “living at Kauwis.” Perhaps one group with the last. 
Now at Palin Springs and Coachella. 

Kilyi-nga-kiktum, On Mission Creek. Perhaps Serrano. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 707 


Iswet-um, “ wolves,” a nickname; in Spanish, Lobos, used in the form Lugo, 
as a modern family name. On Cahuilla Reservation. This is the only moun- 
tain Cahuilla clan recorded, and is so prominent on its reservation as to give 
the impression that Jsiwetum may have been a synonym for all the people of 
the district. The wolf is not an inhabitant of southern California. 

Wakwai-kiktum. Formerly near Warner’s ranch, that is, neighbors of the 
Cupeho. Now at Wakwi or Maulim on Torros Reservation. 

The ending -kiktuwm on many of these names is from the stem ki, “live” 
or “ house.” 

The Cahuilla word for “clan” is fahelo, which is probably from 
the stem tah, atah, “ person,” occurring in several Shoshonean lan- 
guages of southern California. 

The chief, net, and his assistant or ceremonial director, paha, held 
office in the clan, it is said. 

The totemism of the moieties extends to ritual and myth. Images 
for the nuki/ or mourning anniversary are made by each moiety for 
the other. Temayowit and Mukat, the first gods, born in the Milky 
Way, are thought to have been companions of Coyote and Wild Cat, 
respectively. The moon is a woman of Coyote moiety, made by 
Temayowit, the sun a Wild Cat man who went to the sky. 

Their possession of names and affilhation with the moieties render 
it probable that the enumerated groups of the Cahuilla approached 
the nature of clans. But the relation of the clans to the local or 
political units, to the moieties, to blood families, and to chieftain- 
ship and religious groups is far from clear for any of the southern 
California Shoshoneans. 


RELIGION. 


Considering the importance of the Cahuilla, their strength in sur- 
vivors, and the interest attaching both on account of their varied en- 
vironment and their position midway between the Gabrielino and 
the Mohave ceremonial foci, regrettably little is known of their 
religion. 

Their creation myth seems to have been of Serrano type, but with 
the deities named as among the Cupeno. 

The mourning anniversary was called NVukil or Hemnukuwin. 
Images were used. 

The same may be said of the adolescence rite, Au/olil or Pem- 
iwoluniwom, in which the girl was “ roasted.” 

Whether the Chungichnish religion reached the Cahuilla of the 
pass is not certain. It probably obtained some foothold among those 
of the mountains. It did not exist in the desert. The Cahuilla 
there do not know Chungischnish, drink no toloache publicly, make 
no sand paintings, and hold no eagle ceremony. According to the 
Mohave, they sing several cycles analogous to their own song series. 


708 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 78 


There may be some forced native equating in this statement, but 
there is probably at least some basis of fact. The desert Cahuilla 
knew the toloache plant and admit that they drank it, but apparently 
only as occasional individuals intent on wealth or some other special 
aspect of fortune. This is very nearly the Mohave attitude toward 
the drug.* 

On the whole, therefore, it would seem that the Cahuilla possessed 
the basic and generalized elements of southern California religion ; 
‘lacked—at least in their most characteristic habitat—its developed 
Chungichnish form; and had come instead under a certain degree 
of Mohave or Colorado River influence. This influence is likely to 
have been indirect, since there is practically no mention of outright 
communications between the Cahuilla and the Mohave. 


%L. Hooper, The Cahuilla Indians (see bibliography), gives, among other new data, 
an account of a Jimson-weed initiation which appears to refer to the Pass division. 


CHapTerR 49, 
THE DIEGUENO AND KAMIA. 


THr DIEGuENO: Yuman stock, 709; territory and divisions, 709; history and 
numbers, 711; religion, 712; shamanism, 718; calendar, 718; society, 719; 
customs, 720; dress, 721; houses, 721; food, arts, and implements, 722. 
THE KAmIA, 728, 


Tuer DreauENo. 
YUMAN STOCK. 


With the Dieguefo, more fully San Dieguefios, we return once 
more to the much scattered Hokan family and enter upon considera- 
tion of the last of the stocks represented in California—the Yuman. 

The Yuman stock is internally classified on the basis of speech as 
follows, Californian tribes being starred: 

Lower California division: Kiliwi; Cochimi; Akwa’ala. 

Central division, centering on the lower Colorado River: * Mohave; * Hal- 
chidhoma ; * Yuma; Kohuana; Halyikwamai; Cocopa; * Kamia; * Dieguefio; 
Maricopa. 

Arizona . Plateau division: Havasupai; Walapai; Tulkepai (“ Tonto”’’) ; 
Yavapai. 


TERRITORY AND DIVISIONS. 


Diegueno land was washed by the ocean on the west and bordered 
by the holdings of the Luisefo, Cupefio, and Cahuilla on the north. 
For the east and south no precise limits can be set. The Diegueiio 
of the north, about Mesa Grande and San Felipe, declare that they 
did not live beyond the eastern foot of the mountains. But what 
group owned the desert tract to the east, from Salton Sea to the 
now fertile Imperial Valley and New River district, has never been 
fully established. On the map most of the district in question has 
been assigned tentatively to the Kamia; in the section on whom the 
problem is discussed further. 

Southward, the Diegueno shade off into the closely allied Yuman 
bands of northernmost Baja California. At Ensenada, 60 miles 
south of San Diego, the speech is still close to that of the Dieguefo. 
The Indians through this stretch have no group names for each 
other, except by directions. They distinguish between the Dieguefos, 
those formerly connected with the mission of San Diego, and the 


709 


710 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY iene 78 


° 


Bajefios, the inhabitants of Lower or Baja California. But this is 
merely a reflection of the political separateness of American and 
Mexican. The congeners across the line have not thriven, and eth- 
nologically they are wholly unknown, except for statements of the 
most general character; but the scant indications point to no ethnic 
demarcation of moment at or even near the international border. 
Within the part of California occupied by the Diegueno two not 
very different dialects are spoken besides some minor subdialects. 
The two principal dialects have usually been designated as the 
northern and the southern, although “ northwestern” and “ south- 
eastern ” would be more exact. A number of differences of custom 
are known, but much of the available information concerns the two 
groups jointly, so that it is difficult to treat them other than as a 
unit. Their careful distinction- by future students is indispensable. 
Both dialects extended across the international boundary, but 
their position is such as to make it appear that the northern belonged 
primarily to American and the southern to Mexican California. The 
southern dialect includes, in American California, only the modern 
districts of Campo, La Posta, Manzanita, Guyapipe, and La Laguna. 


It is probable that the Dieguefio, or at least the northern branch, called 
themselves merely Ipai, people. They do sometimes call themselves ‘ southern 
people,” Kawak-upai, or ‘“‘ western people,’ Awik-upai, with reference to their 
neighbors; but these are not true national designations. Thus the Dieguefio 
of Mesa Grande are Kawak-upai with reference to the Luisenho, and those of 
San Felipe as regards the Cupefo; but at San Felipe the real Kawak-upai 
should be the Campo people. The southern Dieguefio sometimes call themselves 
Kamiai or Kamiyahi; which once more intrudes the vexed question of who the 
Kamia were. 

To the Luiseno and Cupefo all the Dieguefio are simply “ southerners”: 
Kichamkuchum or Kichamkochem. The Mohave know them as Kamia’-ahwe, 
that is, “ foreign” or remote Kamia. 

Dieguefo names for their neighbors are: Kohwai, perhaps also Hakunyau, 
the Luisefio; Hekwach, the Cupeno, and no doubt originally the Cahuilla also, 
although the latter are now known by their usual name, which the Indiang 
declare to be of Spanish origin; Techahet, probably a place, is also recorded 
for the Cupefio or Cahuilla; Yuma or Yum (probably a recent name), Inyak- 
upai (“eastern people”), or Yakiyak, the Yuma; although some distinguish 
between the Kwichan or Yuma proper, said to be on the Colorado or beyond 
it, and the Yakiyak to the west of the Kwichan; Kwikapa, the Cocopa; 
Chimuwowo, the Chemehuevi: Humkahap, the Mohave; Mitlchus in the north- 
ern dialect, or Haiku in the southern, the Americans; Pinyai, the Mexicans. 

The name Kamia seems to be unknown to the northern Diegueno, except, in 
the form Kamiai, as a designation for the inhabitants of the district of San 
Pascual, near the Luisefio frontier. The occurrence of this name at San 
Pascual may possibly be due to the settlement there of a group of southern 
Dieguefio during or after mission times. With the Cupeno there was intimate 
association and considerable intermarriage, at least from the vicinity of San 
Felipe. The Cocopa are said not to have voyaged into northern Dieguefio 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 711 


territory, but the Chemehuevi were occasional visitors in search of food. The 
Mohave seem very little known in the district of Mesa Grande and San Felipe. 
They probably made their journeys to Manzanita and other southern points, 
where references to their songs and sacred mountain occur. 

The western portion of Dieguenfo territory is shown in detail on Plate 57. 
Other place names are Emitl-kwatai, Campo; Amat-kwa’-ahwat, farther up 
on the same stream’; Amai’-tu, La Posta; Ewiapaip, from which we have made 
Guyapipe; Inyahkai and Aha-hakaik, La Laguna; Hawi, Vallecitos; Ahta, 
“cane,” or Hapawu, Carrizo. Most of these are little reservations now; but it 
‘seems as if many of the reservations constituted by the government in this 
region, as among the Luiseno and Cahuilla, had an ancient village community 
as their nucleus. 

Settled places that can not be located with any definiteness are Awaskal, 
Kohwat, Maktati, Maramoido, Matamo, Meti, Pokol, Shana, and Tapanke, 
mentioned in Spanish sources, Hanwi, Hasumel, Kamachal, Kokwitl, and 
Suapai in American. South of the boundary, some of them perhaps in what 
may be considered Dieguefio limits, were Ahwat, Mat-ahwat-is, Hasasei, 
Hata’am, Hawai, Inomasi, Kwalhwut, Netlmol, and Wemura. The Hakum 
were inland hear the border: that is, a village of this name evidently stood in 
or near Jacumba Pass. 

Other settlements are given below in the clan lists under “ Society.” 

Beyond their own territories the northern Diegueno knew Salton as Esily, 
“* Salt,” or Esilyeyaka; the mud volcanoes as Hakwicholol; Mount San Jacinto 
as Emtetei-Chaup-ny-uwa, ‘“‘ Chaup’s house peak.” 


HISTORY AND NUMBERS. 


San Diego was the first mission founded in upper California; but 
the geographical limits of its influence were the narrowest of any, 
and its effect on the natives comparatively light. There seem two 
reasons for this: first, the stubbornly resisting temper of the natives; 
and second, a failure of the rigorous concentration policy enforced 
elsewhere. Whether this second cause was itself the result of the 
first, or was due to an inability of the almost arid region to support a 
large population by agriculture without irrigation, is not wholly 
clear. 

The spirit of the Diegueno toward the missionaries was certainly 
quite different from the passiveness with which the other Californians 
received the new religion and life. They are described as proud, ran- 
corous, boastful, covetous, given to jests and quarrels, passionately 
devoted to the customs of their fathers, and hard to handle. In short, 
they possessed their share of resoluteness. Not especially formidable 
as foes, they at least did not shrink from warlike attempts. Within 
a month of the founding of the mission an attack was made for 
plunder. In its seventh year, the mission, meanwhile removed to its 
present site, was definitely attacked, partly burned, and three Span- 
iards, including one of the priests, killed. This was the only Francis- 
can to meet martyrdom at Indian hands in the entire history of the 


. 


112 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


California missions. Three years later it was necessary to send an 
expedition against the hostiles of Pamo. 

Christianity also took hold of the natives very slowly. The initial 
year of the mission did not bring a single baptism; in the first 
five, less than a hundred neophytes were enrolled. After this, 
progress was more rapid: but the very success of the priests ap- 
pears to have been the stimulus that drove the unconverted into 
open hostility. There can be little doubt that this un-Californian. 
attitude can be ascribed to a participation by the Dieguefo in the 
spirit of independence characteristic of the other Yuman tribes. 

The Dieguefo population, with the Kamia of American Califor- 
nia included,‘may have reached 3,000. To-day there are between 
700 and 800. This is a higher percentage of survival than is en- 
joyed by any other missionizéd group of California. The cause 
must be ascribed to the slowness of the Dieguenho to submit and 
their retention of a greater degree of freedom of movement and 
residence. It was not until 55 years after its foundation that San 
Diego attained its maximum of converts. Other missions fell into 
heavy numerical decline in a much shorter period, and were only 
partly able to check the decrease by drawing upon importations 
from more and more remote districts. San Diego never harbored 
any Indians but Dieguenos. 

The total baptisms in 65 years were a few over 6,000. ‘Three 
generations to a century would make this figure indicate a stand-_ 
ing population of 3,000. But the native rate of reproduction may 
have been faster, and if so the numbers at a given time would have 
been less. Ten years before the mission reached its populational 
acme the annual death rate was 35 per thousand. This suggests 
more rapid breeding than is common to modern civilized communi- 
ties; but it is probably not a high figure for a primitive community, 
and was certainly far below the mortality obtaining at other mis- 
sions during their periods of activity. 


RELIGION. 


Diegueno religion is so largely compounded of the same elements 
as that of the Luiseno that its detailed consideration would be repe- 
tition. This is evident from the accompanying tabulation, the na- 
tive names in which may serve as points of identification in future 
studies. 

This similarity is probably in part ancient, but has undoubtedly 
been accentuated by the southeastward sweep of the Chungichnish 
toloache cult about a century ago. The southern Dieguefio, in 
fact, did not come definitely under the influence of the movement 
until about the period of American occupation. It is characteristic 


KROEBER] 


HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 


7138 


of the effect of speech diversity in California that ceremonial names 


were translated or replaced by the Diegueno, not taken over. 


Only 


in the songs, the words and melody of which tend to form a close 
unit in the Indian mind, did outright borrowing of speech occur; 
and in these it took place on an extensive scale. 
of Diegueno songs are in a foreign tongue; and this is generally 
not Luiseno or Cahuilla, as the singers believe, but Gabrielino. 


A large proportion 


TABLE 7.—ELEMENTS OF RELIGION IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. 




















Religious elements. Dieguefio. Luisefio. Other groups. 

Ceremonial enclosure..........- himak (‘they | wamkish; hotah-| Juaneno, wankech; Gabrielino 

dance”’?), aki- ish, the fence. yoba. 
uch, 

Ceremonial manager or dance | kwaipai.........-.- ales sg ad Lt Serrano, Cupefio, Cahuilla, 

leader. % paha’. 

Toloache initiates. .........-... een eke? ade oh cs pumal-um........ Juanefio, pupl-em. 

Hes) UCN, Pe A ee ee peer me Kwasiyai. 2.2225 < PUla eres see Juaneno, pul. 

“Tatahuila” dance (Pl. 55)....| tapakwirp.......-. morahash; totaw- | Juanefio, tobet (—towet?) the 
ish, the per- costume; Cupefio, pukavi- 
former. hat, the dance, 

Haglefeather skirt. .-........... Vipelialee sees. seve p BOVE Asp el ata yang ied Juaneno, palet. 

Headdress of owl feathers on | tsekwirp,winyeyi.| cheyat............ 

stick. 

Erect headdress on band....-.-. Talos. yee ech apuma; hainit...-| Juanefo, eneat. 

Stick headed with erystal...... KOtato es seo ee Daewlth tre cree eter 

Toloache mortar of... e kalmoirt Sie tamyushs-. sss 

Net figure for initiation......... WOSDVUL S, 5 ccdecte ten ei WADA WUE oon sarten 

SERENE so Bae Oo co's ce ec a FUSI RUSsse7 ones naktomush, the | Juanefo, pivat (‘‘tobacco”); 
plant; mani,the; Cupefo manit paninil, the 
preparation; rite. 
pa’nish mani, 
the drinking. 

TeTORLGloee renee ts. soe cco. DR is as ety momlahpish....... | 

Hand oatipin yess cL sep es Fas: (UGES Se ORE tarohaisheas24. 5.4 Juaneno,! Gabrielino,! 

Clothes-burning rite............ watlma.........5% chuchamish......- Cupeno, sushomnil. 

Image-burning rite. ...........- keruk, wukeruk...! tauchanish........ Cupefio, nangawil; Cahuilla, 


Mourning rite for initiates 
Eagle mourning rite 


Girls’ adolsecenes rite. =... - 7. 
HIPC ICG Saw et AO og Seas ote 
OTA CSAC ATI COs. nota coe eee ec 
Ordeal of stinging ants 
Race at dying or new moon 
Songs of invective and con- 
tempt. 
Polein Notush mourning. ...-.. 
Cannibal spirit, meteor, fireball. 





| 
| 


_ Chaup, 


ehpa ima (‘‘eagle 
dance”). 
atanuk, akil....... 


ed 


Kuyaho- 
mar. 


yunish matakish - - 
ashwut maknash 
(‘eagle killing” ) 
wekenish, (yunin- 
ish?). 
(COT SBE ee ere ee 
EatiGh. oe eee oe a 
SOS wae ees 


kutumit 
Takwish 


ey 





| 





nukil, hemnukuwin. 
Gabrielino.! 
Juaneno, panes, the bird. 


Cupefnio, aulinil, tilunika; Ca- 


huilla, aulolil. 


Juaneno.! 
Juaneno.! 


Gabrielino,! Cupeno, piniwa- 


hat. 
Fernandeno, kotumut. 
Cahuilla, Takwish; Juanefo, 
Takwich (‘‘Tacuieh’’), 








1Occurs, but name unrecorded. 


2 Lacking. 


714 | BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The name Chungichnish did not enter the Dieguefio idiom. While 
it is difficult to believe that they took over the ritual without the 
least knowledge of the associated deity, such knowledge can not have 
been profound, since there is no trace of it in the available myths. 
The Dieguefio call the Chungichnish practices simply awik, 
“western.” 

Being recent among them, this cult has not invaded all rites to 
the same extent as among the Luiseno. The girls’ adolescence cere- 
mony, for instance, is totally free from Chungichnish coloring, and 
must be regarded as belonging to an older stratum of religion, 
although not necessarily an originally Diegueno one, since the Die- 
guefio elements of this rite recur among the Luisefo plus Chungich- 
nish additions. The adolescence ceremony, in fact, seems to have 
been worked out and to have spread over the entire coastward part 
of southern California so long ago that it became wholly natural- 
ized among each group with a nearly uniform character. 

Apart from the stronger hold of the Chungichnish cultus among 
the Luiseno, the two peoples differ definitely in religious outlook. 
This diversity has been noted by all careful observers, and is the 
more marked because of the close similarity of the concrete ele- 
ments making up the two religions and the practical identity of 
the cultures on their material and economic side. The Luisefio are 
mystics, crude but earnest. The Dieguefo are left untouched by 
the abstruse. The actual—picturesque or decorative but either vis- 
ible or tangible—is what interests them. The sacred order of births 
of the essences of things does not occur in their narrow cosmogony. 
‘The dying god Wiyot, representative of humanity, is slighted in 
their traditions for the sea serpent that was beheaded, the wonder- 
working boy Chaup, the blind brother of the creator, or other 
individuals remarkable only for their peculiarities of magic. The 
relation of the two mythologies, with reference to those of all 
southern California, is discussed in detail in the chapter on the 
Yuma. No trace of the Luiseno esoteric system of double terms 
for all sacred objects or concepts has been found among even the 
most immediately contiguous Dieguefio. The sand paintings of the 
two peoples have already been described as perceptibly different 
workings out of a single idea. 

In some measure these differences may be due to the Diegueno 
having been subject to an eastern influence from their Yuman kins- 
men of the lower Colorado River, from which the Luiseho were 
guarded by the intervening Cahuilla. This influence undoubtedly 
existed. Its spring was probably in large measure the Mohave 
nation; but wherever it originated, it was chiefly transmitted to the 
Dieguenho proper by the Yuma and Kamia. <As between the river 


75 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 715 


tribes and the Diegueno, there is no doubt that the current flowed 
from the former to the latter. 

The effects of this stimulation or borrowing are visible at several 
points. The Diegueno, in the mythic basis of part of their ritual, 
make much of the sacred mountain of the Mohave, Avikwame, which 
they called Wikami, although sometimes they relocate it at a lower 
peak near Yuma. They sing song cycles admitted by the Mohave as 
equivalent to their own, in part as identical. Orup and Tutomunp 
songs phonographed among the southern Diegueho have been 
promptly recognized and correctly named by the Mohave. Whether 
they would have similarly known Luiseno songs of Zemenganesh, 
Pimukvul, or Nokwanish is very doubtful. The Diegueho mourning 
rite with images is called Aerwk—it is said after the name of the 
booth which is burned at the clmax. The Yuma also consume a 
shade at their anniversary and call one of the two kinds of songs 
in the rite Harwuka. That the Luiseho, whose speech is radically 
diverse, do not know this name, proves nothing; but it is significant 
that they are not mentioned as burning any structure. More inti- 
mate knowledge may bring to light hundreds of other points of 
contact. 

It is extremely desirable, in this connection, that something inti- 
mate may yet be ascertained as to the religion of the Cahuilla. In 
origin, they are one with the Luiseno and Gabrielino. Their position 
is such that they may well have received ritual influence from the 
river tribes to the same degree as the Diegueno. The Mohave speak 
of the Cahuilla cults in terms of their own; but this may be because 
they themselves, situated at the center of an area of religious dis- 
persion, know no other rites. The Diegueno refer to the Cahuilla 
as if in their beliefs and practices they were one with the Luisefo. 
Yet this may indicate nothing much more than that they recognized 
the Cahuilla and Luiseno as allied nations distinct from themselves, 
Moreover, the Mohave have in mind the Cahuilla of the desert, the 
Diegueno probably those of the mountains, immediate neighbors and 
associates of the Luiseho. We, on the other hand, are so little in- 
formed about the Cahuilla that we do not know positively how far 
the respective influences of Avikwame and Chungichnish prevailed 
among them. 

A complete list of the known song series or cycles of the southern 
Dieguefo is included in a comparative discussion in the chapter on 
the Yuma (Table 8). 

As to the Diegueno, once more, a distinct eastern and Yuman 
importation can accordingly be recognized in their religion in addi- 
tion to a more recent northwestern and Shoshonean one. When 
both are accounted for, we are face to face with a native Dieguefio 


716 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


basis. But how much of this is original Diegueno it is impossible 
to say. Its outstanding elements—the girls’ rite with its roasting, 
the use of toloache in some way, the mourning anniversary with 
images, the stringing of songs into cycles or classes, a type of cos- 
mogony—are all common to an array of tribes, stretching in some 
cases into central California and in others into Arizona. There is 
nothing to suggest that the Dieguefio were especially prominent or 
creative among this group of nations. We may rather conclude 
from their marginal position, with the unnavigable sea at their back 
and the extremely poor and hard-pressed peoples of Baja California 
on their right hand, that, other things equal, they received more 
often than they gave; and, as one people among many, conditions 
were far from equal. Most of the substratum even of their religion, 
then, is likely to have had its ultimate devising in the hands of 
other nations; and all that we can point to as specifically Dieguefio 
in source are the superficial details peculiar to them. Fuller knowl- 
edge will no doubt add to the number of these, but, on the other 
hand, is also certain to: reduce the number at other points as it un- 
covers the presence of this or that trait, as yet recorded only for 
the Diegueno, among their neighbors also. 

The following are the principal of these peculiarities: 

The Diegueno girls’ ceremony being free of the Chungichnish at- 
mosphere, and therefore containing more magic and less religion, 
refers primarily to the girls’ physiological well-being during life, 
whereas the Luiseho, having more nearly equated the ceremony 
with that for boys, make of it almost an initiation into a cult, with 
sermons over the sand painting, an ordeal of retaining swallowed 
tobacco, foot racing, and painting of rocks by the candidate. In 
place of these features, the Diegueno use the atudku, a large crescen- 
tic stone, heated and placed between the girls’ legs to soften the 
abdominal tissues and render motherhood easy and safe. These 
stones have been spoken of as sacred. No doubt they were. But 
their use was a practical one, in native opinion, not symbolical or 
esoteric. 

Cremation among the Dieguefio was followed by a gathering of the 
ashes, which, placed in a jar of pottery, were buried or hidden among 
remote rocks. The apparel of the dead person was saved for the 
clothes-burning ceremony, but no mention is made of the preliminary 
rite of washing called 7uvish by the Luisenio. 

The image ceremony begins with a night of wailing. On the six 
succeeding nights the images are marched around the fire and danc- 
ing and singing continue until morning. The figures are of mats 
stuffed with grass, the features indicated in haliotis shell. The faces 
of those representing men are painted black, of women, red. On 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 717 


the last of the six nights, at daybreak, the images, together with a 
great quantity of property, are put into the keruk, a small semi- 
circular house of brush open to the east in which the images have 
previously been stored, and the whole is burned to a song “ Goes 
katomi to your house.” Matomi may denote essence, or spirit; the 
meaning is not certainly known. The purpose of the rite is said to 
be to keep the dead content, prevent their return, and assuage the 
grief of the survivors, who at once cease mourning. 

The Dieguefo danced and raced for the revival of the moon toward 
the end of its waning; the Juaneno when it was new; for the Luisefio, 
both periods are mentioned. 

The Dieguefio keep or don their ceremonial paraphernalia in a 
“house ” or enclosure called kwusich-ny-awa. The meaning of this 
term is not known but kwusich recalls kwastyai, shaman, and awa is 
house. It is not recorded whether the kwusich-ny-awa was a special 
religious structure or a living house temporarily set apart for sacred 
purposes. It may have been nothing but a small brush fence such as 
the Luisefo built near the main wamkish. 

Kast is the primary ceremonial direction to the Dieguefio, as north 
is to the Luisefo and usually to the Mohave. The ceremonial en- 
closures open in these directions, but both Dieguefo and Luiseno 
occasionally state the entrance to have been on the side characteristic 
of the other tribe. 

The Dieguefio are the only tribe in California as yet known to 
possess a system of color-direction symbolism. This is: East, white; 
south, green-blue; west, black; north, red. It is interesting that 
there is little if any idea of a circuit of the directions or fixed 
sequence of the colors, as in the Southwest. The Diegueno thinks 
of two pairs of directions, each with its balance of colors, white-black 
or red-blue. If he falters, which is not infrequently, the confusion 
is within the pair. 

From this directional symbolism it might be inferred that the cere- 
monial number of the Dieguefio was four, as it is to a very marked 
degree among the Mohave and Yuma. This, however, is true chiefly 
of Diegueio mythology; and it may be remarked that the color 
symbolism has so far been found only in traditions. In ritual, things 
are done three times, or six times in a pair of threes, almost always; 
four is rare, five and seven do not occur. This conflict is rather 
remarkable and seems very un-Indian. It has an analogue in an 
indeterminateness of sacred number among the Luisefo, where three 
and four both occur, but the feeling for number seems curiously 
deficient. With the Juaneno, five rather looms up, but there is no 
certainty. With the Gabrielino, 4 and its multiple 8 secure primacy 
once more; but there is also a tendency toward 6 and 12, and per- 
haps 7, which in turn prevail among the Serrano and Yokuts, 


718 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


SHAMANISM. 


The shaman, hwastyai, is said by the Dieguefo to have been born 
as such. He may have owned guardian spirits, but information to 
this effect is very vague. There were bear doctors as well as shamans 
who could turn themselves into eagles. The weather maker was 
called hwamyarp. 

Curing was effected by sucking blood or the disease object, either 
with the mouth or through a pipe; by kneading and pressing; and 
by blowing tobacco smoke. Suspected shamans were done away 
with. 


CALENDAR. 


The Dieguefo calendar had six named divisions and no more, 
which have been independently recorded twice. 











Season. Weather. First count. Second count, 
November. \... -...42- Gold $. waste ye eee: ilya-kwetl.........- | 
Decemper. aha: ATIOW tee eter. ee heha-nimsup..-. - - | namasap (white). 
TAM UAE eee nee oe eee ot 6 ed contol ai Hatley eee oe tai. 
P@DTUAT yns 2 Sek oe ee WRatin® SOF AiR heha=psu-.- 2-2-2 2 | pswi, kwurh. 
WT AECM ce siacre reese = iW Ree thi Ce hatya-matinya ..... matanal. 
ADE lae seee TOME ene eases ihy—anidja........-- anaha. 











Kwurh of the second count may possibly stand for -/wetl of the 
first and have been misplaced. 

The round of six was gone through twice each year. Although the 
month names refer to wintry phenomena, they were repeated in 
summer. That the divisions were lunar is shown by the fact that 
the names in the second list were obtained with the prefix hatlya, 
“moon.” 

The Diegueno reckoning is an exact duplicate of the Zuni calendar, 
except for appearing not to begin at the solstices. This default may 
be an error, or due to an imperfect adjustment. The Luisefo and 
Juanefo calendar was almost certainly based on the solstices, and 
the annual repetition of the Diegueho count very strongly suggests 
a primary recognition of two fixed points within the year; and these 
can hardly have been any events other than the solstices. The Zuni- 
Diegueno reckoning flows more evenly for short periods than the 
Juaneno-Luiseho system of combining four or five months with two 
longer solstitial periods; but after each few years it must require 
a violent wrench to readjust it. The Juanefio plan seems rather more 
advanced in that it has departed farther from a mere seasonal year 
divided by lunations toward a true solar year. 


a eee i es ieee 


_ 


KROPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 719 
SOCIETY. 


The Dieguefio were divided into exogamous patrilineal clans. 
Their system, like that of the Luisefio, is, however, a vestigial or 
rudimentary one, evidently because they were situated at the edge 
of the Californian area of clans. The totemic moieties of more 
northerly nations are lacking. So are the totemic names of the 
cognate Yuman tribes to the east. The clans are definitely asso- 
ciated with localities in the native mind. Their names, so far as 
translatable, give the impression of being place names, perhaps of 
narrowly limited spots. Married women went to live with their 
husbands’ people. The following are the known clans. There were 
undoubtedly others: 


Northern Diegueno “clans.” 


Matuwir (‘hard’), south of Mesa Grande. 

Shrichak (‘‘an owl”), at Pamo in winter, Mesa Grande in summer. 

U’u (“an owl”), at Pamo and Mesa Grande. 

Kwitlp, at Pamo and Mesa Grande. 

Hesitl (“ manzanita’), at Tauwi, San Jose, on Warner’s ranch, adjoining the 
Cupeno. 

Paipa, at Santa Ysabel. 

Hsun, at Santa Ysabel. 

Kwaha (“estafiate’”), at Santa Ysabel. 

Hipuwach, at Santa Ysabel. 

Tumau (“ grasshopper”), now at Capitan Grande, formerly at Mesa Grande, 
Santa Ysabel, and elsewhere. Reckoned as distinet from the Tumau clan of 
the southern Dieguefio. 

Kukuro (“dark, shady”), now at Mesa Grande, formerly at Mission San 
Diego and Tiajuana, original location uncertain. 

Lachapa (short?), location uncertain. 


Southern Diegueno “ clans.” 

Kwitak, at Campo. 

Nahwach, at Miskwatnuk, north of Campo. 

Yachap, at Hakisap, northeast of Campo. 

Hitimawa, at Snauyaka, Manzanita. 

Kwamai (“ wishing to be tall”), at Pilyakai, near La Posta. 

Saikul, at Matajuai. 

Kwatl (“hide”), at Hakwaskwak, in Jacumba Valley. 

Hetmiel, at Hakwasik, east of Tecate Divide below Jacumba Valley on 
American soil; now near Campo. 

Kanihich or Kwinhich, in southwestern Imperial Valley; now at Campo. 

Hayipa, at Hakwino, Cameron Lake, in southwestern Imperial Valley. 

Hakisput, at Hachupai in Imperial Valley. 

Tumau (‘“ grasshopper”), near Brawley in Imperial Valley; now among the 
Yuma. 

Miskwis, location unknown. 


These locations tend to connect the southern Dieguenho with the 
nonfarming division of the elusive Kamia. That Imperial Valley 


3625 °—25——-A7 


720 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY {punt 78 


was owned by a group called Kamia is clear; whether these were 
more nearly allied to the agricultural totemic Kamia on the Colo- 
rado or to the hunting, nontotemic Kamiai or “southern Dieguefio ” 
of the mountains of San Diego County is less certain. 

The southern Dieguefo having been less disturbed by civilization, 
their lst probably represents the aboriginal status more closely. 
From this it would appear that each “clan” owned a tract and that 
each locality was inhabited by members of one clan, plus their intro- 
duced wives. The kwaipai or chief of the clan had direction of 
ceremonies, which were largely or wholly made by clans as such. 
This is a gentile system reduced to a skeleton; the only unquestion- 
able clan attribute is the exogamy. Patrilinear descent proves noth- 
ing, since the wholly ungentile tribes of California reckon and 
inherit in the male line. It is.not unlikely that the scheme had its 
origin in pure village communities or small political groups among 
whom a prevalent exogamy hardened into a prescription, while the 
name of one of a number of spots in their habitat became generally 
accepted as their appellation. Only a slight readjustment in these 
directions would be required to convert the Yurok villages, the 
Pomo communities, or the Yokuts tribes into “clans.” In short, it 
is doubtful whether the term clan is applicable.t 

The northern Diegueno data suggest a more definitely social sys- 
tem. Pamo had a chief (Awatpai) for the village or community as 
well as for each clan living there, besides oreau or assistant chiefs 
in the clans. But the northern Dieguefo were shuffled into the mis- 
sion and mission stations and out again after secularization, and it 
would be venturesome to draw inferences from statements that may 
refer to conditions either 50 or 150 years old. 

The Diegueno word for clan is s¢mus, which may be from a Yuman 
stem meaning “ name.” 


CUSTOMS. 


The semicouvade was practiced by Dieguefio and Luisefio alike. 
For a month after a birth father and mother alike did no avoidable 


1 Spier (see bibliography) lists the following southern Dieguefo clans: Kwaha, Waipuk 
(‘“kingsnake’”’), Huhlwa (‘“ twined basket’), Oswai, Hlich (‘‘ worthless’’), Kalyarp 
(*‘ butterfly”), Hotum (‘‘ drum’’—an object learned from the Spaniards), Kwainyitl 
(“ black ’’), Paipa, Nihkai; plus several previously recorded: Tuman, Lyacharp, Neeih- 
hawach, Hitlmiarp, Kwatl, Kwitark, Kwamai, Miskwis, Kwinehich, Hitlmawa, Saikur. 
A map gives their situations, which seem to be their summer ‘haunts, hunted and 
gathered over from spring to autumn. Winter was spent in mixed groups in the 
eastern foothills, at the desert’s edge. Clans sometimes fought; they owned eyries 
and most food products of their tract, but not acorns. Local exogamy was normal but 
not studied ; there was no preferential marriage between clans; residence after marriage 
was patrilocal. Clans seem to have been without totemic associations. Hach had a 
chief, the office being generally hereditary, but with some selection among heirs by 
the people. The principal functions of the chief were to admonish and to hold the 
mourning ceremony; his necessary qualification, generosity. Other than their names, 
there is little in all this to mark the “clans” as being more than local bands or 
miniature “ tribes” of the usual Californian type. 





KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA T21 


work, shunned exposure, and refrained from meat and salt—the 
usual food taboos of the region, 

The umbilical cord, after severing, was coiled on the infant’s ab- 
domen. After it fell off, it was carefully buried. This is also a Lui- 
seno custom. 

Suicide by jealous women is said to have been not rare. 

The entire scalp, including the ears, was cut from fallen foes and 
preserved. ‘The event was celebrated in a night of dancing by men 
and women in the ceremonial inclosure. It is said that the dancers 
took turns at setting the scalp on their own heads. 

The standard game of the Dieguefo is guessing, homarp, Spanish 
peon, played as by the Luiseno. ‘The hoop and poles have gone out 
of use. Women’s dice are of Mohave type: four little boards, painted 
or burned. These are said to be in use only among the southern 
division, and to be a “ Mohave” importation. 


DRESS. 


Men went naked. A braided girdle of agave fiber evidently served 
for carrying and not to support a breechclout. Women’s wear was 
the usual two-piece petticoat. The hinder garment, teparau, was of 
willow bark; the front apron, of the same material or of close strings, 
perhaps partly braided or netted. The footgear, which was worn 
only on rough or thorny ground, was a sandal of agave fiber, cush- 
ioned to the thickness of a half inch or more. 

Both sexes wore their hair long. The men bunched it on their 


crowns. The women allowed it to hang loose, but trimmed the front 


at the eyebrows, and often set on their heads a coiled basketry cap. 

Tattooing, wkwich, was somewhat random and variable. Women 
bore more designs than men, as a rule, and two or three vertical lines 
on the chin were the commonest pattern, but forehead, cheeks, arms, 
and breast were not exempt. Women were tattooed in connection 
with the adolescence ceremony. <A cactus thorn pricked charcoal 
into the skin. 

HOUSES. 


The house in the mountains, and apparently on the coast also, was 
earth covered. ‘Three posts, planted in a row, were connected by a 
short ridge log, on which poles were then leaned from the sides. A 
layer of Adwat brush kept the superimposed soil from sifting or 
washing in. The door was not oriented. The elliptical outline, 
sharp roof, and absence of walls approximate this structure to the 
Luiseho and Cahuilla house; but the regular roofing with earth, 
exacted by neither the mild climate of the coast nor the heat of the 
desert edge, points to an influence of the cognate tribes on the Colo- 
rado River. 


122 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


The sweat house, ¢awip, is described as smaller but higher than the 
dwelling. Its center rested on four posts set in a square. The root 
was like that of the living house. The fire was between the posts and 
the door. Men sweated regularly in the evening; women did not 
enter at any time. This is the farthest known occurrence of the 
typical Californian sweat house; the Mohave and Yuma did not know 
any device of the kind. 

Wells, setdmehwatl, were dug with sticks. Like the Cahuilla, the 
Diegueno declare this to have been a practice of the pre-Spanish days. 
Permanent springs are not numerous on the eastern slope of the 
mountains. 

FOOD, ARTS, AND IMPLEMENTS. 


About San Diego Bay fish and mollusks formed the basis of sub- 
sistence. Inland the range of food was similar to that of the moun- 
tain Luiseho and Cahuilla. Toward the desert baked “ mescal,” 
amatl, looms up as a staple. In spite of their affinity to the farming 
Kamia, the Diegueno never attempted the practice of agriculture. 

The mortar was that of the Luiseno, but usually made in a smaller 
bowlder, and often sunk into the ground. The bed-rock mortar was 
also known. 

The same pottery is made by the Dieguefo as by their neighbors. 
A reddish clay is mixed with finely crushed rock, coiled, shaped with 
a stone and a wooden paddle called hAéat/tut, and fired. Nowadays 
it is usually unornamented. Formerly patterns were customary, It 
is said; but this seems doubtful. Cook pots and water jars are the 
common forms. Bowls and plates of clay seem to be largely re- 
placed by baskets. 

Basketry is of the type general in southern California; but in 
addition a variety of soft textiles in basket shape, close-twined sacks 
or wallets, were made of string materials, especially milkweed. These 
are unparalleled in California except for some ancient specimens 
round in the southern San Joaquin Valley (PI. 63), and for some- 
what similar wares made by the Mohave and Yuma, but executed 
to-day in civilized materials and coarsened technique. 

The war club, Aitlchahwai, was of heavy mesquite wood, and of 
typical southwestern form, that is, with a cylindrical enlargement at 
the head. 

String was either red or white, apparently as it was made of milk- 
weed, hot/, or yucca, pyatl. Heavier cordage, and the burden net, 
katara, were usually of yucca. 

Carrying nets and sacks are made in the “bowline on a bight” 
stitch among the northern Dieguefo, with the double loop or square 
knot among the southern Diegueno. This is but another of several 
indications that the two groups were further cleft in culture than 


KRORBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 728 


their similarity of dialect and inclusion under a common Spanish 
name would indicate. 

On San Diego Bay tule balsas were used; perhaps canoes also. 
The paddles were double bladed, as among the Chumash. 

What appear to be olivella or other small univalve shells were dug 
out of the ground in the eastern desert and made into necklaces by 
the interior Diegueno. They were called ahchitl. These may have 
been living shells in the banks of New River, but are more likely to 
have been ancient remains from former lake beds or overflowed 
districts in the region below sea level. 

Pipes, mukwin, were 6 or 8 inches long, tubular, and either of stone 
or of pottery. The former may be presumed to have been used in 
religion, the latter for every-day smoking. The Mohave also make 
pipes of clay, but they are much shorter. A pipe of cane is also men- 
tioned by the Dieguefi. 

Like all the tribes of southern California, the Dieguefio had no 
drum. The rattle was a gourd or turtle shell, both of which were 
called ahnatl. The gourd is probably recent. A deer-hoof rattle 
was used in the mourning anniversary.’ 


Tur Kamta. 


The Kamia, Kamya, Comeya, or Quemaya are a Yuman tribe be- 
tween San Diego and the lower Colorado whose identity is not al- 
together clear, while their territory is even more doubtful. 

These are the facts about them. 


In 1775 the Quemaya were said by Garcés to live in the mountains from 
about the latitude of the south end of Salton Sea to San Diego, to eat mescal 
like a hunting group, but to visit the lower Colorado River for agricultural food. 
Hardy in 1826 described the Axua (ahwe, “foreign’’) as on the Colorado, 


2Spier (see bibliography) has recently added important notes on the southern 
Diegueno. There are no bear or weather shamans, though both are known from 
northern neighbors. The Jimson-weed initiation is made by a “ clan,’’ viz, the people 
of a locality, mostly of one clan; members of any clan are included among the initiates. 
The ceremony is simple: The ground painting contains no figures of animals; the net 
figure (Luiseio wanawut) is not used; the whirling dance (tipkwirp) is not made; the 
fire ceremony is made after the Jimson-weed drinking. There is no clothes-burning 
ceremony separate from the image ceremony. Wild plums are pounded, leached, and 
cooked like acorns. The metate is often unsquared, its hollow oval. Rabbits are 
netted; small rodents taken in a stone deadfall baited with an acorn; snares are not 
used. Houses are for winter use only, gabled with a ridgepole in two forked posts, and 
covered with earth. The flat-roofed shade is not built. The diagonally twined cap 
is said to be for women, the coiled cap for men. Good blankets contain an average of 
20 jack-rabbit or 40 cottontail skins. They serve mainly as bedding, but are also 
worn as ponchos. ‘Trees are felled by fire, wedges not used. Cord is of mescal, milk- 
weed, or human hair, not of yucca, nettle, or reed. The old rattle was of deer hoofs 
or clay, gourds being a Mohave importation, and turtle shells not used. Sinew-backing 
of the bow is known as a Chemehueyi trait. Soapstone arrow straighteners are pref- 
erable to clay ones. Arrowheads of stone are for large game only. Clubs were curved 
or spiked, not cylinder headed. The “ moons” of the year have six names only, repeated, 
and seem to denote seasons rather than lunations. Other recent papers on the Diegueno, 
by G. G., Heye and E. H.- Davis, are also cited in the bibliography. 


. 


hon. BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


above the mouth of the Gila, fishing and farming. Whipple in 1849 distinguished 
the Comaiyah from the Yuma or Kwichyana and put them on New River near 
Salton Sea. The modern Yuma know the eastern or “southern” Dieguefo, 
as they have been called in the present work, as Kamya, and appear to in- 
clude the western or “ northern Diegueno ” with the Shoshonean Cahuilla under 
the designation Hakwichya. ‘The Mohave distinguished between the Kamia, 
and the Kamia ahwe or foreign, strange Kamia, whose dialects, habits, and 
territory were distinct. The Kamia they describe as farmers, and as living 
on the Colorado below the Yuma, but wholly on the west side; which may mean 
that they ranged considerably back from the river. The Kamia ahwe they 
identify with the Dieguefio, state that they did not farm, but ate snakes and 
other strange foods, and place them in the mountains that run south of San 
Jacinto Peak. Alone of all the Yuman tribes, they did not travel or visit— 
hence their name as “foreign” people; and captive women from them made | 
no attempts to escape. 


This evidence points to a group that held the New River district, 
the depressed desert valley—anciently an arm of the Gulf of Cali- 
fornia extending over most of Cahuilla territory also—that slopes 
from the lowest course of the Colorado northwest to the sink, nearly 
800 feet below sea level, called Salton Sea, which is at irregular times 
dry and flooded. The people in this area, particularly in its southern 
or Baja California part, would naturally have an outlet toward the 
ereat river; and may have had a foothold, perhaps even their main 
seats, on its nearer bank. These people are here identified as prob- 
ably the Kamia. Their chief residence must have been across the 
line in Mexican California; on the map they have been given the 
tract between Dieguefo, Yuma, Cahuilla, and the international 
boundary. (Pl. 1.) 

The old ownership of this stretch, which forms part of the Colo- 
rado Desert and was formerly as utterly arid as portions of it are 
fertile under irrigation at present, is, however, by no means estab- 
lished. Although likely to have been only seasonally inhabited, and 
in any event harboring only the slenderest population, it must never- 
theless have belonged to some group. Yet what this group was 
remains open to some doubt. It was not the northern Dieguefo, 
who, by the common account of themselves, the Yuma, and the 
Mohave, did not own beyond the eastern foot of the mountains. It 
was not the Cahuilla, who profess to have reached south only to 
Salton Sea or at most a little beyond its farther end. It may have 
been the Yuma, who sometimes claimed eastward to the Dieguefio, 
and who may have visited the desert for one purpose or another, 
though they certainly never lived in it. In favor of this supposition 
is the fact that the northern Diegueno, little as they know of the 
Yuma, place no other group between them and themselves. On the 
other hand, there undoubtedly was a Kamia tribe with its distine- 
tive dialect and a range on New River as well as on the nearer side 
of the lowest Colorado. 


KROEBNE] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 725 


It is also possible that the owners of what is given as Kamia 
territory on the map and the southern Diegueno of Campo, Man- 
zanita, and Jacumba, are the same people. These “southern Die- 
gueno ” are really southeastern and might just as correctly have been 
called “ eastern.” They call themselves Kamiai or Kamiyahi. Their 
situation on the map of the American State is such that they give 
the impression of being but the spur of a group that lives mainly 
in Mexican territory. From what is known of their customs, they 
are in fairly close affiliation with the Colorado River tribes, and 
under their religious influence, to nearly the same degree as the 
northern Diegueno cults have been shaped by the Shoshoneans be- 
yond. All this agrees splendidly with the Yuma terminology: 
Kamya for the eastern Diegueno, Hakwichya for the western Die- 
gueno together with the Shoshonean Cahuilla, to whom alone it 
properly refers. The application of the name Diegueno to both the 
southern-eastern and the northern-western group proves nothing, 
since it is of Spanish origin and indicative of mission affiliation, with 
only a secondary ethnic significance. In any event it is balanced 


_ by the similar Mohave terms for the Kamia and the Diegueno. 


It may be added that the modern Diegueno of the “southern” 


branch voice some claim to a former ownership of the Imperial 
Valley. There are individuals among them who were born, or whose 
parents were born, in this valley, and along the eastern foot of the 
mountains in a latitude where these mountains belong to the north- 
ern Diegueno. 

All this looks as if the southern Diegueio Kamia and the Colo- 
rado River Kamia south of the Yuma might have been a single peo- 
ple that stretched across the greater part of the State at its south- 
ern end and in Mexican California. The difficulty, however, is to 
accept as a single nation a group which at one end farmed, was di- 
vided into totemic clans, and closely resembled the Yuma in all cus- 
toms, and at the opposite end of its territory was nonagricultural, 
nontotemic, and so similar. to the northern Diegueno that it has 
been usually considered a part of the latter. 

Enough of speculation, however. Knowledge is so scant that a cer- 
tain amount of conjecture is admissible. But what is really desir- 
able is information, which can undoubtedly still be secured, espe- 
cially in Baja California. And with that statement we must leave 
the Kamia. 


Crapter 50. 
THE MOHAVE: CONCRETE LIFE. 


Habitat and outlook, 726; appearance, 728; disposition, 729; houses, 731; agri- 
cultural and other foods, 7385; pottery and basketry, 7387; various utensils, 
739; games, 740; totemic clans, 741; land ownership, 744; chieftainship, 
745; marriage and sex, 747; names, 749; death, 749; war, 751. 


HABITAT AND OUTLOOK, 


With the Mohave, the third Yuman tribe to be considered, we 
reach for the first time a people living on a large river. The Colo- 
rado is one of the great streams of the continent, voluminous, 
and far longer than any within the boundaries of California. From 
the Mohave to its mouth its shores were occupied by a line of Yu- 
man tribes, similar in speech, in habits, in appearance, and in dis- 
position. This enormous Nile, flowing through narrow bottom lands 
bordered sharply by sandy stretches, high mesa rims, and barren 
mountains rising on both sides from an utterly arid desert, pro- 
vides a setting wholly unlike any heretofore encountered. And its 
civilization is equally distinct. 

The country of the Mohave is the valley which bears their name, 
the uppermost of a number that stretch at intervals to the sea. 
Above is the great defile known as Eldorado Canyon, visited now 
and then by Chemehuevi and Walapai, who lived above it on west 
and east, but unfit for habitation; and beyond comes a bend and the 
vast gorge that culminates in the Grand Canyon. The river civiliza- 
tion thus comes to a sudden upstream stop with the Mohave. 

Their valley lies in what is now three States: California, Nevada, 
and Arizona. As the channel has flowed in recent years, most of the 
bottom lands lie on the eastern side; and there the bulk of the settle- 
ments were. But the land is so shut in by the high desert and so de- 
pendent on the river that it is an inevitable unit. Kast and west, the 
left bank and the right, are incidental. The stream course is a fur- 
row that separates Arizona from California, as culturally it divides 
the Southwest from California; and whoever lived in the trench 
belonged as much, and as little, to one area as to the other. 

Cottonwood Island, above Fort Mohave, was but intermittently 
inhabited by the Mohave. The same is true, perhaps in even greater 
measure, of Chemehuevi Valley below them. After the Mohave drove 


726 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA ded 


the Halchidhoma out of the country about Parker and below, the 
Chemehuevi began to drift into the valley now named ,after them. 
The Mohave probably maintained some claim to the land, although 
they did not use it; for they tell that they came in numbers, and by 
persuasion or compulsion induced the Chemehuevi to remove to Cot- 
tonwood Island at their northern limit. Here Chemehuevi and Mo- 
have lived more or less together until about 1867, when, war breaking 
out between them, these Mohave outposts felt it safest to rejoin their 
main body below, just as certain Chemehuevi who had reoccupied 
Chemehuevi Valley fled from it back to the desert from which they 
had come. The most frequent references of the Mohave to their hab- 
* itations are to the vicinity of Fort Mohave; but they lived down to 
the lower end of Mohave Valley, where the river enters the narrow 
gorge above which rise the jagged peaks known as the Needles. 

For every people hitherto mentioned in this book a list of towns 
or villages has had some significance. When such information has 
not been given, ignorance has been the sole cause. The settlement is 
the political and social basis of life in California. The tribe, at least 
as a larger unit, exists hardly or not at all. The reverse is the case 
with the Mohave. They think in terms of themselves as a national 
entity, the Zamakhava. They think also of their land as a country, 
and of its numberless places. They do not think of its settlements. 
Where a man is born or lives is like the circumstance of a street num- 
ber among ourselves, not part of the fabric of his career. ‘The man 
stands in relation to the group as a whole, and this group owns a 
certain tract rich in associations; but the village does not enter into 
the scheme. In fact, the Mohave were the opposite of clannish in 
their inclinations. Their settlements were small, scattering, and per- 
haps often occupied only for short times; the people all mixed freely 
with one another. 

With such proclivities, it is small wonder that the petty Cali- 
fornian feuds of locality and inherited revenge have given way 
among the Mohave to a military spirit, under which the tribe acted 
as a unit in offensive and defensive enterprise. Tribes hundreds of 
miles away were attacked and raided. Visits carried parties of 
Mohave as far as the Chumash and Yokuts. Sheer curiosity was 
their main motive; for the Mohave were little interested in trade. 
They liked to see lands; timidity did not discourage them; and they 
were as eager to know the manners of other peoples as they were 
careful to hold aloof from adopting them. 

These journeyings brought with them friendships and alliances 
as well as enmities. The Mohave were consistently leagued with the 
Yuma against the Halchidhoma and Maricopa and Kohuana and 
Cocopa; and these belligerencies led them into hostile or amicable re- 
lations with people with whom they had but few direct contacts. 


728 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


Thus the Pima and Papago, the friends of the Maricopa, became 
normal foes, the Yavapai and western Apache nominal friends. 
Against tribes of the desert and mountains the Mohave carried on 
few wars. Perhaps the nomads were too elusive: On the other 
hand, reciprocal raids into a valley thickly settled by an aggressive 
people thirsting for adventure and glory did not appeal to the scat- 
tered mountaineers. Thus the Chemehuevi and Mohave got along 
well. The Mohave constantly traversed the Chemehuevi territory 
that began at the western border of their own valley; and the smaller 
and wilder people came to be profoundly influenced by the more 
dominant one, as has already been recounted. 


APPEARANCE. 


The Mohave men are tall, long footed and limbed, large boned, 
and spare. The common California tendency toward obesity is rare. 
Their carriage 1s loose, slouching at times and rapid at others. They 
lack the graceful dignity of the Pueblo and the sedate stateliness 
of the Plains warrior, but are imposing to look at. In walking, they 
are apt to stoop and drag, but break readily into an easy trot in which 
they travel interminably. The women have the usual Indian inclina- 
tion toward stoutness after they have borne several children, and in 
comparison with the men seem dumpy, but carry themselves very 
erect and with a pleasingly free and even gait. The color of both 
sexes is distinctly yellowish—as often appears in the women when 
they wash—-but ordinarily is turned a very dark brown by dirt and 
exposure to the sun. (Pls. 64, 65.) 

Mohave men sit with their thighs on their calves and heels, or with 
legs bent to one side on the ground. These are women’s fashions 
among the Indians of the western Plains. Women at rest. stretch 
their legs straight out, and sometimes cross their feet. This is Pueblo 
style, but a most indecent position for a woman among the majority 
of American Indians. At work, a Mohave woman tucks one leg 
under her, with her other knee up. This is a common female atti- 
tude in California, and convenient for certain kinds of sedentary 
work. When she pleases, the Mohave woman also sits with her legs 
folded in oriental style—the normal attitude of Navaho and Plains 
men. Dress may have had much influence in determining the adop- 
tion of some of these styles. Thus the “Turk position ” is easily 
taken in the loose fiber petticoat of Califormia, but is awkward or 
likely to lead to exposure in the rather long gown of unyielding 
buckskin worn by the eastern women. But factors other than fashion 
of garment have certainly been operative, particularly for men. 
This is one of the most interesting matters in the whole range of 








BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78. PLA He G3 


Wis net 
TEES CLES 


TTC 


ETS SLRS Rt 


FRAGMENT OF PLAIN-TWINED, PLIABLE BAG, WITH PAT- 
TERN OF HUMAN HAIR. BUENA VISTA LAKE INTER- 
MENTS 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLE RIN. 73) (PUA mR s6¢ 





MOHAVE TYPES, WITH CHARACTERISTIC HAIR DRESSING. 
LOWER RIGHT, A WOMAN 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULCLETINe or oF EAE, G5 





MOHAVE TYPES, SHOWING ALSO MODE OF WEARING HAIR, NOSE ROD, CANE, SANDALS, AND LOAD SLUNG 
FROM HEAD 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN /6eeRUAHESO5 





Mohave 





Kings River Yokuts 





Cupeno 


METATES AND GRINDING SLABS 







EBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 729 


customs. and further knowledge for California is a great de- 
sideratum. 

A very frequent Mohave gesture, apparently of embarrassment, is 
the quick placing of the hand over the mouth. Men especially seem 
addicted to this movement. 

In many individuals the fingers habitually hang straight, except 
for a sharp bend at the farthest joint, which gives the hand a curious 
effect as of the legs of a crab. 

Men wore, and sometimes still wear, their hair long, rolled or 
rather pasted into 20 or 30 ropes of about the thickness of a lead 
pencil. The greater the mass of these strands hanging down the 
back to the hip, the prouder the owner. The women trim the hair 
square above the eyes and Jet the remainder flow free, spread out over 
the shoulders. In mourning they cut it a little below the ears; the 
men clip a trifle from the ends. The hair is sometimes tied up in clay 
mixed with mesquite gum, to stain it black and glossy; or plain clay 
is allowed to dry on it in a complete casing and left for a day or two, 
in order to suppress parasites. As the nits survive and hatch out, the 
treatment requires frequent repetition. 

The Mohave tattoo somewhat irregularly, although their own say- 
ing is that an untattooed person goes into a rat’s hole at death instead 
of the proper place for spirits—as the Yahi pierce their ears with a 
similar purpose. Another account is that the ghosts are asked to 
point to the pole star, wnasakahava, which in their new country is 
south; if they point northward, the rat’s hole is their fate. Both 
sexes most commonly mark lines or rows of dots down the chin, and 
may add a little circle, a stripe, or a few spots on the forehead. The 
men are the more sparsely ornamented. Women sometimes draw a 
few lines across the cheeks or on the forearms. The absence of any 
standardized style is notable. (Fig. 46.) 

The Mohave paint the face far more frequently and effectively 
than other California Indians. Young women in particular hardly 
appear at a gathering or public occasion without striking red or yel- 

low patterns across the cheeks. Forking lines are drawn downward 
from the eyes, or a band passes squarely across the cheeks, and the 
like. The style is obviously kindred to that followed by the Seri, 
though not quite so inclined to fineness of execution. (Figs. 60, 
61, 62.) 


DISPOSITION. 


The Mohave are noticeably more responsive and energetic than 
the other Indians of California. They are an obstinate people— 
amiably so, but totally unable to see anything but their own view 
once this has set. They are rarely sullen; although they sometimes 





= 


730 . BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 78 : 








Fic. 60.—Face paints: Mohave men. a, Ha’avkek; b, ‘cut’; c, modern; d, for male 
twin; e, for elderly man; f, “lie at back of house,” for old man. (Heavy and light 
stippliag indicate red and yellow, respectively.) ' 


KROFBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA - 731 


sulk like children, they are more given to outbursts of temper. The 
women scold freely on occasion. The Californian trick of eating in 
a grievance is foreign to them. Ordinarily they are idle minded and 
therefore readily persuaded, until some prejudice is stirred. Then 
they become immovable, although usually without resentment. Nor- 
mally they are frank, inquisitive, and inclined to be confiding. They 
are untidy, careless of property, and spend money freely, like east- 
ern Indians. Only the old women evince some disposition to hoard 
for their funerals. 

The slow, steady labor to which the Californian and the Pueblo are 
inclined is rarely seen among the Mohave. They either lounge in 
complete relaxation or plunge into sudden and strenuous activity. 
No physical exertion is too great for them. They make valuable 
laborers, except that they are rarely dependable for long periods. 
When they have enough, nothing can hold them to the job. In their 
own affairs, such as house building and farming, they often work 
with a veritable fury, and even when hired do not spare themselves. 
They eat voraciously, but endure hunger without trace of complaint. 
The demeanor of the men in repose has a certain reserve, as befits a 
people that fought for pleasure, but they unbend readily, talk volu- 
bly, and laugh freely. Jokes are greeted uproariously. All ages 
and sexes demonstrate their feelings openly. Young men may be 
seen walking with their arms around each other, fathers kiss their 
children irrespective of who is about, girls in love manifest their 
sentiment in every action. There is something very winning in the 
instantaneousness of the generous Mohave smile. The habitual and 
slow-dying distrust typical of most of the California Indians does 
not rest on the Mohave’s mind; when he suspects, he complains or 
accuses. The children are remarkably free from the unconquerable 
shyness that most Indian youngsters, in California as elsewhere, can 
not shake off. They often answer even a strange white man readily. 
Altogether it is a nation half child, half warrior, likable in its sim- 
ple spontaneity, and commanding respect with its inherent manli- 
ness—as far different from the usual California native as French- 
man and Englishman stand apart. 





HOUSES. 


The house has a frame of logs and poles, a thatch of the arrow 
weed that serves so many Mohave needs, and a covering of sand. 
The latter blends so gradually into the surrounding soil that it is 
practically impossible to give outside measurements, and the old 
description of the domicile as dug into a sand hill is a natural mis- 
take. The structure has a rectangular interior, and is substantially 
square on a line of 20 to 25 feet. The door or front is always to the 


732 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULD, 78 












\\ My \\ : 


\) 





ag" 
















fl si ts in 


’ 
ay 


\ 
\ 


\\v\ 
Ny 


Fig. 61.—Face paints: Mohave women. a, “Rainbow”; b, “ coyote teeth’; c, “ yellow- 
hammer belly ”’; d, ‘‘ butterfly ”; e, “ atalyka. leaf’; f, ‘bent over’; g, h, hatsiratsirk ; 
i, j, hotahpava; k, 1, tatsirkatsirka. All in red or yellow. 


KROEBER J HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 7338 





Fig. 62.—Face paints: Mohave women. m, “ Tatsirkatsirka enclosed’; n, 0, r, without 
hames; p, ‘at edge of nose’’; gq, humturk;: s, for female twin; t, mourning for a 


child. - All in red or yellow except t, which is black. 


south on account of the coldness which the frequent north wind 
seems to the desert dwellers to bear. (PI. 56; Fig. 63.) 

So few of the native houses of the Californians have been de- 
scribed accurately that the following details may not be amiss. 


In the center are either four posts or two placed longitudinally, that is, in 
north and south line; or one; or two set transversely. The last arrangement 
is the commonest, but there is a name for each design. The tops of the posts 
are slightly hollowed, and the connecting logs laid on. The south or front wall 
has eight or ten posts of varying length; the back, two principal ones in the 
middle; the sides, about five that are still shorter. The tips of these are all 
connected. From the log above the center posts six or eight beams run to the 
back wall and an equal number forward. The latter spread into two sets of 
threes or fours to clear the door. From these 12 or 16 beams about 20 smaller 


734 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


rafters extend to each of the sides. Across these rafters sticks are laid longi- 
tudinally. The thatch in turn runs across the house. In the middle the 12 or 16 
beams are directly overlaid with transverse sticks close together. In this part 
of the house, therefore, the sticks and the thatch run in the same direction. 

The low side walls slope. About two dozen light poles are leaned against 
the logs that connect the five vertical posts on each side. On these leaning 
poles four or five long sticks 
are laid horizontally, and 
against these arrow-weed 
thatch is set upright, outside 
of which comes the banking 
of sand. The rear is similarly 
constructed. The front wall 
is higher, vertical, and un- 
banked. Sticks run across 
the inner as well as outer 
faces of its posts. .In the 
space thus formed thatch is 


a2 


-~ = -- 
aI) a oo ee 
i i ad 


the old days a mat of woven 

2: Seas cottonwood bark closed the 

Fig. 63.—Plan of Mohave earth house. door | jat-« might“) Haitront 

there is often a_ space 

enclosed with a windbreak of arrow weed, and almost invariably a flat shade 
on posts. 

Seen from the front, the roof is nearly level in the center, slopes about 10 
degrees to the side posts, and then falls more steeply, but still at no great 
angle, to the ground. The profile is gently rounded, especially toward the 
rear, but of course terminates vertically in front. The floor is fine soft sand. 
(Pl. 56.) 

The following are details of two houses: 





Inside length to re@ageposts= see 5 ae ee feet] 4 B22 23 
Inside length to base’Geredriwall = 2 Bees ee ae Noms 7 24 26 
Inside width, side posts to side posts____-2-___-2s___=2-- OL seer Ze 24 
Insideswidth, wall to?wall Dage ade ee ee ee Cote 24 30 
Distance between 2 transversely set center posts__________ dQsa2 vi 
Wadth. of G0Or 2a 22 se ee ee ee dos2es 24 
Height—center’ post§.ics. t2etehesaint_ 2 ee a rea doLiizg W716 6 
middileso£ modf ataita 30. 222 eae eee G62) 6 ey 
front-posts: ati door 2 eee dof 5 
at ends. 2 ees ee ee do. =. a 
Packs DOSES 3k en eet ae ws ee er Coss pet 4 
SIGG@HPOSTS eee oat ee ee ee ee ee do_ a 3 
Goore DU Ee Sees EO ee Cee eer eee ah a 6 
Diameters neenter\Posts-20: eis ere eis Bite ae inches__ 10+ 
COOr/s Postsue= i laks eed es oe Se do__-__ 10+ 
TUTTO OCLOdIE OCUS ces gle corey tree nee do____ 10+ 
SIG. OS Us seer ae ea ce ae ce do. 2 Fes 
LOS Wait CCIILET POSTS c= Sc es a ee eee i Le Pes NG”. 
DOa Sees tee ee ee a ae ee ee do____ 5-9 
TTT en Se a ee ee do____ 45 
INTE OL GO pel OS a ce ht ee eR Sa ee 12 16 
Nim ber oti rirerers a2 eee ok as ee ee a ene ee 39 
NUMDGr OL et0C UOSts, GnCh SlCr Oe ere ee ee eee a 2} 


set and sand poured in. In 


ee 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 395 


The Mohave were without sweat houses. Prominent men put up 
large houses in which considerable groups of people slept. Such a 
house was the owner’s dwelling; the others lived near by in smaller 
houses, but these were considered too cold for comfortable sleeping. 
The big houses can not be regarded as more than a sort of Mohave 
substitute for the sweat house, since women and children assembled 
there with the men—a quite un-Californian practice. 

A prospective builder summoned his friends and kin to do the 
work, and fed them while they were busy on his behalf. His place, 
and that of his wife, was the corner west of the door. Other 
couples occupied the other corners. Girls slept along the walls, 
unmarried men in the center. Late in the afternoon a fire was built 
just inside the door. At night this was covered with sand. Smoke 
hung through the house, but above the heads of the reclining in- 
mates. The myths frequently mention such houses as crowded with 
people. 


AGRICULTURAL AND OTHER FOODS. 


Mohave agriculture according to aboriginal methods began quickly 
to go into disuse after Americans settled among them, and it is 
already somewhat difficult to estimate the importance of the art to 
them. It may have furnished half their subsistence. The rainfall is 
too nominal to support any cultivated plant, and the Mohave seem 
to know nothing of irrigation. Annually, about May and June, the 
Colorado rises and floods large stretches of the bottom lands, some- 
times to a distance of a mile or two. Sloughs from this overflow re- 
main for months or through the year. The level tracts are left 
drenched and coated with soft mud. In this the Mohave plant; and 
under the fierce sun their produce shoots and ripens with marvelous 
rapidity. The relation of the tiller to his strip of fertile soil in the 
vast burning desert is therefore similar to that which obtained in 
primitive Egypt, and gives Mohave agriculture a character unique 
in native America. 

Corn is planted irregularly, not in rows. The planter takes one 
long step more or less at random from his last hole and rams his 
stick into the ground for another hole. Half a dozen kernels are 
sunk from half a foot to a foot deep. 

The wheat planter sits on the ground and makes holes at the limit 
of his reach a foot or two apart, and drops a number of seeds into 
each. This is, of course, a plant introduced by the Spaniards, but 
the Mohave regard it as indigenous. 

Beans, pumpkins, watermelons, and cantaloupes were also planted 
by the Mohave. Their corn is usually white and long eared, but they 
distinguish blue, red, yellow, and spotted yellow and white varieties 


3625°—25——48 


736 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [ BULL. 78 


also. Beans are called white, yellow, “ deer droppings” (black), and 
“Pleiades” (spotted). Bean-stalk fiber was a common material for 
cordage. 

The farming implements were two: A hard, heavy staff for plant- 
ing, which is nothing but the California root-digging stick somewhat 
enlarged and slightly flattened at the sharp end; and the cultivator, 
a broader piece, whose square edge is pushed flat over the ground to 
cut the weeds off as they sprout. The cultivator handle is usually 
somewhat crooked in the plane of the working edge. (PI. 67, a, b.) 

Women perhaps did most of the farm work, but the men were not 
averse to participating, and there may have been no formal division 
of labor. Even in recent years an old Mohave and his wife can fre- 
quently be seen going to their patch together—he carrying an 
American hoe, she preparing to» pull weeds with her hands. 

It is rather interesting that pottery and agriculture are definitely 
associated in the Mohave mind, their myths telling how the god 
Mastamho thought farmed food incomplete until vessels were pro- 
vided to cook and eat it in. The Pueblo has little feeling of this sort. 
Corn is to him something so basic that it was primal; the method of 
causing it to flourish is his gravest concern; but he is little 
interested in vessels. The Mohave thinks of both as something given 
to him. Perhaps this sense is intensified by his situation among 
nations that neither farm nor bake pots. 

Besides the usual native American farm products, the Mohave 
planted several wild herbs or grasses in their overflowed lands and 
gathered the seeds. These they call akatat, aksamta, ankithi, and 
akyesa. They are unidentified except for the last, which appears to 
be a species of Rumewx. 

A larger variety of seeds were collected from plants that sprang 
without cultivation after the recession of the river from certain tracts 
of the bottom lands. ‘These include akwava, hupo, aksama, ham- 
askwera, koskwaka, and ankika. 

The Mohave metate for corn, wheat, and beans is a rectangular 
block of lava on which a cylindrical muller is rubbed back and forth. 
It is therefore the Pueblo type of implement, except for not being 
boxed or set into the ground. A myth describes the metate first used 
by Turtle woman, in Mastamho’s presence, as “ rounded, not square 
like the metate of to-day.” The narrator may have been merely 
thinking of a ruder implement, as would befit the time of beginnings; 
or it is conceivable that the native Mohave metate was of the oval 
Californian type, which went out of use after steel axes allowed the 
readier shaping of stone. (PI. 66.) 

Mesquite beans are crushed with a stone pestle in a wooden mortar, 
the hard seeds remaining whole. The meal is sometimes eaten raw, 


KROEBER J HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 737 


the seeds being shaken out of it in the hand. More commonly, water 
is poured on the flour to extract the sugar, and then drunk off. The 
dough that is left is carried to the mouth in handfuls, sucked out, and 
replaced, to be steeped a second time before being thrown away. 
Sometimes the fresh dough is patted into a huge jar-shaped cake, 
covered with wet sand, and baked. It comes out so hard that it has 
to be cracked with a stone. The séeds are spat out or swallowed 
whole. Mesquite screw meal is baked in the same fashion. 

Fresh mesquite screw bean is “ cooked ” by being stored in an im- 
mense pit, perhaps 15 feet across and 4 or 5 deep, lined and covered 
with arrow weed. From time to time water is sprinkled on the mass. 
After about a month the screws turn brown and very sweet. 

Mesquite of both varieties formed an important part of Mohave 
food. Trees are said to have been owned. In other cases a bunch of 
arrow weeds was hung on a tree to indicate that its yield was 
claimed. 

Long wooden pestles were also used (PI. 67, ¢)—an unknown im- 
plement in the remainder of California. 

Fish were taken with seines, or driven up shallow sloughs into 
scoops, kwithata (PI. 59), as large as a canoe, that were quickly lifted 
up. The fish of the muddy Colorado are rather soft and unpalatable 
to the white man, but the Mohave caught quantities and relished 
them. Game is very scarce in the valley, and the Mohave rarely left 
their country to hunt. They can have eaten meat only occasion- 
ally. They refused to touch the turtles and lizards of which the 
Chemehuevi and other tribes made use. 

Fish are sometimes broiled on charcoal, but more often cooked into 
a disintegrated stew with or without corn. The tails, heads, scales, 
and guts are left in, only the “gall” being taken out. Such a mess 
is stirred and tasted with three little rods tied together in the mid- 
dle, and is scooped to the mouth with the fingers. Sometimes the 
viscera are removed to be cooked separately. 


POTTERY AND BASKETRY. 


Clay is tempered with sandstone crushed on the metate, and built 
up by coiling. The start of a vessel may be spiral, but its body con- 
sists of concentric rings. The paste is rolled out into a slim sausage, 
the length of which is roughly estimated on the vessel. It is then 
laid on the last coil, and any excess pinched off. It is beaten, with 
a light. and rapid patting with a wooden paddle, against a smooth 
cobble held inside, and its edge finished flat by scraping between the 
thumb-nail and index finger. ‘Then the next coil is added. The 
maker sits with the growing vessel on the thighs of her stretched 
legs, or with one leg flat in front of her and the other doubled under. 


738 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


The paint is yellow ocher, which is put on with a little stick and 
burns dull red. The firing is by an open wood fire. The patterns 
are carelessly done and often shaky. (Pl. 68; Figs. 64, 65.) 

The following are enumerated as pottery vessels: 


hapurui, the water jar. 

taskyena, the cook pot. 

chuvava, a large cook pot, rested on three conical supports of pottery. 

kam otta, a spoon or ladle, with the handle often in the rude shape of a 
quail’s head and hollowed to rattle. (Fig. 64.) 

kayetha, a flat bowl or lipless plate. (Fig. 65.) 

kakapa, an oval platter. 

katela, a parcher for corn and wheat, pointed at two ends. 

kayuka, an open bowl. (Fig. 64.) 

The water jar is sometimes made asymmetrically and is then known as 
hanemo, “ duck,” from its resemblance to a swimming water bird. 

kwathki seems to be the generic name for pottery. 





Fic, 64.—Mohave bowl] and ladle with “ rain” and ‘“ fish backbone” designs. (Cf. Pl. 68.) 


Designs on vessels are named spider, rain, rainbow, fish backbone, 
melon markings, turtle, cottonwood leaf, coyote tooth, yellow-ham- 
mer belly, tattoo, and hotahpam, a style of face paint that crosses 
under the eye. 

Mohave basketry was easily the poorest of any in California. 
Coiled baskets are still used in every house and their employment 
as drums to certain kinds of singing proves the habit to be old; but 
they are Chemehuevi or Maricopa trays. The Mohave made only 
a few flat receptacles in an irregular plain twining or open-stitch 
coiling (PI. 55, 6); fish traps or scoops in twining (PI. 59); wicker 
hoods of splints for their cradles (Pl. 39, b); and the kupo carrying 
frame of two U-shaped sticks surrounded with thin string—a far 
derivation from the burden basket of California. One textile art 
they followed with more skill: the weaving of bags or wallets from 
string of bean and akyasa fiber, much as the Dieguefio wove, it 
appears. At present such receptacles are made only in American 
yarns. Braided or woven belts with which the baby was lashed 
into the cradle have deteriorated similarly. 





a ee | rr ae 


~~ ; 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 739 
VARIOUS UTENSILS. 


Now and then a stone ax made its way into the Mohave country 
from the Southwest, but rarely; and the implement is associated by 
the tribe with eastern nations. There was also no adze, and the gen- 
eral Californian horn wedge seems to have been unknown. ‘Trees 
were not felled. If land was 
to be made arable, split stones 
were tied to handles, and with 
this rude tool the smaller limbs 
and foliage were hacked from 
willows. The brush was then 
burned about the butt to kill the 
tree, the stump being left stand- 
ing. (Fig. 66.) 

The rush raft of the Mohave 
was a crude affair of two bundles, 
with about three sticks skewered 
through, and some lashings of 
willows. The material was the 
Bat tile. copia (probably Py pha Ol! m6s.— Molaver pottery; owl t Designs 

Cottonwood leaf” and ‘ rain. 

rush), not the round stemmed 

kwalinyo (Scirpus lacustris). Loose tules might be laid on top. 
Four to six persons could be carried, those in the middle remaining 
dry. The balsa was pushed with a long pole. It was made for 
crossing the river. If the current carried it far downstream it was 
easier to put a new one together than to drag the old one up against 
the current. The men were all good swimmers. Children were some- 














Fig. 66.—Mohave fire drill. 


times pushed across the river in pots a yard in diameter. These ves- 
sels were made for the purpose, being too large, the Mohave say, to 
utilize for cooking. 

Shell currency seems to have been held only in small quantity. 
A horse was given for half a fathom of typical Californian disk 
beads—a very high valuation. Most old women wore at the throat 
a clam shell cut into frog shape and called simply hanye, frog. 
These also were valuable. On the whole, the Mohave appear to 
have used shells as jewelry rather than money; in which they re- 


"40 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


sembled the southwesterners. They took to imported glass beads 
more eagerly than most Californians. Men as well as women coiled 
strands of blue and white Venetian beads in thick masses around 
their necks; women wound them around their wrists; and donned 
showy shoulder capes of a network of beads. A definite style seems 
to have been evolved early, which made use almost wholly of the two 
colors mentioned; and these, it must be admitted, match pleasingly 
with the brown of the Mohave skin. ‘The women’s lacelike bead 
capes that fit snugly around the shoulders are shown in Plates 54 
and 69. 


GAMES. 


The favored game of the Mohave was between two players, each 
of whom cast a long pole at a rolling hoop. The ring was thrown 
by the winner of the last point, and either runner was at. liberty to 
dart his pole when he pleased. If the hoop was pierced, nothing 
was counted. If the ring rested on the pole with sufficient overlap 
that a space was visible, one point was made. Should the ring he 
on the end of the pole, the score was double. If both players cast 
successfully, both scored. Four points won the stakes. A favorite 
device was to hurl one’s pole between the opponent’s and the hoop. 

Thus the Mohave describe the game. The following record pre- 
sents some discrepancies: 

Two elderly men bet three dollars, as the Indians say, that is, a dollar and 
a half each, on a game of five points. When the score stood 2 to 1, the leader 
threw the tip of his pole under the ring. His opponent insisted that this was 
worth only 2 points, but 3 were allowed, running out the game. The players 
immediately bet two dollars and a half each and resumed. When the winner 


had scored 2 points to 3, he apparently feared to lose and quit; whereupon the 
new stakes of five dollars were divided in the proportion of 2 to 3. 


A football race was run by two men, each with a ball of willow 
root. | 

Shinny was played with a slender curved stick and small wooden 
ball by “ old,” that is, middle aged, men, seven or eight to a side, be- 
tween goal lines a third of a mile apart. Betting was public, but 
by individuals, the stakes being matched and deposited -in pairs. 
The ball was put into a hole in the middle of the field, covered with 
soil, and trod down. Half a dozen players struck at the pit until 
the billet flew out. The play was fast, wild, and random, without 
stations or order, each contestant and many younger spectators fol- 
lowing the ball as closely as they could. Other people stood where 
they pleased and stepped aside when the ball traveled toward them. 
Boys pointed it out in the confusion and clouds of desert dust. The 
striking was clean, hard, and generally successful, the aim not so 
good, nursing of the ball scarcely attempted. If it entered a mes- 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BUCECETIN 73. PLATE ag 





a, Mohave weedcutter; 6, planter; c, wooden pestle; d, e, Pomo rattles. Paddles: /, 7, Yurok; 
g, Pomo; h, Klamath-Modoe 





BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78+ PEA fEs63 7 


i 














MORAVEZPOTLERY —BOWLES. PATTERNED 





5 
i 





NOILVANSYO SAVHOW 





ADOIONHL]A NVOIGAWY SAO NVAYNA 


69, SatVdd  sZ Nitsagind 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE #0 





YUROK WOMAN (WITH CAP) AND OLD MEN 





oan j 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 741 


quite thicket from which it could not be struck, it was picked out and 
play resumed from a pit as at the start. 

The guessing game was played by four men on a side, each with 
one piece of cane which he hid in his hand under a mat or blanket. 
Pointing was at one or two of the players. An umpire stood in the 
middle, parceled out the twelve stick counters as they were lost, held 
the stakes, and threatened to burn them if the contestants quarreled 
too violently. 

Another variety, less formal, was played between two persons, one 
of whom hid a bit of stick in one of four little heaps of sand. Each 
wrong guess lost one of the five counters from which the game was 
played; if the stick was found, the play was transferred. 

Women played dice with four willow staves, painted in three dif- 
ferent patterns on one side. The score has not been recorded. In 
the myths, boys sometimes play this game. 

Women also swung the ring-and-pin. The rings were the butts of 
pumpkin rinds. Each ring caught counted one point, except the last 
one, which went for ten. When none was caught, play passed to one 
of the pair of opponents. A Jong spiral was drawn on the sand, and 
a mark made across this for each point, the two sides beginning at 
opposite ends of the line. When the tallies met, they were counted, 
and the victors were considered to have won the anuses of their 
opponents. 





; 
7 


TOTEMIC CLANS. 


The Mohave share with the other Yuman tribes of the Colorado 
a peculiar clan system. ‘This comprises patrilinear, exogamous, 
nameless groups of totemic reference. All the women born in a 
clan bear an identical name, although they may in addition be known 
by nicknames or other epithets. These clan names are of totemic 
import, though they are not the word which is in common use to 
denote the totemic object. Thus anya is “sun,” but the woman’s 
clan name that “means” sun, as the Mohave say, is Vyo’dcha. In 
a few instances there is a resemblance, as in Yuma ave, rattlesnake, 
and Mave, rattlesnake clan name. But in general the names appear 
to be archaic stems, disguised descriptions or allusions, or equivalents 
from other dialects. Many of the younger men and women seem to 
be ignorant of the totemic import of the names, and totem taboos are 
either lacking or slight, although the Cocopa do not kill their totem. 
The clans do not enter into religious activities, so far as known. In 
fact, the ceremonial scheme of these tribes is such that it is difficult 
to see how the natives could have found serious points of contact. be- 
tween their clan organization and cult practices if they had been so 
inclined. The impress which this gentile scheme makes is that it 
rests lightly on society and not at all on cults. 


742 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The clans are mentioned in mythology, but in a bald and formal 
way. Atacertain point in some long myth dealing with other things 
a man called so and so announces or is instructed that he will take 
such and such a name for his daughters and his sons’ female de- 
scendants. Sometimes it is added that he will settle or “take land” 
at a specified place. Such references can scarcely be interpreted as 
any strong indication of an original local basis for the clans. They 
seem rather to reflect the custom of the river Yumans of living in 
little groups of kinsmen, and therefore incidentally of clan mates, 
at more or less shifting sites determined by the farming fields, and 
scattered rather randomly through the cultivable portions of the 
tribal territory. At the same time it is well to remember that the 
“clans” of the Dieguefio and southern California Shoshoneans were 
essentially local in native consciousness and perhaps in fact. 

The known clans of the Mohave and Yuma are here listed accord- 
ing to their women’s names and totemic implications, with the cor- 
responding data added for several cognate tribes of Arizona and 
Baja California. Of these, the Kamia are the group of that name 
actually on the Colorado, while a series of names reported as ‘‘ Mari- 
copa from the Cocopa” have been interpreted as belonging to one of 
the refugee tribes formerly on the Colorado, probably the ancient 
“ Cajuenche ” or Kohuana neighbors of the Cocopa. 


Nyo’tlcha, Mohave: sun, fire, deer, eagle, or beetle. 

Hoalya, Mohave: moon (haly’a). 

Mat-hachva, Mohave: wind (mat-ha). 

Owich, Mohave: cloud. 

Hipa, Mohave, Yuma, Maricopa: coyote; Maricopa also: cholla cactus. 

Moha, Mohave: mountain sheep. 

Siulya, Mohave: beaver. 

Malyikha, Mohave: wood rat. 

Kutkilya, Mohave: owl; Kohuana: yellow animal. 

Motheha, Mohave: screech owl. 

Masipa, Mohave: quail, possibly also coyote. 

Maha, Mohave: a small bird; Sikwma, Yuma, Kamia: dove; Kohuana: “ pig- 
eon’; Sakuma, Cocopa: dove, buzzard. 

Halypota, Mohave: frog; Yuma: already done; Kohuana: a shrub. 

Nyikha, Mohave: a caterpillar or worm. 

Kata, Mohave: tobacco, perhaps also mescal, that is agave. 

Vahadha, Mohave: tobaeco. 

Tilya, Mohave: mesceal. 

Vimaka, Mohave: bean mesquite. 

Musa, Mohave: screw mesquite; Kalsmus, Kamia: screw mesquite; Alymos, 
Yuma: bean (?)mesquite, deer: Kasmus, Cocopa: beaver. 

Kumadhiya, Mobave: ocatilla cactus; Kimithi, Maricopa: ocatilla, road- 
runner. 

Kwinitha, Mohave: prickly pear cactus. 

Chacha, Mohave: corn or food; Havchach, Maricopa: white corn; Yuma: 
agricultural food, frog. 


a 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 743 


Waksi, Haksi, Yuma: hard earth; Kamia, undetermined; Asila, Maricopa, 
sand. 

Sinykwatl, Yuma: deer or skin; also eagle; Sinikwus, Kohuana: red ant; 
Kamia: undetermined; Sikupas, Yuma: red ant. 

Kwaku, Maricopa: deer (Mohave: akwaka). 

Wahas, Yuma: beaver. 

Liach, Liots, Yuma: buzzard, cloud, also called “Pima” clan; Maricopa, 
buzzard, sun, fire; Kamia, buzzard. 

Met’a, Yuma: road-runner. 

Chia, Yuma: night-hawk. 

Mave, Smawv’’, Yuma, Kohuana, Cocopa: rattlesnake (ave). 

EHstamadhun, Yuma: an insect. 

Kwisku, Yuma: grasshopper, willow bark for skirt. 

Sikus, Yuma, undetermined; Cocopa: salt, coyote, and two undetermined 
meanings. 

Niu, Cocopa: deer; AKiwinis, Kohuana: deer. 

Nimi, Cocopa: wild cat. 

Uru, Cocopa: night hawk (Mohave: orro). 

Kapsas, Cocopa: frog. 

Kwas, Cocopa: ‘ Colorado river ”’. 

Kuchal, Cocopa: bark. 

Wachuwal, Cocopa: undetermined. 

Hutpas, Kohuana: sedge. 

Salal, Kohuana: bean mesquite. — __ 

Namituch, Maricopa: bean mesquite. se 

Pakit, Maricopa: ‘“ buzzard.” 

Kunyih, Kamia: coyote, fox. 

Witah, Kamia: undetermined. 

Itikamyap, Kamia: undetermined. 


It is rather remarkable how divergent the lists for the several 
tribes are. More than two-thirds of the names are confined to a 
single nation. Only a sixth are found among three of the six. Not 
one is established among all of the tribes. The only names of any 
notable distribution are: 

Hipa, coyote. 

Sikuma, dove. 

Liach, buzzard. 

Mave, rattlesnake. 

Sinikiwus-Sikupas, red ant. 

Havehacha, corn. 

Kalymusa, screw mesquite. 

Halypota, of variable significance. 


Frequently a single name has two, three, or even five totemic 
implications: compare Vyo/cha at the head of the preceding list. 

Analogously, the same “totem” often has entirely diverse names 
attached to it, sometimes perhaps within a single tribe, certainly 
among different tribes. For instance: 


744 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Deer: Mohave, Nyo’ilcha; Yuma, Alymos; Cocopa, Nivw; Kohuana, Kwinis ; 
Maricopa, Kwaku. 

Coyote: Mohave, Yuma, Maricopa, Hipa; Cocopa, Sikus; Kamia, Kunyih. 

Bean mesquite: Mohave, Vimaka; Yuma, Alymos ; Kohuana, Salal; Maricopa, 
Namituch. 

It is clear that all the agricultural Yuman tribes adhered with 
rather rigid uniformity to the scheme of the system, but varied its 
precise content freely. This is a situation of some interest, because 
the tendency of scholars has been to observe frequent transmission of 
individual elements from culture to culture, at least among primitive 
peoples, whereas the combinations made of these elements by indi- 
vidual nations have seemed much more fluctuating. In the present 
case the probability of diverging growths from a single source is 
very high. 

It may be added that the indirectness of the totemic reference in 
this clan system finds an analogue among the Pima and Papago, 
whose totemic clans and moieties are also nameless, but are dis- 
tinguished by their appellations for “ father; ” and among the Miwok, 
whose individual personal names connote totemic objects without 
expressing them. 

Among the Yuma and Cocopa gray-haird women are called by their clan 
name with akoi or wakui, “old woman,” prefixed: thus, Akoi-hipa, Wakui-niu. 
In other instances the ordinary word denoting the totem replaces the clan 
name: Akoi-akwak (deer) for Alymos, Akoi-uru (night-hawk) for Chia, Wakui- 
panapala (buzzard) for Sakuma, Wakwi-sih (salt) for Sikus. In still other 
cases a third stem appears, as Wakui-chayil for Kapsas (hanye, frog), and 
Wakut-mas for Kwiye (ihwi, cloud). This plan is not known to be followed 
by the Mohave; but this people changes Nyo’ilcha to Nyocha and Siulya to 
Kusuvilya for a woman who has lost a child. 


LAND OWNERSHIP. 


Farm land was owned and could be sold for beads or other prop- 
erty. A brave man, the Mohave say, brought captives and spoils 
back from war and gave them to other men in return for tracts of 
land. 

Quarrels of various sorts were settled by a sort of combat calcu- 
lated to prevent fatalities. For instance, when the river flooded the 
valley, it sometimes changed the configuration of the land or washed 
away landmarks. <A group of people might then assert the boundary 
of their holdings to have been at a point which their neighbors re- 
garded as well within their own limits. A sort of pushing match, 
thupirvek, was then arranged. One man was surrounded by his 
friends, who tried to shove or drag him across the disputed terri- 
tory, whereas their opponents struggled to carry a champion of theirs 
to the farthest end of the land of the aggressors. In this scuffle 
legs were sometimes broken and the human footballs nearly crushed 


KROBBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 745 


and pulled to death. The stake of the contest may sometimes have 
been not only the stretch first in dispute but the entire arable hold- 
ings of both contestants. 

If the losers were dissatisfied, they reappeared next morning at 
their asserted boundary, armed with willow poles a couple of inches 
thick and 5 or 6 feet long. Each man held a shorter stick in his 
left hand. The victors met them, and a stick fight, chetmana’ak, en- 
sued, which might last hours. The contestants beat each other over 
the heads till they were weary. As they parried with their staves, 
no one was killed, say the Mohave, but men sometimes died after- 
wards, especially when they fought long on a summer’s day and 
maggots bred in the wounds. The object of each party was to drive 
the other back across the disputed tract, whereupon title to it was 
definitely established. The dispossessed losers went to friends else- 
where and might have fields lent to them. 

Such a system would have been impossible among other Califor- 
nians. If these raised their hands against an opponent at all it was 
to kill, and the losers would scarcely have ceased to plan injury for 
their wrongs unless formal settlement were made. 


CHIEFTAINSHIP. 


The Mohave had hereditary chiefs, in the male line, whom they 
call hanidhala (from Spanish general); but their functions are 
obscure. They are much less often mentioned than the brave man 
or war leader, who ranked in estimation much like his counterpart 
among the eastern tribes of the continent, and for whom alone an 
anniversary mourning rite was performed; less, too, than the kohota 
or manager of entertainments, somewhat recalling the Luisefio 
paha,; and the kwathidhe, the “doctor” or shaman. All three of 
these characters acquired their prominence individually—through 
their dreaming, the Mohave say. Only the chief inherited—but 
counted for little, it would seem. 

The Mohave say that when a man, instead of joining in a feast, 
orated while the others ate, or if he allowed his dishes, property, or 
house to be destroyed—presumably by those whom he had offended— 
he gained prestige and authority. Karly travelers tell how the 
“chiefs” to whom they made presents promptly distributed these, 
keeping nothing for themselves. It is doubtful whether these ac- 
counts refer to the official hereditary chiefs or to men of influence. 
But it is clear that liberality and abnegation were qualities required 
of him who aspired to leadership. 

The following narrative, which appears to relate to about 1855, 
illustrates the position of the kohota or festival chief, the nature 
of Mohave dances, and the attitude toward captives: 


When I was a boy I saw a war party set out to help the Yuma, who had 
issued an invitation for a raid on the Cocopa. ‘They killed two of the enemy 


746 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


and. took two women captives. They returned to a place some miles south 
of Fort Mohave, where the entire tribe assembled. This place was among 
the Mat-halya-dhoma or northern Mohave, who already had several captives, 
whereas the Kavilya-dhoma or southern Mohave were without. The two 
women were brought to the kohota at this place, because he had asked some 
of his kinsmen to join the party and if captives were made to carry food 
and water for them and guard them so that they could be taken home to 
himself. 

The kohota is a man who constantly works, builds a large house, makes 
dances, and provides food for all who come. When he undertakes anything, 
people say: “ Let us help him because he works for us all.’”’ When he has 
nothing left, everyone contributes blankets or other property. Captives are 
given to him to keep. Every year he says: “ Let us sing,” and then the people 
gather and are happy. 

This kohota sang “ Pleiades.”’ In the morning the men and the women would 
dance to this, facing each other. About noon they all ate. Then in the after- 
noon the kohota would call on someone who sang Chutaha. When the jar began 
to resound, the people would leave off their play or gambling and come together, 
the young men with feathers in their hair. Then they would dance to this, 
three rows of young men, one of old, and two women, until the sun had nearly 
set. 

Then the kohota might say: “ Let who wishes to, sing; I name no one. Let 
any woman sing.” He would bring out his rattles. Then if women wanted to 
dance Tumanpa, they brought a rattle to a man who sang Twmanpda, and so for 
“ Raven ” and Vinimulya and Vinimulya-hapacha. But Nyohaiva is sung without 
rattle. The singer holds a long stick. Sometimes one other man sings with him. 
Many women stand about him, shoulder to shoulder, moving one foot at a time 
sidewise to the left, their hands hanging, the circle revolving. When the singer 
swings his stick, they step with their knees bent. All five of these dances may 
be going on at the same time. As soon as one song is finished, another is begun ; 
they dance fast because the sun is nearly gone, and the women sweat. 

So they did this time when the captives were brought in. As it began to be 
dusk, they stopped, and all went to the river and washed off their paint in order 
that the two captives might not cause them to be sick. Having returned and 
dried themselves, they ate, and then began dancing again. They sang the same 
songs as before, and sometimes also Chuhuecha, or ‘‘ Cane,’ though these are 
not danced to; or Ohuera. 

And some men sang Tudhulva, and they gambled to that by a fire. They 
played that all night. I was a boy but I was there. 

In the morning the kohota said: ‘‘ Now all bathe. Then come back in two 
days and we will dance again.” 

So in two days they all assembled once more, and danced again the whole 
day and the whole night. In the morning they continued singing while the 
kohota took the two slaves, one in each hand, and started toward the river. 
Behind him came those who were singing Tumanpa, then the Vinimulya-hapacha 
singers. All the people followed him. When he came near the river, he ran 
and leaped in with the captives. Everyone plunged after him. This was to 
make the two Cocopa women Mohaves, so that they would not bring sickness on 
the people. They had waked me at daybreak to take part. Being a small boy, 
J did not want to jump into the water, but they compelled me. 

Then the kohota sent the people home and took the two captives into his 
house. He said: ‘Perhaps these young women will bear children. These 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 747 


ehildren will grow up half Mohave and half Cocopa, and because they belong 
to both tribes, there may be no more fighting.”’ 

The captives were sisters, both called Orro, which is a Cocopa name for 
women and means nighthawk in Mohave. After two or three years one of 
them was married and had a child. The other one did not marry. Then, after 
a time, the kohota said: ‘‘ Everything is peaceable. Fighting has stopped. Let 
us not keep her since all tribes are friends. We will send her home.” So a 
party of men took the unmarried girl to‘the Yuma, where the Cocopa met her 
and brought her home. Her sister remained with the Mohave and is living 
yet and her son isa man. She is still called Orro. 


MARRIAGE AND SEX. 


The Mohave are at least as loose as any California Indians, and far 
franker about sexual relations. Marriage is a living together at 
will, and divorce is separation when either is so inclined. No men- 
tion is made of any bride purchase or wedding ceremony. A woman 
that is notoriously unstable becomes conspicuous and is called hama- 
luik, but there seems to be no serious criticism of either men or 
women on the score of conduct dictated by sex feeling. The old do 
not exhort the young to be continent, but urge them to enjoy them- 
selves while they may. This indiscriminateness has perhaps con- 
tributed to a higher social position, or at least greater freedom, of 
women among the Mohave than is usual. They sit, eat, laugh, work, 
and converse freely with the men, and the children display little less 
bashfulness. In the realm of religion, however, women are very 
subsidiary. They rarely join the men’s singing, tell myths, or be- 
come shamans; and there is not a single song series for women. 

A Mohave brought a second wife into his house, where she occupied a sepa- 
rate corner. The first wife was urged by her kin to be silent and put up with 
the unwelcome situation. After a time she left her husband for another. This 
one soon displayed an ugly disposition, and when angry would throw out 
her property or tear up her new front petticoat of bean strings. Finally she 
buried her food, packed up, and left, telling him to save persuasion as she 


would not return. They have now become old, but still do not speak. If he 
comes where she is, she looks away. 


If two half-sisters had sons and the children of these sons married 
(that is, the second half-cousins) the father of the girl would 
say to the father of the boy: “It is not long ago that our mothers 
were related. You knew it. Why did you allow this?” Then he 
would take a horse or something from the boy’s father, and the young 
people were permitted to remain married, not being considered rela- 
tives any longer. 

Women gave birth seated. They leaned backward, but without 
support, and held neither rope nor stick. Another woman received 
the child. For a month the mother ate no salt or flesh; and, to- 
gether with her husband, refrained from smoking. 


748 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


Twins, havak, were thought to come from the sky. “ We have only 
come to visit,” they said. ‘“ Our relatives live above. Give us some- 
thing and we shall stay with you for a time.” They possessed clair- 
voyance and knowledge of supernatural things; but their “ dreams ” 
were of the sky, not of the mountain Avikwame. They must be 
treated alike. If one were given more of something than the other, 
at least in childhood, the latter became angry and went where he had 
come from. If one died, the other lay down and, without sickness, 
followed him. 

The Mohave appear not to make a dance for adolescent girls: 
dancing is not a characteristic social form with them. The maiden 
is kept covered with hot sand for four nights. There is no actual 
pit, as among the Shoshoneans, but sand is taken from next the 
fire. It is likely that she is sung for, but this has not been reported. 
During the four days her acts are symbolical of her future. She 
goes about plucking leaves from arrow-weed brush—a perfectly use- 
less labor—merely because she would forever be lazy if she remained 
sitting in the house. She is silent, so as not to turn gossip. If she 
moved her head to look about she would soon become immodest. 
So that she may have a clean head the remainder of her life, her 
mother louses her and assembles the catch in a small pot. 

For 40 days the girl eats no salt, drinks only warmed liquids, 
and washes herself with hot water. On her next illness the period 
is the same; on successive occasions, 10, 8, 6, and 4 days. 

The Mohave call transvestites alyha and hold a ceremony induct- 
ing youths into this condition. They say that a boy dreams that he 
is an alyha and then can not do otherwise. Four men who have 
dreamed about the ceremony are sent for, and spend the night in the 
house, twisting cords and gathering shredded bark for the skirt 
the prospective alyha will thereafter wear. The youth himself lies, 
with two women sitting by him. As they twist the cords, the 
men sing: 

Ulin 4s eR Nite) a Ee Se ee roll it this way. 
PELE AID Bh Eh og peg CE I ed roll it that way. 


When the petticoat nears completion: 








SEU se ee ete Ss 6 ee Baas I hold it. 
TONGA RAE Ne ee, ee Oe I place it. 
Uw ARISTA VOC LO Si Ores re it is done. 
hatin wictosg Aa fio peer cee s it is finished. 
kawavek. _ 3 aia ‘fe OATS 

Ga ca oe Se Pee ey aa es listen ! 


These songs the singers dreamed when they were with the god 
Mastamho, and during the night they tell and sing of how they saw 
him ordering the first. performance of this ceremony. 


KROHBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 749 


In the morning the two women lift the youth and take him out- 
doors. One of the singers puts on the skirt and dances to the river 
in four stops, the youth following and imitating. Then all bathe. 
Thereupon the two women give the youth the front and back pieces 
of his new dress and paint his face white. After four days he is 
painted again and then is an alyha. Such persons speak, laugh, 
smile, sit, and act like women. They are lucky at gambling, say 
the Mohave, but die young. It is significant that a variety of 
‘venereal sickness which they treat is also called alyha. 

Sometimes, but more rarely, a girl took on man’s estate, among 
both Yuma and Mohave, and was then known as hwami, and might 
marry women. ‘There was no ceremony to mark her new status. 


NAMES, 


The Mohave are vehement in their observance of the name taboo 
of the dead, and are bashful about their names before strangers, but 
readily accept and even take for themselves names of the most un- 
dignified sort. A phrase that strikes as apt or novel or alludes to a 
trivial incident is the basis of many names. ‘There is not the least 
shrinking from obscenity, even in such personal connection as this. 
The other Californians are sufficiently shameless in their conversa- 
tion on occasion, but the Mohave delight in filthy speech habitually. 
Some men assume names of this character in the hope of attracting 
or impressing women. These are typical men’s names: Earth- 
tongue, Proud-coyote, Yellow-thigh, Foreign-boy, Girl’s-leg, Hawk’s- 
track, Doctor’s-sack, Shoots-mountain-sheep, Sells-eagle, Muskmelon, 
Rope, Gartersnake, Man.dies-bone-castrated-coyote. 

Kweva-namaua-napaua, of which the second element means 
“ father’s mother ” and the third “ father’s father,” is a violent insult 
uttered by angry women, evidently because of its reference to an- 
cestors normally dead. In a contrary spirit of delicacy the Mohave 
referred to the father’s settlement or kin as on the right, the mother’s 
as on the left, or designated the places from which the father’s kin 
sprang as ny-amata-hothare, and the mother’s as hanavasut. The 
indirectness of the allusion allowed these phrases to be used on cer- 
tain occasions without sting. 


DEATH, 


The Mohave have the appalling habit of beginning their wailing 
and singing some hours before an expected death. If the patient 
possesses unexpected vitality, the singing may go on for two or three 
days. In certain crucial cases the effect must be adverse; but the 
probability is that the mourning usually commences only after the 
sick person has indicated his expectation of dying, and that he is 


750 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


comforted by the unrestrained solicitude and grief of the crowd of 
his kinsmen and friends. General mourning after death goes on only 
for a very few hours; unless a death has occurred suddenly, when 
time must be allowed to assemble the relatives. A trench is scooped 
out near the house, willow or cottonwood logs piled above it, the body 
laid on with its head to the south, burning arrow weeds applied, and 
when the fire has sunk into the pit, sand is pushed over it. There 
are no cemeteries. The house and shade are immediately set on fire 
with all their contents. While the pyre is blazing, the shouts and 
lamentations are at their height, property is thrown into the flames, 
and people even strip themselves of their garments. All relatives, 
however remote, attend the cremation and weep; afterwards, only 
the closest kin cry for a few days, then go about their affairs as if 
nothing had happened. The loud lamentations must be extremely 
exhausting. For an entire night a father may sing 7umanpa, or 
whatever he knows, at the top of his voice for a dying son, while the 
mother alternates wails with speaking aloud until her voice comes in 
a whisper. An uncle shouts in jerky sentences how Mastamho made 
the river, or some other myth that he has dreamed, while others seem 
to “ preach ” in competition with him, or lament more inchoately, 
and the sitting women cry alalalai or weep mutely. Of course grief 
is not spontaneous in all, but it is expressed most unrestrainedly; the 
cries that arise at the moment of death are piercing; and the quick 
fierce cremation with the circle of abandoned mourners makes a scene 
whose intensity is unforgettably impressive. (PI. 69.) 

For four days after a death the kin eat no salt, fish, flesh, or fat, 
incense themselves with the smoke of arrow weed, and wash with 
steepings of the peeled root of the same plant, in order not to fall ill. 

The Mohave enact a special mourning for men with an illustrious 
war record and perhaps for chiefs. This seems to be held either 
immediately after cremation or some days or weeks later; but 
strangely enough is called “Annual” by them in English, as if it 
were an anniversary. The native name is Vyimich, “mourning,” 
or [Hitpachk, which seems to refer to the running in the rite, or 
Nyimi-chivauk, “ cry-put.” The mourners, distinguished men, and 
old people sit crowded close under a shade, crying and singing for 
a night, or a day and a night. Almost constantly there is some old 
man “ preaching ”—speaking on mythological subjects in loud, de- | 
tached, jerky words or pressed-out phrases. This is called nyimi- 
chekwarek, “ mourning-talk.” For hours 12 men run back and forth 
over a cleared and dampened space south of the shade. One shouts 
and directs; one holds a war club and is the leader; two carry bows 
and arrows; four have sticks with loops of beads; and four others 
carry sticks from which feathers dangle in pairs. Sometimes a 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 751 


woman and a mounted man are stationed on each flank of the 12 
runners, several of whom wear large bunches of feathers on their 
heads. The running back and forth is a conventionalized represen- 
tation of warfare, and occasionally an imitative act may be recog- 
nized. In the morning the dead warrior’s house, his property, the 
shade, and all the paraphernalia of the runners are burned, and the 
entire assemblage bathes. 

The destroying of property with the dead is a subject of much 
concern to most Mohave, and frequently discussed. It is called 
upily-m or ch-upily-k. One man wants his flute laid on his breast 
when he is burned, another his rattle, a third his feathers. Old 
women with difficulty keep a horse alive on gathered mesquite in 
order that it may be killed and eaten at their funeral. When a man 
has sung for his dying or dead son. he throws away and gives him— 
chupilyk—his songs. 

An old woman had saved some odds and ends of property for chupilyk for 
herself. When she sold them, she declared her intention of buying food, which 
would pass into her body and thus be destroyed with her. She was perhaps 
half humorous in her remarks, but at the same time evidently explaining to 
her conscience. 

WAR. 


War was carried on with four weapons, according to native reck- 
oning: the unbacked bow of willow, otisa, a little less than a man in 
length; the arrow, ipa, of Pluchea sericea, the arrow-weed which 
Serves so many uses, feathered but unforeshafted and untipped; the 
mallet headed club, halyahwai, of mesquite wood; and the tokyeta 
or straight stick club of screw mesquite wood. Shields and lances 
were known, but very little used. At long-range fighting, the head- 
less arrow penetrated but a short distance, and many a warrior re- 
turned covered with wounds, the Mohave say. Their myths make 
some of their heroes bristle like a porcupine at the end of a battle, 
and speak of men dying subsequently from wounds more frequently 
than during a fight. The ambition of combatants was to come to 
close quarters, and here execution was often deadly. No man was 
accounted really brave who had not distinguished himself in this 
hand-to-hand fighting; and in surprise attacks on settlements it was 
the rule. A leader sometimes rushed into the opposing ranks, grasped. 
an opponent, and threw him over his shoulders, thus at the same time 
shielding his own head from the foe and exposing his victim to the 
blows of his followers. Such struggles often ceased when one or two 
had been slain and their heads secured as trophies to be scalped at 
leisure; but at other times the mélée became general and losses were 
heavy. The straight club was for breaking heads; the mallet was 
thrust upward endwise to crush in an opponent’s face after his long 


3625 °—25——49 


752 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY faut. 78 


hair had been seized with the free hand. This style of fighting was 
not confined to ambuscades and desperate resistances of those who 
had been trapped, but sometimes marked the termination of an open 
combat. The Mohave prized courage above all other virtues, and it 
can not be denied them. 

Brave men dreamed especially of the morning star and of certain 
hawks. 

When war parties went out, each man carried a gourd of water 
and a gourd of ground wheat which furnished his sole subsistence for 
15 days. Travelers professed to journey four days without any 
food. Horses were rarely used in war or travel, in fact seem to have | 
been kept chiefly for food and show. The Mohave move across the 
country in a trot that carries them over long distances rapidly. They 
seem not inferior to the southwestern and Sonora Indians in this 
ability. Bits of thore willow were often chewed to keep the mouth 
moist. Jf hail or showers threatened, the bow was sometimes cased 
to protect the string. In battle and at other times a belt was worn; 
under the back of this, arrows were thrust. 

Triumphal scalps consisted of the entire skin of the head except a 
triangle consisting of nose, mouth, chin, and throat; and with their 
long locks they must have made magnificent trophies. They were 
celebrated over in the Yakatha’alya. The scalp was put on a pole 
set up in an open field or playground, mat’ara. Near by was a shade, 
under which the old people sat, the women calling pilelelelelele. 
Young men and women painted their hair white and danced for 
four days and nights. The songs were from any of the standard 
series, irrespective of their content. After each period of dancing, 
the youths and girls bathed and smoked themselves over a fire of 
human dung to escape sickness. The celebration was directed by 
the kohota, and was held near his house. He alone could touch the 
scalp, and might keep it for another dance a year later; but even he 
had to incense himself eight times each of the four days. 

A constant object of Mohave war parties was the capture of girls 
or young women. Other prisoners were not taken. The Mohave 
speak of these captives as “slaves,” but the word by which they were 
designated, ahwe, means only “strangers.” They were not violated; 
in fact, a ceremony had to be made over them else they would bring 
sickness into the land; and even after this purification they seem 
more generally not to have been married. They were given work, 
but not often abused, except under suspicion of trying to escape. In 
fact, their usual treatment appears to have been rather kindly, and 
they were sometimes assigned seed and a patch of field for their 
personal subsistence. The economic life was far too simple to allow 
of such captives being seriously exploited, and they needed constant 


KRONBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 753 


watching to keep; yet the Mohave were sufficiently intent to hold 
them to even purchase the captives of other tribes. Their curious 
attitude in the matter is distinctly southwestern. 


The last great fight of the Mohave occurred in 1857 or 1858, a short time 
after their successful raid against the Cocopa, the celebration of which has 
been described. The same five leaders were at the head of this more disastrous 
expedition, which was directed against their hereditary foe, the Maricopa. 
The Mohave, in a party whose numbers are not exactly known but estimated 
by themselves at about 200, were joined at Avi-kwa-hasala by 82 Yuma and a 
considerable body of Yavapai and a contingent from a more remote tribe whom 
the Mohave call Yavapaya-hwacha, “ traveling” or “ nomadic Yavapai,’ and the 
description of whose appearance and manners exactly fits the Apache. The 
Maricopa summoned the Hatpa or Pima, “a large tribe of many villages,’ as 
the Mohave found to their cost. The battle took place at Avi-vava, in an open 
plain. The Apache fought fiercely for a time but fled when things turned 
against them, and escaped without a fatality. The Yavapai followed but lost 
seven. The majority of warriors of these tribes were probably mounted, 
whereas the river nations fought on foot. A part of the Mohave and all the 
Yuma were surrounded and exterminated after a most determined hand-to- 
hand fight. Sixty Mohave fell and 80 of the 82 Yuma—Humara-va’acha and 
Kwasanya being the only survivors of the latter. The Yuma refused to flee 
and stood in a dense mass. When the foe charged, they attempted to grasp 
and drag him into their body, where he was hacked to pieces with great knives. 


It is this style of fighting, based on a readiness to clinch with the 
enemy in mortal issue, that was characteristic of the Yuman river 
tribes, as well as the Pima, and that allowed the latter people, quiet 
farmers as they were, to more than hold their own against the un- 
tiringly aggressive but unstable Apache. The same quality of forti- 
tude has found notable expression among another agricultural tribe, 
the Yaqui of Sonora. 

The Mohave reckon that a war party returning from an attack on 
the Maricopa sleeps one night on Maricopa soil, five in Yavapai 
territory, one among the Walapai, and on the eighth evening reaches 
the foot of Mohave Valley. The distance is 150 miles by air, con- 
siderably more over the ground, and most of the country totally 
desert. 


CuaApter 51. 
THE MOHAVE: DREAM LIFE. 


Dreaming, 754; song series, 755; the several series: Tumanpa type, 759; “ Salt ”’ 
type, 761; Chuchuecha type, 763; Pleiades type, 764; various series, 765; 
“Goose” series, 766; other semi-shamanistic series, 769; mythology, 770; 
“great tales,’ 771; shamanism, 775; status of the shaman, 778; toloache, 
779; the ghost dance, 779; religion and knowledge, 779. 


DREAMING. 


The Mohave adhere to a belief in dreams as the basis of everything 
in life, with an insistence equaled only by the Yurok devotion to the 
pursuit of wealth. Not only all shamanistic power but most myths 
and songs, bravery and fortune in war, success with women or in 
gaming, every special ability, are dreamed. Knowledge is not a 
thing to be learned, the Mohave declare, but to be acquired by each 
man according to his dreams. For “luck” they say swmach ahot, 
“good dreaming,” and “ill starred” is “bad dreams.” Nor is this 
a dreaming by men so much as by unconscious infants in their 
mothers or even earlier, when their matkwesa, their shadows, stood 
at Avikwame or played at Aha’awulypo. “Iwas there, I saw him,” 
a myth teller says of his hero, or of the death of the god Matavilya; 
and each shaman insists that he himself received his powers from 
Mastamho at the beginning of the world. So deep are these con- 
victions, especially as old age comes on, that most Mohave can no 
longer distinguish between what they have received from other men 
and what is their own inward experience. They learn, indeed, as 
much as other people; but since learning seems an almost valueless 
nothing, they dream over, or believe they have first dreamed, the 
things which they in common with every Mohave know. It is a 
strange attitude, and one that can grow only out of a remarkable 
civilization. 

There is, too, an amazing timelessness in these beliefs, which finds 
reflection in every myth. The precise time of day or night of each 
trivial supernatural event is specified, but the briefest moments suf- 
fice for the growth from boyhood to adult age, for the transforma- 
tion from person to animal, for the making of a mountain or the 
ordering of an everlasting institution. Just so a Mohave can not 


754 


KROBEER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 755 


tell a story or a dream without naming the exact spot at which each 
character journeyed or slept or stood or looked about; but four steps 
bring the god to the center of the earth or the source of the river, 
and his arms reach to the edges of the sky. 

Dreams, then, are the foundation of Mohave life; and dreams 
throughout are cast in mythological mold. There is no people whose 
activities are more shaped by this psychic state, or what they believe 
to be such, and none whose civilization is so completely, so deliber- 
ately, reflected in their myths. 


SONG SERIES. 


Public ceremonies or rituals as they occur among almost all 
native Americans can not be said to be practiced by the Mohave. 
Even dances are little developed among them, being little more than 
an occasional addition to certain cycles of familiar songs. These 
cycles or series number about 30, each designated by a name. The 
songs in each are comparatively uniform, in fact little more than 
variations on a single theme; and although no two of the 100 or 
200 songs of one series are identical, the Mohave need hear only a 
few bars of any song to recognize its kind. All the cycles have 
their songs strung on a thread of myth, of which the singer is 
conscious, although practically nothing of the story appears in the 
brief, stylistically chosen, and distorted words of the songs. Some- 
times a night is spent by a singer entertaining a houseful of people 
with alternate recital and singing; but such occasions seem not to 
have been common. Many singers declare that they have never told 
their whole tale through and sung their songs from beginning to 
end at one sitting. It is in accord with this statement that some 
men appear to know the whole of a song cycle but only parts of its 
myth; and that to the public at large all the songs are more or 
less familiar, but the stories much less known. 

The singers generally state that they have dreamed the myth 
and cycle; sometimes admit that they have learned them from 
listening to older relatives; and occasionally declare that they first 
learned them in part and then dreamed the whole. One or more 
of an old man’s sons or brothers or brothers’ sons usually sing the 
same cycles; others have dreamed a different one. Some men, and 
they are not a few, profess to know, and sing and tell, three or 
four series. The same cycle is often sung quite differently by men 
not connected in blood or by personal association, and the story ap- 
pears to vary to a nearly equal degree. 

At funerals, and in case of an anticipated death for many hours 
before, mourning consists largely of singing from these cycles. A 
dying man’s kin know his songs and sing them; for a man not given 


756 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


to singing, or a woman, or a child, the chief mourners sing from 
their own cycles. The Mohave appear to be aware, and tell readily, 
what songs will be sung at the funeral of any person with whom 
they are well acquainted. As the same songs are substantially the ~ 
only ones which they use for pleasure, this definite association 
with death seems strange; but the content, or rather implication, of 
all of them is so mythological, and at the same time so vague and 
so conventionalized according to familiar patterns, that any song is 
intrinsically about equally suitable for any occasion. <A singer evi- 
dently does not think of the reference or lack of reference of his song 
to the funeral or the celebration which is going on at the moment. 
Music is proper, and he sings what he knows. The mythology that 
is touched upon is one of the materials of which his fabric is made, 
and nothing more. When a-man has sung for his dead son, he 
breaks the rattle and declares that he has thrown his song away; 
but after a time his association of grief vanishes, and when next 
he sings, it is from the same series. He certainly would recur to 
it at the next death. 

About a third of the cycles are said by the Mohave to belong to 
shamans and to serve the curing of particular sicknesses. These 
seem to be regarded with some disfavor and to be little used on other 
occasions; but all that is known of them shows them to be nearly the 
same as the nonshamanistic cycles, and to be based on myths of 
the identical type. The remainder are variously classified, according 
to the proper instrument that accompanies the singing, whether or 
not they can be danced to, whether the tale contains episodes of 
war, and so on. Hacha and Chutaha, for instance, are sung chiefly 
as an occasion for dancing. But again, neither their songs nor story 
appear to present any marked peculiarities. 

‘The myths are enormously long, and almost invariably relate the 
journey of either a single person, or of a pair of brothers with or 
without a following, beginning with their coming into existence and 
ending with their transformation into an animal or a landmark. 
This journey, which is sometimes described as ‘occupying two or 
three days, but is really a timeless life history of the hero, is given 
with the greatest detail of itinerary; but incidents of true narrative 
interest are few, often irrelevant to the main thread of the story, 
and usually can be found in very similar form in entirely distinct 
cycles. But each locality reached, whether on the river, in the 
desert, or among distant mountains, is named, and its features are 
frequently described. All that happens, however, at most of these 
stops is that the hero thinks of something that he has left behind 
or that will happen, marvels at the appearance of a rock, sees a 
badger, catches a wood rat, has night come on and watches the stars, 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 157 


or suddenly, and in the same vein, plots the death of his brother and 
companion. As a story the whole is meaningless. In fact, the 
narrator is sometimes guilty of gross inconsistencies as he goes 
along, and when asked to resummarize his tale, usually outlines it 
altered. The plot is evidently a framework on which episodes of 
ornamental significance can be bung. 

We are thus face to face with a style of literature which is as 
frankly decorative as a patterned textile. The pattern is far from 
random; but it is its color and intricacy, its fineness or splendor, that 
have meaning, not the action told by its figures; and as a simple 
but religious people don the same garment for festivity or worship, 
for dress or interment, provided only it is gorgeously pleasing enough, 
so the Mohave weave their many myths in one ornamental style and 
sing them on every occasion that calls for music. Something of this 
quality has already been found in the tales of the Gabrielino and 
chants of the Luiseno. But the Mohave are perhaps more single- 
minded, more extreme and less conscious, and therefore more expert, 
in their national manner. 

The same with the songs. As a narrator comes to each spot in his 
story, he sings so many songs. If, after his conclusion, he is asked to 
repeat the songs that belong to a certain place, he may sing four 
instead of six, and insist that there were no more. He is truthful: 
comparison shows that he is now singing other variations of his 
fundamental theme; and the words are likely to be different. What 
he has in mind is clearly only the theme, certain manners of varying 
it, a certain stock of words to be fitted to the melody. This might be 
anticipated. It would be impossible for ordinary men to remember 
definitely the sequence and the precise minor shadings of the varying 
rhythms and melodic embellishments of 150 songs all cast in the same 
mold. ‘The gifted individual might do this; but it does not attract 
him. In short, the skeleton of the plot, its geography, the basic 
tune and the kind and scope of its variations, are held somewhat 
plastically in mind; everything else is more or less improvised, with 
frequent recourse to remembrances of other singers and even diverse 
series. 

Some examples of songs wil] illustrate: 


Tumanpa-vanyume: 


Words of song. Mohave. English. 

Mapkoyame) 20 aed A WOME . wink onc nae es AONE 
baerhotele= =. Pe. ROCKO. «5.1 5 Scedh tk Peien ae Pleiades 
hayangamanui varam.. (=kwuk).......-.--- (see!) 

Goose: 
nahaiyamim......--- nyahaim—. ....------- At Nyahaim-— 
PEUCUIR ORI 6 ht RVR ck a Ba kuvara 
DMC a else PENMAN ec Mieke 303 5 ose night 


kuidhauvangat....-... kuvidhauk,...-..--.- have 


758 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 78 
Another: 
lamanguth? eee namk.a. Sefeok. Wet go 
LOWUNONO OU eo oe hod ATROLO WELK Ao re os travel to 
OTD iTT: SOE EL ee my-amata.......-... my land 
hangar. 
Turtle: 
ROU AVEC Bee Pee es eS Ee At Hakwinyava, 
husnyom hokwinylees: AAs yl gts. ue. ok oer ae dark imagine (make a dark 
place—a house—by thinking) 
NAUGSURIET ane hats fete es om dacs Cs es eas blue 
The same: 
AN YOO See veers EES eed Ee ae aes is marked 
hiama (for himata)........-.....----.------ her body (the turtle’s) 
akwathe that ilo hentia: Ee Ae ae yellow 
Nyohaiva: 
OMOLUONGA see Aaine « eta ei Sie cpg a ee at Amataya’ama, 
SIEMORWONGE coer ete eee ee te oe dream 
sumakahuwam At eG OSS eee IR) dream 
Raven: 
GNU Y O saix nurse eases fa avi daira: see ae gourd-rattle 
OCLY 0 ok. cote Pee es heres eae eee I show 
OV: UT ae Maliars ae Oh Sas ee er eer eee standing 
The following song is: 
Ghrnalyah... ROTA a assayed. a 8. ee gourd-rattle 
ihauk. vessar ie Bhs eee te ae I hold 
GRUMIER Achiake? ON ei Oe cick ieee ee upward raise it 
DU DUM ae oo ea wets Ane ees oe standing 
And the one after: 
VANGELIS OTR Le Ce ee ee IT hold it 
akonavek oi its ets JE ar ee eae I tell of it 
VEU CUM TS sy spb ett aoe ee cas: standing 
ON TN ET Os Se Eo Se Fe Ie eet ee I look hither 
CTO ON CHS) RG Yee SOL ee AE ey FA RE Se See I look thither 
UIW CUMS eo ra eae a ee te ee standing 
The next song, the first of the following group: 
tinijam=halcheskan Aig Sse). Gir Sa ee the night bat 
himan kind buen ites. SASS ee OA ee rising flies 
CRONOUS dive ad. nae tne lt oe eee eae ee I tell it 
SUBOTCR ALS aden e tee Meee coll econ Ce i ee oe eee I sing it 
Another Raven song: 
GPE IT RIA LOLA ON TSE Ses metate 
haniichiyest ese. SPE ee I eee muller 
LAW iNiw ny ate 2 te 38 Re a ee eee ee grinding 
LOGIT CRO NZOUON et ee ete er AER is sais . corn grinding 
The first song of this cycle: 
hina oa ee son ce ee ee Now both 
j OMY ei 2 Saat od PAR Wa Rs cerns ARES mA ae being persons (1. é., alive) 
quakund aes Ase. emt tST 9/2 > 2 ai) ee Pe ee we sit here 
And the last: 
MOLANGIE ALOT OGL RGD) 2 = - 2 17 ee ee eee the wind 
CWE COU ee terre hk eS Ye rk oe eR whirls 


Tt is clear that very little of the plot gets into the song: insufficient 
to render it intelligible to those who have not learned or heard the 
story; although the words themselves may be readily recognizable, 


Se 


KROBBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 759 
THE SEVERAL SERIES: TUMANPA TYPE. 


Tumanpa comes in three varieties: Zumanpa akyulya, long; Tu- 
manpa utauta, atatuana, taravika, or halyadhompa, short, odd, or 
crooked; and Zumanpa Vanyume, of the Vanyume or Serrano of 
Mohave River. The first two differ in the length of their songs. 
The myth is the same and takes, with the songs, a night to go 
through. The story begins at Aha’av’ulypo at the death of Mata- 
vilya and then relates the rather eventless journey of an old man 
and woman, brother and sister, first north to Okalihu, then south 
along the river past Bill Williams Fork, then eastward, until at 
Chimusam-kuchoiva, near Aubrey in Arizona, the two marry and 
turn into rock. Another version takes them first into the Providence 
Mountains west of Aha’av’ulypo, omits the marriage, but ends at 
the same locality. There are practically no events except the jour- 
ney itself. Instead, the things which the Tumanpa see, their 
thoughts about them and names for them, are entered into at length: 
a battle, scalping, the newly made river, driftwood, rats and other 
animals, the constellations, and so on indefinitely and no doubt dif- 
ferently in the mouth of each reciter. 

Tumanpa Vanyume has an obscure history. Some Mohave say 
that it was learned by them from Tavaskan, a chief at Tejon. 
This would make him a Kitanemuk, but this dialect and Vanyume 
are both Serrano and not very different. Others declare that the 
songs were learned from certain Mohave-speaking relatives of 
Tavaskan and are therefore in Mohave, although the myth is told 
in the Vanyume language and is unintelligible; much as the Cocopa 
sing another variety of the same cycle, Z’wmanpa ahwe, “ foreign 
Tumanpa,’ in words intelligible to the Mohave and believed by 
them to be in their own speech, whereas they can not understand 
the accompanying story. Cocopa is Yuman speech, and it may 
well be that the phrases which occur over and over in all Yuman 
songs are sufficiently similar to be recognizable; but Serrano is a 
Shoshonean language. In any event the 7wmanpa Vanyume songs 
sung by the Mohave have Mohave words; and they agree that. the 
inevitable journey narrated in the story begins at Aha’av’ulypo, 
progresses to Matavilya-vova near Barstow, and ends at Aviveskwi- 
kaveik, south of Boundary Cone at the rim of Mohave Valley. 
Barstow is Vanyume territory, and possibly that is all that this 
tribe has to do with the cycle. 

Vinimulya and Vinimulya-hapacha—the first is also called Vini- 
mulya-tahanna, “Vinimulya indeed ”—are stories of fighting. They 
are often coupled with 7umanpa, “ Raven,” and Nyohaiva as a group 
of series that are sung at celebrations, even the women participating, 
and men and women dancing. ‘These cycles tell of war, lend them- 


760 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 : 


selves to play, and are free from any suspicion of shamanistic 
powers in the Mohave mind. 

Vinimulya-hapacha lasts from near sunset to the middle of the 
following afternoon. One version begins at “ Gourd mountain” in 
Chemehuevi or other Shoshonean territory, 200 or 300 miles north- 
west of Avikwame; comes into Mohave Valley; and ends “ at ” Avi- 
watha (New York Mountains), Savetpilya (Charleston Peak), Har- 
rakarraka, and Komota, four widely separated places belonging to 
the Chemehuevi. 

Another account makes the hero Umas-kwichipacha, a Mohave, leave his 
home, Aha-kwa’a’i, in Mohave Valley and settle for a year with his people in 
the Providence Mountains, historic Chemehuevi territory. On his impending 
return, the people in Mohave Valley crediting him with warlike intent, he 
goes first past Hatalompa far downstream to Aha-kwatpava below Ehrenberg, 
then turns back and after a number of days’ marches reaches Kwaparveta 
at the lower end of the valley. The residents there flee up the valley and 
Umas-kwichipacha with all his followers, men, women, and children, pursues, 
until he reaches his old home Aha-kwa’a’i. There he gathers booty and set- 
tles. His daughter Ilya-owich-maikohwera, angered at his suggestion that 
she take a husband, runs off to the Walapai for a year. On her return, 
Umas-kwichipacha starts up the valley, the residents fleeing before him under 
the leadership of his younger brother Savilyuvava to Sokwilya-hihu near Fort 
Mohave. There they make a Stand, Savilyuvava is killed and scalped, his 
daughter made captive, and his people driven across the river. Next the 
hero attacks the Ipa’ahma, “quail people,” who also flee across the river 
and join the defeated party of Savilyuvava at Avi-kutaparva, a few miles 
above. There they and Umas-kwichipacha defy and revile each other across 
the river, mentioning each other’s kin. Then he returns to the Providence 
Mountains, where one of his people, Umas-elyithe, dies from wounds received 
in the battle. 

This is clearly a “clan legend,” though of the peculiar form 
favored by the Mohave. While the narrator does not regard it 
necessary to mention the fact in his story, he thinks of all Umas- 
kwichipacha’s people—as well as his brother’s—as having daughters 
named Owich. 

Akaka, “ Raven,” tells of the birth from the ground, where Mata- 
vilya’s house was burned after his death at Aha’av’ulypo, of the two 
raven brothers, Humar-kwidhe and Humar-hanga. They move 
toward the door and sing of their toys, buzzers of cane; then, that 
there will be war; then face and reach out in the four directions and 
thereby obtain gourd rattles. Then they sing of the bat of night, 
Orion and the Pleiades, hostile tribes in the south, the dust of an 
approaching war party, the battle at dawn, captive women, scalped 
foes, the return Journey northward past Bill Williams Fork, an- 
nouncement of victory, gathering of the people, and the dance of 
celebration. They continue singing, telling of the birds to be heard 
before dawn, of food in the grinding, of people gathering to play at 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 761 


Miakwa’orva. Now they move nearer the door, are able to stand and 
walk, and tell of their bodies and what those who dream of them will 
sing. They go outside the door, wondering what their shape will be 
and where they shall go, and take new names. Feathers begin to 
grow on them and they commence to fly. It dawns, and the older 
brother announces that he will follow the darkness as it passes from 
east to west, and go southwestward to live, as the crow, with the 
Kamia. The younger takes the name Tinyam-hatmowaipha, “ dusky 

night,” will be the raven, and stay in the Mohave land. The wind 
puffs aul they soar off noth ii. 

This is a curious tale within a tale, if it can be called a story at all. 
The heroes do nothing but move 30 fait sing all night, and disappear 
at daybreak. What they sing of is precisely ‘what any Mohave would 
be likely to sing of if he sat up. The story is thus but a pallid 
reflection of the conventional subjects of Mohave singing. The ver- 
sion outlined comprises some 186 songs in about 32 groups. 

Nyohaiva differs from those that precede in being sung without 
gourd rattle accompaniment. The singer stands leaning on a stick. 
The tale is one of war. 

Nyohaiva, the insect called yanathakwaataya, was a woman who grew out 
of the ground at Miakwa’orva, near the northern end of Mohave Valley. She 
moved southward, went east from opposite Needles into the mountains, gave 
a bow and knife to Hamatholaviya that the Walapai might live by hunting, 
returned to the river, leaped far down, accepted a new name, Ath’inkumedhi, 
from Nyahunemkwayava, but rejected several men who claimed her as sister. 
At Akwaka-hava, somewhere in the old Halchidhoma country, she was offered 
food and plotted against by Kimkusuma, Ochouta, and their two brothers, .~who 
wished to eat her. She found her relatives’ bones, beat the people of Akwaka- 
hava in a contest for them, and defied them to war. She went downstream to 
Avi-haly’a and Avenyava and prepared the people for war. They assembled, 
and she appointed three leaders besides herself. On the way up they met her 
brother, on whom horns were growing, and she sent him to the east to become 
a mountain sheep. As the party approached Akwaka-hava, Nyohaiva put the 
foe to sleep with a magic ball, entered the house with her three companions, 
carried off the sleeping Ochouta, and decapitated him with her thumb-nail. 
She took the head northward to Amata-ya’ama, near Parker, still in old 
Halchidhoma territory, where four alyha men-women lived, and made the scalp 
dance. Ochouta’s skull she threw far south, where it became the rock Avi- 
melyakyeta at Picacho near Yuma. Then she herself turned into a black rock 
near Amata-ya’ama. 


One narrator sang 33 groups of from 1 to 5 songs, 107 in all, in 
reference to the myth outlined. 


“ SALT” TYPE. 


“ Salt,” “Deer,” and “Turtle” are sometimes mentioned with 
“Tumanpa short” as sung indoors during the long winter nights, 
apparently in contrast to “Tumanpa long,” the two Vznimulya, 


762 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


“ Raven,” and Vyohaiva, which lent themselves to outdoor dancing 
when the people gathered for amusement. All the singings of the 
present group except “ Turtle,’ which uses no rattle, were also 
danced to, but only on the limited scale which a crowded house 
allowed. Thus in “ Deer,” women accompanied the singer, and a . 
few men danced. In “Salt,” three men stood by the singer facing 
four women inside the door, and the two lines danced four steps 
forward and back. The singer might make a knot in a string of his 
own length as he finished each song. 

“ Salt,” Ath’2, uses the rattle. One version begins at Aha’av’ulypo 
and ends at Yava’avi-ath’1, near Daggett, in Vanyume country. 
Another, whose 25 groups of 115 songs take a night and a day to 
traverse, tells of four mountain-sheep brothers who journeyed from 
Aha’av’ulypo, after Matavilya’s death, eastward and then north 
through the Walapai country to Ati’siara, where the two oldest sank 
into the ground and blew back their brothers, who wished to follow 
them. The younger brothers went north, then west, crossed the course 
of the future river at Ukaliho, passed the Providence Mountains, 
and reached Hayakwiranya-mat’ara, east of Mojave station in Ka- 
walisu or Vanyume land. On the way they saw and talked or 
disputed about their tears, their powers and future, several insects, 
rats, birds, and tobacco plants, meteors and constellations, and a lake 
which they took to be the sea. Then they turned southeastward 
across the desert, and finally at Himekuvauva, a day’s journey west 
of Parker, their tears turned into salt and they into stone. The 
Chemehuevi now gather salt there, the Mohave say, and sing what 
they have dreamed about Salt, beginning at the point where the 
Mohave leave off. 

Akwaka, “ Deer,” is sung to the gourd rattle. It seems to be of no 
great length, so that it can be completed within a night. Most of the 
songs are those of the deer, but the last of the cycle are put in the 
mouths of the true heroes of the myth, Numeta the older brother and 
Hatakulya the younger. These seem to be the mountain lion and the 
jaguar; wild cat is nwme. The Mohave say that Numeta’s tail stands 
up, Hatakulya’s hangs. 


When Matavilya died, the two feline brothers sank into the ground at 
Aha’av’ulypo, emerged to the north at Hatakulya-nika, sank in again, and 
reappeared far west at Avi-kwinyehore, beyond San Bernardino. There they 
made two deer of clay, cleansed them by rain, and thought of the bow and hunt- 
ing of the eastern mountain tribes. The deer stood and looked at the earth, 
sun, sky, and coming of night, and then journeyed eastward across the San 
Bernardino Range, through the Mohave Desert, past the New York Mountains 
and Avikwame, across the Colorado River at Idho-kuva’ira and Karaerva near 
Fort Mohave, by the foot of Boundary Cone, south, then up by Aha-kuvilya 
wash, and east to Amata-kwe-hoalya, “pine land,’ the Walapai Mountains. 
Their experiences are of the sort conventional in Mohave song myths; they find 


KROBBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 763 


grass, see the morning star, swim with difficulty across the river, meet antelopes 
and wild cats. 

From the Walapai Mountains a path led eastward which Numeta and Hata- 
kulya had made for them. The female believed the tracks to be left from the 
beginning of the world, but the male knew that his makers were waiting for 
him and that disaster portended: he had “dreamed badly.” Where the trail 
stopped, Numeta and Hatakulya were in wait: the older unskillfully made a 
noise with his bow, but the younger shot and wounded the male deer, which 
ran eastward and died at Amata’-ahwata-kuchinakwa. The brothers followed, so 
that the Walapai and Yavapai of that country might know how to hunt, found the 
dead body, but quarreled about its division. Numeta went back to the Walapai 
Mountains; Hatakulya, taking only the deer’s heart, to Ahta-kwatmenva, east 
of Kingman, also in Walapai country. The female deer went on to Avi-melya- 
hweke, mountains also in Arizona, but far south, opposite Parker. Such is the 
myth: the songs begin only at the New York Mountains, Aviwatha, and end 
at Amata’-ahwata-kuchinakwa. The last song is: 


IOUTUELINL © OlOLCNmte a  e old man (brother) 
ER VATS 3 Lael aly SE ipa te pagis O t n gx tat a le divide 

erate £7 APTOS SOE ASE igad (ey Veh 904 its body 

PESTS Te eS ORS ae ee ee ean SO CRN ee its horns 
UR GAL ST 8c) Ra Pian Bs Shh, ene Oe a Be ae es ee skin 

BOE CMEIL OLE ee ee ean ae nS sinews 





Kapeta, “Turtle,” is sung to the beating of a basket with a rod. 
This person was born last in the great house of Mastamho on Avik- 
wame. She came into existence on the west side of the house, hence 
the Chemehuevi, who live in that direction, eat turtle. The singing 
seems to be thought to begin at Aha-kwi’-ihore, near the New York 
Mountains. The story progresses through the various mountains 
west of the river belonging to the Chemehuevi. Then it tells how 
Turtle went east to Hakwinyava, in Pima land, and built herself a 
house. | 

CHUHUECHA TYPE. 


Chuhuecha, Ohwera, Ahta, and Satukhota are also classed by the 
Mohave as good singings because those who know them do not 
become shamans in old age. 

The heroes of Chuhuecha are the two brothers called Hayunye, an 
insect, perhaps the cricket, that is said to sing Chuhuecha now as it 
chirps. A record obtained includes 169 songs in 83 groups. The 
singer begins in the evening to beat his basket with a bundle of 
stems and tells of Aha’av’ulypo and the sickness and funeral of 
Matavilya. By the middle of the night his story is at Analya-katha, 
northwest of the Providence Mountains, in Chemehuevi land; in the 
morning at Kwiya-selya’aya, where the river flows through Cheme- 
huevi Valley. In the evening he begins again, but sings only a short 
time and ends his tale at the sea—the Gulf of California, in Papago 
land. At first the two brothers’ experience are of the usual insignifi- 


764 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


cant and descriptive kind. Later in the story, the elder wins the 
younger at gambling and maltreats him. From their house at Avi- 
melyahweke in Arizona the younger goes far down river and gets a 
wife among the Alakwisa, then kills much game, wins his brother’s 
body at dice, kills him, and throws his corpse south to grow as cane. 
Then he turns to stone. His wife goes far east to the Pima country, 
and bears a miraculous boy, who grows up in four days, journeys to 
the sea, and turns into low cane. His mother follows and becomes 
the shore bird méinturisturisa (the snipe?). Where the plot is nomi- 
nal, the songs are numerous; as the story becomes humanly interest- 
ing, the songs are few and hurried. Chuhuecha is not danced to. 

Ohwera has the eagle as its hero, and revolves at least in part 
about the New York Mountains and the Chemehuevi country north- 
west of the Mohave. The stinger strikes together two bundles of 
stems. A sort of dance can accompany the singing. Six men and 
two women kneel on one leg, then stamp the forward foot slightly 
to each beat of the music. 

Ahta, or “ Cane,” also called “tall cane,” Ahta’-amalya’e, is a long 
story, with more plot than most cycles. The singer strikes a double 
beat on a Chemehuevi basket with a stick. There is no dancing. 

Satukhota has much the same plot as the Diegueno story of Auya- 
homar, but the Mohave know nothing of this, and connect their 
series with a Maricopa version called Satukhota. Its geographical 
setting indicates that they are right. The story is said to begin 
at Aha-kutot-namomampa near the Bill Wiliams Fork of the Colo- 
rado. Kwa’akuya-inyohava, “ west old woman,” surviving alone 
after a flood, gives birth to two. boys, Para’aka and Pa’ahana, who 
grow up, take cane, make flutes, and attract the two far-away daugh- 
ters of Masayava-kunauva, who lives at Koakamata, near Maricopa 
Wells. They marry the girls, go off with them, and are killed by 
their wives’ kin in the Papago country, but are avenged by their 
son Kwiya-humar. Satukhota and “Cane” appear to have much 
plot in common. The Satukhota singer smites his palm against his 
breast. 

“‘ PLEIADES ” TYPE. 


Hacha or “ Pleiades,” and Chutaha, which refers to the long-billed 
wading bird minsakulita, stand apart from all others in being pri- 
marily dance singings, although the Mohave list them indiscrimi- 
nately with the others. There is some justification for this attitude 
because there are long myths for both, beginning at Aha’av’ulypo. 
There are only two Pleiades songs and two Chutaha, these being 
sung over and over for hours. ‘There seems to be no instrument 
of percussion used in the former. For Chutaha, a trench perhaps 
4 feet long and a few inches wide is scooped out with the foot and 


| 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 765 


sprinkled to compact its walls. At one end a tray-shaped Cheme- 
huevi basket is laid and beaten; at the other, a large pot is set as a 
resonance chamber. The dances, which are made at least primarily 
for the fun of them, are conducted as follows: 

The Pleiades singer stands under a shade with his back to the 
sun. Behind him young men stand abreast, and behind these, their 
elders. They wear feather-hung rabbit skin ropes over their 
shoulders. I*acing the singer are a row of girls and one of older 
women. AI] sing with him for a time. Then he ceases, but they 
continue to dance. They bend and raise the body, make a long 
stride forward with the right knee elevated, bend again, and step 
back. As the men step backward, the women step forward, and 
vice versa. 

In Chutaha, when the basket is struck with the palm, the jar 
gives out a deep booming, and the people assemble. Abreast with 
the singer is a kneeling line of elderly men facing east; behind him, 
two women selected for their loud voices, their bodies painted red, 
their hair white; in front, looking toward the sun, sit three rows 
of younger men. They wear tufts of white heron or crane feathers on 
their heads, or strings of these feathers down their backs. <A pas- 
sage is left through their ranks. Down this path runs an old man, 
one arm raised behind him, the other pointing forward and down. 
He shouts: “ Hu! once, once, once,” the drummer smites his basket, 
and all clap hands. Again the runner comes, but calls: “ ‘Twice, 
twice, twice (haviktem),” and as all answer “ Yes,” and clap again, 
the drummer and singer begin. Soon the singer raises his hand and 
the row of old men arises. Each one holds a stick of his own length 
and merely nods his head to the music. Again the singer signals, 
and the three rows of young men, 40 or 50 in number, kneel, and the 
first rank stands and sings. One of them raises his arms and the 
second row rises and joins in the song; and then the third on signal 
from the second. Finally the two women sing, their shrill voices 
rising above the great chorus. The young men’s dancing is a slight 
flexing of the knees, the arms hanging slack. As the leader in the 
middle of each row raises his hand, they drop farther, perhaps a foot 
each time. The dance is continued until everyone is tired. It is very 
clear that the Mohave are not dance specialists. Unison mass effect 
makes up to them for variety and meaning of movement. 

It is doubtful whether either Pleiades or Chutaha is sung at funer- 
als. Their four songs are known to every one, but their public exe- 
cution seems to be left to the dance or play director, the kohota. 


VARIOUS SERIES. 


Nyavadhoka, Halykwesa, Ohulya, and Kamtoska are little known. 
The first has its myth begin at Aha’av’ulypo. The singer slaps his 


766 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


thigh. In Halykwesa he kneels before a basket and beats it with a 
stick. There is no dancing. The singing is considered short, last- 
ing only part of the night. The story begins at Av’athamulya; the 
hero traveled to the sea, presumably the Gulf of California, and 
became a univalve shell. In Ohulya the basket is beaten both with 
the stick and with the hand, which suggests a double or syncopated 
rhythm. The hero of the tale is the rat, who began his career at 
Avihalykwa’ampa. The Aamtoska singer also uses a basket. This 
singing tells of an unidentified brownish bird with the cry “ tos, tos.” 

Some of the Mohave count 7’udhulva, the hand game, as a song 
series. There seems to be an associated story into which coyote 
enters. When besides dances, traditions, funeral rites, and shaman- 
istic practices, even games are reckoned in one common group, it is 
clear that the standardized formula into which these varied activities 
have been fitted must have deeply impressed the civilization. 

In addition to Tumanpa Vanyume, the Mohave follow several 
other foreign singings. Chiyere, “birds” (that is, in general), was 
learned by one or more individuals from the Yuma. ‘They are said 
not to know the story. The rattle 1s used and the songs can be 
danced to. Av’alyunu is also from the Yuma. The myth begins at 
Aha’awulypo. Alysa is from the Kamia. The singer rattles, and 
men and women dance in a circle, an arrangement that is rare in 
native Mohave dances. 


** GOOSE ” SERIES. 


The shamanistic song series that follow seem to comprise only a 
portion of the curative practices of the Mohave, and on the other 
hand to be only partly shamanistic, since some of them are in dispute 
as “ doctor” singings, and the myths that accompany them are, in 
some cases, of the same tenor as the stories of the nonshamanistic 
series. Perhaps the present group, or some of its cycles, are shaman- 
istic in association rather than practice. Thus the Mohave say that 
those who sing them become doctors when they grow old. At the 
same time these cycles are not danced to, do not use the rattle, and 
seem not to be sung at funerals, so that they must present a quite 
different aspect to the native mind from the preceding ones. 

Yellaka or “ Goose” is one of these “ doctor’s singings,” but the 
cure which it serves is not known. It begins at the source of the 
river, and describes, with much detail but little incident, the journey 
to the sea of a company of birds with the goose and later the grebe 
as their leader. The musical theme is unusually simple in one of the 
renditions; a second is rather different in melody and rhythm. The 
stories of these two versions seem to be similar in scheme, but far 
apart in particulars. Since other cycles probably vary equally in the 
mouths of different individuals, a synopsis of the two Goose versions 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 767 


may be of interest. It may be added that the two singers who gave 
the information were relatives, although not close kin. The first 
was a young man, who also knew and sang Vyohaiva. His rendition, 
according to his own itemizing, comprised over 400 songs in 66 
groups. The second was an old man, who professed to sing no other 
series. His Goose songs fell into 89 groups, and required two nights 
and a half to complete. 


Version 1. 


Song-group 1: at Nyahaim-kwidhik (‘“ wet-lie”) or Nyahaim-kwiyuma (“ wet- 
see”). Pahuchacha (Mastamho) makes the river and Goose (Yellaka) comes 
out followed by other birds, still unformed. (8 songs.) 

2: they go to Nyahaim-kuvara, in the San Francisco Mountains in Arizona 
and return. (6 songs.) 

3: they go to Kwathakapaya, Mount San Gorgonio near San Bernardino. 
(4.) 

4: they return to Nyahaim-kwidhik. (10.) 

5-8: south to Nyahaim-korema, Nyahaim-kumaika, Nyahaim-kuchapaiva, 
Nyahaim-kwattharva. (4, 4, 8, 10 songs.) 

9-11: started on their long journey down the Colorado River, the birds think 
themselves equal to Goose; he teaches them to know right and left, and 
shows them foam. (8, 5, 10.) 

12, 18: at Nyahaim-kwachava. They think he will die, and Raven, Road- 
runner, and Gold-eye ask him for names. (4, 2.) 

14: at Hatakulya-nikuya. Raven is named and flies off. (5.) 

15,16: at Hatavilya-kuchahwerva. Roadrunner and Gold-eye are named. 
(4, 5.) 

17: at Amata-hamak. Goose is sick but bars the way to the others by 
stretching his wings. (15.) 

18: at Thaweva. He sinks and they think him dead. (6.) 

19-21: at Aha’av’ulypo. Only his heart still lives. He dies, Halykupa 
(Grebe) takes his place, and orders the insect Han’ava to wail for him. 
(10, 10, 10.) 

22,28: at Ahakekachvodhauva Grebe gives half the birds to Minse’atalyke 
to lead, but.the channel rejoins at Wathalya. (10, 14.) 

24-27: going on, Grebe hears a supernatural noise from Avikwame, makes 
the birds swim in a straight row, and names the places Ahaikusoerva and 
Avikunu’ulya. (5, 5, 4, 5.) 

28-31: approaching Avikwame, Grebe tells four names of Pahuchacha, warns 
the birds not to heed him as his power is antagonistic to theirs, and succeeds 
in passing the mountain. (8, 6, 10, 10.) 

32: at Akwaka’iova, near Fort Mohave, they sleep. (13.) 

33: Halykupa pretends to hear a noise of Goose far ahead. (18.) 

84: at Hachiokwatveva. Four birds, led by Han’avachipa (Gnat catcher?), 
select land to become people. (10.) 

35: at Avihalykwa’ampa. Grebe resolves to take the land. (10.) 

36: at Hayakwira-hidho. A white beaver dams the river with its tail, but 
Grebe passes. (6.) 

387: at Idholya-idhauva they land. (4.) 

388: at Himekoata they sleep and Grebe makes a rock for them to breed 
on in future. (10.) 


3625°—25——50 


768 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


380-41: at Hachehumeva, Omaka, Aspalya-pu’umpa, their feathers sprout, 
they look back where they have come from, and think of that place. (5, 6, 4.) 

42: at Selya’aya-kwame. Grebe tells them they are birds, but they do not 
understand. (6.) 

438: at Hakuchyepa, Bill Williams fork, Woodpecker flies off. (4.) 

44-47: at Avi-sokwilya-hatai, where they sleep, Quail, Oriole, Nighthawk, 
and Mockingbird take their characteristics and the last announces day break. 
(6,-626710.) 

48,49: at Avi-vataya and Avi-vera Grebe has them try walking on land and 
tells them they are not yet fully formed. (6, 8.) 

50,51: at Aha-kutinyam he tells them how to lay eggs and Mud-hen does so. 
(8, 4.) 

52-54: at Aha-takwatparva and Kuvukwilya they hear a noise far in the 
south and Grebe tells them it comes from their brothers who have come into 
existence from Goose’s body which floated south to the sea. They try to walk 
on land, but faint, and Grebe makes wind and hail for them. (3, 3, 4.) 

55, 96: at Aha-kumitha the wet from their feathers makes a spring and as 
they go on Grebe names a place To’oska. (4, 3.) 

57-59: at Yellaka-hime (‘ goose-foot ”’) they try to fly but their gooselike 
toes fail to leave the ground. At Aha-dhauvaruva they return to the water 
and hear a noise ahead near Yuma. (6, 4, 4.) 

60: at Avi-kunyura they speculate over their ultimate appearance. (4.) 

61-64: at Hukthilya they hear Pakyetpakyet, at Kwenyokuvilyo Ahanisata, 
at Amata-kutkyena Kwilolo, who have grown from Goose’s body. They go on 
and see the ocean. (4, 2, 4, 5.) 

65-66: at the sea, Minturisturisa (Snipe?) dives and arises with a necklace 
of shells. All go on the ocean except Grebe, Wood-duck, and Sakatathera. 
The latter wishes to return north and become a person. (6, 4.) 

Here end the songs, but as in many Mohave singings, the story continues. 
The three birds rise halfway to the sky, where they can see the ocean on all 
sides of the earth, and try to alight on Avikwame, but come down on Avi-kw- 
ahwata, farther south. They proceed upstream, sleep at Savechivuta, go on to 
Hachiokwatveva near Fort Mohave where the four birds led by Han’avachipa 
have chosen tracts of land and become people. The three are unable to eat 
the edible food offered them. They announce that they have come to take 
the land. The first settlers resist successfully and Wood-duck and Han’- 
avachipa are wounded. The three wanderers think Mastamho may be able 
to do something for them, go on north, and meet him at Hokusava, where the 
god is turning various beings into finished birds. He gives mythic names to 
the three, who go off as birds. Mastamho returns in four steps to the head of 
the river, makes fish, sand, and rocks, deliberates, turns into the bird Sakwithei, 
and flies away. 


Version 2. 


Song-group 1: at Nyahaim-kwiyuma (‘“ wet-see”), the mythical source of 
the river, where many eggs hatch. 

Groups 3 to 5 and 11 to 12 are devoted to the names of Goose. 

15: at Avi-kwatulya. 

19: at Avak-tinyam. Tinyam-hwarehware and Han’ava, two insects, ery in 
their house when they see Goose, here called Masahai-tachuma, coming at the 
head of many birds. 

24: at Selya’aya-ita. 

28: at Avi-kutaparva, 


—o 


“ 


KROHBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 769 


29: at Kara’erva, near Fort Mohave. 

82: at Avi-halykwa’ampa. 

33: at Mat’ara (“ playing field ”’), near Needles. 

36: at Hokyampeva. 

40: at Sankuvanya. Goose turns white and thinks himself like the gulls he 
sees. 

43: at Hakuchyepa, the mouth of Bill Williams fork, Goose takes the main 
channel, other birds follow a blind slough and must return. 

44: at Amata-kutudhunya. It becomes night and the birds quarrel whether 
it will be light again, Goose tells of the owl and night birds. 

47: he tells of Orion and the Pleiades. 

48: Goose awakes and tells of a dream in which they were at the sea. 

51: the birds swim on downstream abreast, they being now where the river 
is widest. 

5d to 56: at Hatusalya. Goose tells of sitting on the beach of the sea. 

59: at Kuvukwilya. Mastamho is there, but Goose announces that they will 
pass on. 
_ 69: Goose dreams he sees the ocean, the others say that it is a mesa; they 
quarrel. 

70: at Yiminalyek, in Yuma country. 

77: at Avi-aspa or Amata-kutkyena, below Yuma territory. 

81: they have gone to Amata-hakwachtharva, apparently another name for 
the place at which they began, 

86: they grow feathers and begin to fly. 

88: at Hokusava. 

89; at Amata-minyoraiva, north of Mastamho’s mountain Avikwame. 


OTHER SEMI-SHAMANISTIC SERIES. 


Halykupa, “Grebe,” is the chief character of the latter part of 
the Goose story. There seems to be a distinct Halypuka or “ Loon” 
singing, for which a basket is beaten. Those who dream this shout 
like the bird at the “annual” mournings and have the repute of not 
living long. 

Ahakwawilya seems to be named from the dragon-fly larva. A 
basket is beaten. This is both specified and denied as a shamanistic 
cycle. 

Sampulyka, “ Mosquito,” also uses a basket as instrument. 

Wellaka cures diarrhea. 

Hikupk has to do with venereal disease. 

A pena, “ Beaver,” begins its story with Matavilya still alive at the 
source of the river. It is sung by shamans who cure neck swellings 
caused by the beaver, can smoke tobacco while diving, and prevent 
the river from washing away banks on which houses stand. J/chul- 
yuye may be another singing connected with the beaver, or perhaps 
is only the name of the sickness which the A pena dreamer cures. 

Humahnana, a hard, black, malodorous beetle, and /pam-imicha, 
“person cries,” begin their tale at Aha’av’ulypo, use no accompani- 
ment to their songs, and serve to cure the sickness ichudhauva caused 


770 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 


by eating a bird wounded by hawks, as well as the cchiekanyamasava, 
diarrheal illness which befalls infants whose fathers eat game killed 
by themselves instead of giving it away. Jlpam-imicha also has to 
do with the “ foreign-sickness” caused by eating strange food, and 
is thus connected with Yaroyara, which serves the same purpose and 
also commences at Aha’av’ulypo. All four of these singings, if they 
are indeed distinct, are held by the Mohave to be truly shamanistic 
in their details of Matavilya’s sickness and funeral. 

Hayakwira is a cycle concerned with another kind of rattlesnake 
than the Ave songs and story described below under “ Shamanism.” 
Chamadhulya is allied to Hayakwira. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


Besides the tales that form the thread of their song cycles, the 
Mohave tell at least three other kinds of myths, which ordinarily 
are not sung to. There is, first, an origin myth, of a type generic in 
southern California. Second, there are long pseudohistorical nar- 
rations, which contain suggestions of migration legends and clan 
traditions, but are too thoroughly cast in the standard molds of 
Mohave mythology to evince these qualities very clearly. Lastly, 
there are coyote stories and miscellaneous tales, which, if they do 
nothing else, prove that the Mohave can on occasion be reasonably 
brief. 

This is the cosmogony; for which the Mohave seem to have no 
name other than “ dream tale” or “ shaman’s tale”: 


The first were Sky and Earth, male and female, who touched far in the 
west, across the sea. Then were born from them Matavilya, the oldest; Frog, 
his daughter, who was to cause his death; his younger brother or son Mas- 
tamho, his successor and greater than he; and all men and beings. In four 
strides Matavilya led them upward to Aha’-av’ulypo, ‘“ house-post water,” in 
Eldorado Canyon on the Colorado, above Mohave land; the center of the 
earth, as he found by stretching his arms. There he made his “ dark round,” 
the first house. With an unwitting indecency he offended his daughter, and 
plotting against him, she swallowed his voidings, and he knew that he should 
die, and told the people. Coyote, always suspected, was sent away for fire, 
and then Fly, a woman, rubbed it on her thigh. Coyote raced back, leaped 
over Badger, the short man in the ring of people, snatched the god’s heart 
from the pyre, and escaped with it. Mastamho directed the mourning, and 
Han/’ava, the cicada, first taught how to wail. Korokorapa, also called Hiko 
or Haiko, ‘‘ white man,” alone had sat unmoved as Matavilya lay dying, now 
sank into the ground with noise, and returned westward to Piin, the place 
of universal origin. 

Matavilya’s ashes offended, and wind, hail, and rain failed to obliterate 
them. In four steps Mastamho strode far north, plunged his cane of breath 
and spittle into the earth, and the river flowed out. Entering a boat, Mas- 
tamho journeyed with mankind to the sea, twisting and tilting the boat or 
letting it run straight as he wished wide bottom lands or sharp canyons to 
frame the river. He returned with the people on his arms, surmounted the 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 771 


rising waters to the mountain Akokahumi, trod the water down, and took his 
followers upstream to the northern end of what was to be the Mohave country. 
Here he heaped up the great pointed peak Avikwame—more exactly Avi- 
kwa’ame—Newberry or Dead Mountain as the Americans call it, where he, too, 
built himself a house. It is of this house that shamans dream, for here their 
shadows were as little boys in the face of Mastamho, and received from him 
their ordained powers, confirmed by tests on the spot. Here, too, Mastamho 
made the people shout, and the fourth time day and sun and moon appeared. 

Then he plotted the death of “ sky-rattlesnake,”’ Kammay-aveta, also called 
Umas-ereha, a great power far south in the sea. Message after message 
was sent him; he knew that the sickness which he was summoned to cure was 
_ pretended; but at last he came, amid rain and thunder, stretching his vast 
length from ocean to mountain. As his head entered the great house it was 
cut off. It rolled back to the sea in the hope of reconstituting its living body, 
but became only an ocean monster; while from his blood and sweat and 
- juices came rattlesnakes and noxious insects whose powers some shamans 
combat. This was the first shaman killed in the world. 

Now Mastamho’s work was nearly done. To Walapai, Yavapai, Chemehuevi, 
Yuma, and Kamia he gave each their land and mountains, their foods, and their 
speech, and sent them off. The youngest, the Mohave, he taught to farm, to 
cook in pottery, to speak and count as was best fit for them, and to stay in 
the country. Then, meditating as to his own end, he stretched his arms, grew 
into saksak the fish eagle, and flew off, without power or recollection, ignorant 
and infested with vermin. 


* GREAT TALES.” 


The migration or war myths are of the type of the Vinimulya- 
hapacha cycle stories. Their groups of people who travel and fight 
seem all to be regarded as Mohave, and each of them to stand in the 
narrator’s mind for a body of kinsmen in the male line; but his 
interest is in their doings, not in their organization, and their clan 
affiliations are rarely mentioned, or sometimes contradictorily. The 
geography, as always among the Mohave, is gone into very minutely, 
and centers in Mohave Valley, but the marches and-settlements are 
made to extend for long distances in all directions. These stories 
are called tch-kanava, “ great tellings,” and while of similar tenor, 
appear to vary greatly according to the narrator. They are, of 
course, dreamed, in native opinion, and are staggeringly prolix. 
One, which the narrator, a blind old man, had sometimes told from 
for a night, or until his hearers went to sleep, but never completely 
through, he recited on six days for a total of 24 hours, and then was 
still far from the end. He evidently was wholly unable to estimate 
its length. 

Such stories simply can not be condensed. An outline becomes as 
dry a skeleton of names and places as certain passages of the priestly 
writer of the Pentateuch. The central events, the battles themselves, 
are trivial. The point, and to the native the interest of the whole, 
evidently lies in the episodes and a certain treatment of them; which 


772 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


is so peculiar, so uninteresting even, to those habituated to other 
literary manners, that it must bé admitted as a very definite style, 
in the inward sense of that word. A comparison with the Iliad 
with the wrath of Achilles omitted, or the Mahabharata without the 
careers of its five brother heroes, gives some rude suggestion of the 
quality. If Mohave civilization had been advanced enough to allow 
of their finding some clear central theme to hold together the welter 
of detail and names, their “great tales” would no doubt seem im- 
pressive to us. A fragment of one may serve to give some hint of 
the epic breadth of manner. 


Part of a Hipahipa Legend. 


Amainyavererkwa and Ichehwekilyeme, his son, were at Amata-tasilyka. They 
were there four days. Then Ichehwekilyeme went fishing. He visited his © 
friends, some to the north and some to the south, through the whole Mohave 
Valley, and gave them fish. The next day he went again. His people said: 
“Take food with you,” and wanted to give him mixed corn and pumpkin seeds, 
but he said: “I will not carry a load. I shall travel light.” So he took 
only his fish net and went off on a run. On his way he followed a lake (or 
slough), Aha’-inya (some miles south of Fort Mohave). When he had caught 
fish, the people there crowded around him. He gave them his catch and they 
cut up the fish and ate them. When they had thus pleased themselves, they 
killed Ichehwekilyeme with a club and hid his body and ran off. The men 
who did this were Hinyorilya-vahwilya, Hinyorilya-vanaka, Hinyorilya-vapaya, 
and Hinyorilya-va’ava. When the people (at large) had scattered abroad, these 
four had returned and settled at Avinya-kapuchora and Kwinalya-kutikiorva, 
near Aha’-inya. They were Hipahipa (the mythic name of a clan, whose women 
bore the name Kutkilya, which is still in use). Now that they had killed 
Ichehwekilyeme, they ran off far to the east to Chivakaha, Aha-kupone, Aha- 
kuvilya, and Avinyesko. 

Amainyavererkwa became distressed about his son and searched for him. 
As he had friends everywhere, he thought perhaps the young man might be at 
Aha-talompa (near the southern end of the valley), or perhaps at Kuhuinye. 
Or he thought he might be at Avi-kw-ahoato, or Avi-kutaparva, or Kwiya-kavasu, 
or Kwiya-kulyike, or Hu’ulyechupaiva, or at Avi-tutara (apparently all in 
Mohave Valley). As he had friends at all these places, he thought of them, 
and in the morning put on his sandals and went southward. As he traveled, 
he looked over these places. By noon he had come down to the last one. 
Then he returned and by night reached his house in the north (of the valley) 
without having found his son. His people crowded thickly around him, but 
he said that he had not heard news nor seen tracks. He felt very bad. 

Then Ampotakerama was the only one there who thought: ‘‘ Perhaps the 
young man became as if crazy or blind. Perhaps he was drowned, or ran off.” 
Ampotakerama thought thus all that night. 

Now Umase’aka lived at Amata-tasilyka also. But he said nothing. Ahalya’- 
asma was chief there also, and so were Ahamakwinyuenyeye, Nyemelyekwesi’ika, 
and Ha’ampa-kwa’akwenya. They too thought. But Amainyavererkwa said 
nothing. He only lay and slept while the others were thinking. 

When the sun was up, the others all told him: “Hat a little.” But 
Amainyavererkwa said: “I feel bad. I want to go north. When [I come 
back and have found my boy I shall eat.” So he started. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 778 


When he returned, all crowded around him again. He said: ‘I have looked 
everywhere. I have no more friends among whom I can search. T think my 
son is lost.” Then all cried and had tears in their eyes. 

In the morning Amainyavererkwa went up river once more. This time he 
went farther and traveled until he came to Asesmava. There he slept. In 
the morning he went on. He visited all his friends and received to eat what- 
ever kinds of food they ate different from his own. He thought that perhaps 
his son had gone up for the purpose of eating these strange foods. Late in 
the afternoon he came to Amata-akwata, Kukake, Ahtanye-ha, and Avinyidho. 
He inquired there among his friends. It was now sunset and his friends gave 
him to eat. but told him they had not seen his son. He ate a little and slept 
there that night. 

In the morning he ate a little again. His friends gave him red paint and 
feathers which he packed and put on his shoulder and then he started (south) 
homeward. 

At sunset he came to Akwereha. He had no one living there, but lay and 
slept there. He thought: “I will call this place Akwereha, and all will call 
it by this name when they tell stories. And I will leave my paint and feathers 
here, and will call it also Amata-sivilya-kwidhaua (feather-having-place).” 

In the morning he went on, and while it was still early came to Kwakitupeva 
and Kwasekelyekete (Union Pass, north of Fort Mohave). There he drank 
a little. He was now feeling very bad on account of his son. Then he began 
to run until he came to Amata-kamota’ara. There he drank again and then 
ran on until he came to Ammo-heva (Hardyville). Having drunk once more, 
he went on until he came to Ismavakoya and Mach-ho. There he looked to 
see how far he still had to go. Then he began running again. He ran until 
he came to Akweretonyeva. Then he thought: “I am nearly at my house 
now.” So he walked fast until he came to Selya’aya-kumicha, and then to the 
top of Amai-kwitasa. Then he looked toward his house at Amata-tasilyka. 
As he stood, he saw that it was dusty about his house as if there were wind 
there. The dust was from-the many people. 

When he returned home he again thought of the north. He wanted to go 
north once more to look for his son. Then in the morning he took his sandals 
and started. He came to Oachavampeva, ASmalya-kuvachaka, Amata-kuma- 
ta’ara, and Avi-tunyora. At Avi-tunyora lived Himekuparakupchula. He 
was a Shaman and knew everything that happened. It was he that Amainya- 
vererkwa went to see. Himekuparakupchula had two sons, Thumeke’-ahwata, 
the older, and Ahwe-mestheva, the younger. He himself was too old to walk. 
When Amainyavererkwa came, his two sons set him up and leaned against 
him to support him. He was so old that he could hardly talk. 

Amainyavererkwa sat down near him and said: ‘*‘ My son is lost.’”’ Hime- 
kuparakupchula said: “I am the man who knows everything. No one has 
told me of this matter, but I know it. Here are my two sons. The oldest is 
‘not very able. The younger knows something. Call him. He is playing 
about with a bow. Call him and ask him. He knows. He has dreamed like 
myself.” So they called Ahwe-mestheva, and the boy came. He said: “I 
know. I am like the old man, my father.” He was ready to go back with 
Amainyavererkwa. But he only sat and said that he knew and made no 
movement. Amainyavererkwa asked: ‘‘ You will be sure to come?” Ahwe- 
mestheva said: “ Yes; I shall surely come southward.” 

Then Amainyavererkwa started back to his house. When he had gone a 
short way he looked back but did not see the boy coming. He went on, look- 
ing back, but still Ahwe-mestheva did not come. Then he thought: “‘I do 


74. BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (pane 


not think he will come. He has not seen. He is only a little boy. He is not 
man enough and does not know and so will not come.” But when he reached 
Ammo-heva he looked again and saw the boy coming. Then he thought: “ He 
is really coming.’ When he reached Amata-kwilyisei he stood and looked 
and again saw him coming. Then all at once the boy was no longer apparent. 
He was traveling under the ground. Therefore Amainyavererkwa did not see 
him. He kept looking back in vain. Then at last he saw him traveling 
underground. He went on and reached his house in the afternoon and said: 
‘“Ahwe-mestheva is coming. He will be here soon.” 

When Ahwe-mestheva arrived carrying bow and arrows everything was pre- 
pared. They had made a little hut of idho willows, sticking them into the 
ground and tying the tops together. As the boy came in front of the hut he 
threw his bow and arrows forward on the ground. Then he stood, kicked the 
ground, and jumped up on the roof of the hut so that it shook. Then he 
jumped up, then down on the ground again, and stood outside the hut. He 
said: “I said that I knew everything. Now I shall sing. I shall sing four 
times.”” Then he sang as follows (the words are distorted to fit the rhythm) : 

“Akwetinyam ithapikali, at night I see clearly.” 

“(Matkwesa) ikakorenye ikanamave, (my shadow) speaks and tells me 
(ally 

“Akwetinyam ithapiwaye, at night I see brightly.” 

“Tkanavek kwanumadhe, I shall tell it (all) here (in time).” 

When he had sung these four songs he went into the little house. 

When he was inside he said: “ I know theman’s name. It is Ichehwekilyeme. 
He went fishing. Four men killed him. Their names are Hinyorilya-vahwilya, 
Hinyorilya-vanaka, Hinyorilya-vapaya, and Hinyorilya-va’ava. The people here 
wanted to give him corn and pumpkin seeds to take with him, but he would 
not. Then he went. These people found him fishing. He said to them: 
‘You are traveling and are hungry. Build a fire and I shall give you to eat.’ 
Then these four men answered: ‘It is good.’ Then they killed him. In the 
water was a stump. There they dragged him and fastened his body down with 
a stick so that no one would see and know.” 

Thus the boy Ahwe-mestheva knew and told everything, and so the people 
discovered what had become of Ichehwekilyeme. 

Then his father, Amainyavererkwa, went to Aha’-inya and found the body 
and took it out of the water. Then they burned Ichehwekilyeme with his best 
clothes and property, and cried at the house. Then the boy Ahwe-mestheva 
said: “That is all. I go now.” He shot an arrow northward and started 
home. 

When he returned, he told the old man Himekuparakupchula, his father: 
“JT found him.” His father said: “It is good. Perhaps they will do some- 
thing about it (fight). I do not yet know it, but perhaps they will.” Then he 
said to his oldest son, Thumeke’-ahwata: ‘Go down to them and let me know 


what they will do.” So the older son started. He reached Amata-tasilyka. 


at sunset. Amainyavererkwa said: “ We do not yet know. I have nothing to 
say. There is one man here who speaks and we follow. He is Ampota-kerama, 
and he is thinking now. I know that people sometimes “steal” (ambush 
shamans who have caused deaths). I have seen them doing that. But I think 
that bad and we shall not do it. Perhaps Ampota-kerama will know something 
to do.” 

And Ampota-kerama said: “I am trying to know how we shall start a fight. 
Perhaps we shall play kachoakwek with them (a game of kicking at one an- 
other with the heels). Perhaps in that way we shall be able to pick a quarrel 


— a 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA W715 


and seize and kill them. Or perhaps we shall play hachohwesavek (a game in 
which balls of mud are put on the ends of poles and slung at the opposing 
party). If they beat us, we can become angry and fight. Perhaps we shall 
play with hoop and poles. If the ring lies so that the pole shows inside, we 
shall say that we can not see it clear. Then he who threw the pole will say: 
‘T can see it.’ We shall say: ‘No; it is not a score.’ Perhaps in that way 
there will be a quarrel and a fight will begin.” So they were thinking of that, 


Here the recorded tale breaks off. The above is evidently little 
more than a beginning. 


SHAMANISM. 


Shamanism is deeply stained by the beliefs that pervade all Mo- 
have thought. The shaman’s experiences begin in myth at the world 
origin and are myth in form. The god Mastamho gave their special 
powers to all shamans of to-day, who own no private spirit allies. 
Their songs have words of the same cast as the myths on which are 
based all songs of pleasure or funeral. One class is dreamed like 
the other. There is no theory of disease objects projected into human 
bodies. Hence the physician sucks little if at all. The patient’s 
soul, his “ shadow,” is affected or taken away; the shaman brings it 
back because he has dreamed, while Mastamho was regulating the 
world, of the mythical person that became a certain thing or animal, 
and saw the nature of its power of operation for human good or ill; 
and he counteracts this power with his own, with song or breath or 
spittle, blowing or laying on of hands or other action, as his own 
shadow then saw and was instructed. There is no philosophy of 
disease and treatment more diverse than this from the beliefs of the 
north and central Californians. 

A single example, even though in condensation, may make this 
attitude plain. 


A shaman’s story. 


At Aha’av’ulypo, the account begins, all the people were in the dark house 
that Matavilya made. “TI shall die,” he said when the Frog, the shaman, his 
daughter, had made him sick. Six persons were there and listened to him and 
grieved and went off when he had died: Tumanpa long, Tumanpa_ short, 
Chuhuecha, Salt, Nyavadhoka, and Av’alyunu (these song cycles are here per- 
sonified ). 

Then follows the story of Matavilya’s funeral, of the making of the river by 
Mastamho, and the killing of the gigantic Sky-Rattlesnake. From the glue in 
his joints, himata-halai, eggs, were formed, out of which came Achyeka, Yellow 
ant, the oldest, who took the name Humara-kadhucha. From himata-haka- 
malya, his “body form,” grew Halytota, Spider, who called himself Ampota- 
nyunye, ‘‘road dust.’ Menisa, Scorpion, was born from Sky-Rattlesnake’s 
sweat, and from his blood Ave, Rattlesnake, the youngest. These took the 
names Ampota-kuhudhurre and Ampota-himaika. 

While these four took shape, Mastamho taught some of the people to know 
three sicknesses and their cure: hayakwira (a kind of rattlesnake distinct from 


776 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


ave), isuma (dream), and ichhulyuye (beaver). Of these sicknesses I know, 
Says the narrator, but I do not treat them because they were not given to me. 
But Ave-rattlesnake, Scorpion, Halytota-spider, and Achyeka-ant are mine. 
Four rows of people stood at Avikwame before Mastamho, and these four sat 
there also, and my shadow was there. ‘‘ Now he comes,’ Mastamho said of me. 
“ Listen to him. What he says is true. I gave it to him.” Then the four 
were ashamed and feared and hung their heads and did not want to hear, be- 
cause I knew them and was above them. 

Then Mastamho took all the people downstream to Avi-kutaparva, to the 
New York Mountains, and far west to Avi-hamoka, ‘‘ three mountains,” which 
is toward Tehachapi from Mojave station. The four went there too, but on 
the north, by their own road. There Rattlesnake marked himself with white 
dust, with dark dust, with white cloud, with dark cloud, and went with Mas- 
tamho and others eastward to Koskilya near Parker. There Mastamho or- 
dained a line between the Mohave to the north and the Pima, the Halchidhoma, 
and the Kohuana to the south. There they prepared for war against the south- 
erners, traveled against them at Ahpe-hwelyeve near Ehrenberg, attacked and 
fought, and took a Halchidhoma and a Kohuana gealp under Rattlesnake’s lead. 
Then they returned to “Three Mountains” and made a dance over the scalps. 

Rattlesnake lives there at Three Mountains. He has a road to every tribe. 
Often he thinks of war and wants to bite a person. ‘I like him,” he says of a 
man, “I want him as a friend to be here.” Then he asks the mountain. If 
the mountain says yes, the man will die; but if the mountain is silent, the 
man will be bitten and live. One road goes straight from Three Mountains to 
my heart, says the narrator, and I hear the singing and talking there. Then I 
know whether a person will live or die. When Rattlesnake or Spider has bit- 
ten him, he takes his shadow. If he brings it all the way to Three Mountains, 
the man dies. But if I can stop the shadow near Three Mountains, then I 
sing again at each place on the road and each time we are farther, until when 


I arrive with it here the man is well. At every place on the way I stand and 


Sing and prevent the shadow’s going on. 
Spider also thinks of biting persons. He thinks (sings): 











Oyach-kwa@ -anyayt__ ie = my breath is bright. 
iha-kwa’-anyayi Ol eee we NY Splttle-1s "Ori smi 
tha-kwe’-akwithva ee ee ee my spittle is tough. 
OYACh-ki0G -Ch1OUn C0 a Be oe te my breath is tough. 


“In the north, in the south, my breath is not hot. In the east my breath 
is hot. When the sun rises, I put up my hands. When they are warm, I lay 
them on my face, and my breath becomes hot. MHiha-nyunye, ‘ saliva-road,’ 
is my name. My roads are four. They are not on earth, but high, in the sky. 
As Rattlesnake has done, so I will do. I am thinking of my friend whom I 
wish.’ I want his shadow on my road. My north road is cold, my south road 
is cold, but when I bite in the east it is hot. I do not want my friend at 
night, I want him when the sun rises in the east and my breath becomes hot 
in him,” says Spider. ) 

Then I see Spider start out on his sky road when he wishes to bite. North 
of Avikwame, at Lyehuta, lives the chief of Rattlesnakes, Ampota-nyamatham- 
tamakwa. Him I hear Spider asking; and if he will not allow, Spider can do 
nothing. When he permits, Spider bites with his four teeth, and bright- 
spittle and hot-spittle go into the person’s body and make it clear. Then I ean 
look through the man, and he rolls about in sweat. Spider ties his heart 
around with spittle. I see it like that. If I am summoned from far away, 


ee 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA TEX 


the heart may be wrapped twice when I arrive. Then I walk four times 
around the man on the left side (sunwise) and break the roads that Spider has 
made to his heart, and he sits up and spits out what Spider has put into him, 
and is well. But if Spider has tied his heart four times around when I arrive 
and it is tight, the man is killed. I can do nothing then. 

If Spider has bitten a person without the assent of the mountain or of 
the great Rattlesnake, and the man is cured, Spider is full of breath, and 
goes off and dies somewhere. His shadow goes up, without legs, a round thing, 
ampota-yara, that rolls in the clouds, invisible, and makes rain. 

There is another one, Halytota-kunemi, “brave spider,’ that brings on 
diarrhea, and that warriors dream of. I know that one’s name, but I did 
not dream about him. And so with Ave-hakthara, the short rattlesnake, that 
is brave and always wants to war: he too went off to one side from where 
I was, and knowledge about him was not given me. 

But Scorpion at Three Mountains took the name Matkwesam-havika, ‘ Shad- 
ow-companion,’ and meditated what his form would be. He too made four 
roads, but they are underground. At the end of the road to the east, he made 
Tarantula by his word; at the north, Rock Spider; west, Firefly; south, 
Kwithohwa, a longish yellow spider. These four own the winds and clouds, 
which are their breath. But the rain from these clouds is bitter. I can make 
it fall, and sometimes when the crops are dry, people ask me to make it, 
but I refuse because it is not good. Scorpion asked these four at the ends 
for the power to kill. But they did not answer him, hence he only wounds, 
and a man who is strong needs no treatment. Sweat is harmless, and that is 
what Scorpion was born from. He also went down the river to ask four great 
rattlesnakes for power, but one after the other would not give it to him. 

Achyeka-ant was the oldest of the four. He, too, made four roads of spittle 
and breath. Then he called himself ‘‘ night body,’ Kutinyam-himata, and sank 
down to the heart of the earth, amata-hiwa. There he was no longer a person, 
but a yellow ant; and there he made four more roads in the darkness... He 
emerged, and now called himself “ bright body,’ Himata’-anyayi, who would 
live in the roots of a tree, the heart of a tree, and make his house there. His 
body is here on earth, his shadow below. It is his night body, the underground 
shadow, that bites men. It goes through the veins, of which one leads to the 
heart. He eats the heart and the man begins to die. Heis a long time dying; 
but at last Achyeka takes the man’s shadow with him to his house. But he 
failed to make stone and earth alive as he tried. So I take a very fine earth, 
rub it between my hands, and put it on the sick person’s body. So I stop the 
roads to the middle place of Achyeka, and bring the person’s shadow back to 
him, and he becomes well. 


The complete interweaving of shamanistic beliefs and curative 
practices with the national mythology, and the complete dependence, 
in native opinion, of both on individual dreaming, are fully exempli- 
fied by the foregoing personal narrative. 

The following is a purely objective description of the treatment 
extended for snake bite by another shaman. 


When the shaman is notified, he immediately begins to sing where he is, in 
order to produce a cooling wind and sprinkle of rain for the wounded man. 
When he arrives where the patient is lying with his head to the south in front 
of his house, he sings standing at a little distance from him, first on his north, 
then on his west, south, and east. Should he sing a fifth song, the sick man 
would die. Only the man’s wife may sit by him; all others are at a distance, 


778 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


The shaman forbids everyone to drink until the sun has set, and takes no water 
himself, because the rattlesnake does not drink. He sits awake, and at mid- 
night and in the morning sings his four songs over again. Then he goes home 
and the patient is cured. 


If a man eats fish caught in his own net while this is new, the 
ghosts, nyavedhi, of the fish take away his shadow, matkwesa. ‘Then 
he becomes drowsy and feeble, and a shaman must sing the soul back. 
But the shaman must not stay too long in the village of the dead, 
or the departed among his own kin are likely to seize and try to 
hold him with them in affection. 


STATUS OF THE SHAMAN, 


The Mohave are astoundingly frank in telling of how they kill 
their doctors or shamans,.and some of the latter reciprocate with 
unforced declarations of the harm they have done. This is a native 
summary: 


Doctors are despatched for blighting the crops; for repeatedly attending 
a patient but killing instead of curing him; for having said about a sick 
person: ‘‘I wish you would die;’” and for admitting responsibility for deaths. 
There is a doctor now who stands at funerals and says aloud: “I killed him.” 
Doctors and brave men are alike. The latter say: ‘‘I do not wish to live 
long.” <A doctor says: “I shall not live a long time. I wish to die. That 
is why I kill people. Why do you not kill me?’ Or he may hand a stick to a 
man and say: “I killed your father.” Or he may come and tell a sick person: 
“Don’t you know that it is I that am killing you? Must I grasp you and 
despatch you with my hands before you will try to kill me?’ 


The Mohave tell of such utterances as if they were frequent, and 
there is little doubt that certain shamans, particularly those under 
suspicion, now and then launched into a very delirium of provoca- 
tion and hate—an intensity of emotion rare among other Cali- 
fornians. In general, they unquestionably believe their spirit ex- 
periences and power to be actual. 

The following autobiographical anecdote well illustrates the na- 
tive attitude: 


When I was young, I was once with a friend at a shaman’s house. My 
friend proposed that we kill him. I took my bow and four arrows and said 
to the shaman: “I am going to shoot doves.” He assented. When I re- 
turned, the shaman seemed to be asleep under the shade before his house. 
My friend was indoors, and said: ‘“ He is sleeping.” I took a (steel) ax and 
swung at the shaman’s head. I struck him in the cheek. As he sat up, no 
blood came from the wound. Then suddenly a torrent gushed out. My com- 
panion became frightened, ran off, returned, struck at the shaman’s head, 
but hit only his legs, and ran off, hardly able to drag his own. Two women 
had been sitting near, lousing each other, and at first had not seen what 
we did. ‘Then they began to cry and wail. I crossed the river, and found some 
men gambling, and sat with them. In the afternoon I said: “I have killed 
so and so.” They thought I was boasting. ‘ Yes, do it,” they said. “ That 


KRouBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA T79 


will be good. Too many people are dying.’ ‘I have done it already,” I 
answered. Soon the dead man’s relatives came, and it seemed that we should 
fight with sticks. But on the next day the shaman’s son announced that he 
would not fight, and nothing further happened. 


TOLOACHE. 


The Mohave know the Jimson weed and its qualities, but give no 
evidence of having been at all influenced by the toloache cult of the 
Shoshonean tribes. They make no ceremony connected with the 
plant. Individuals drink a decoction of the leaves taken from the 
west side of the bush—those on the east are considered poison—be- 
come unconscious for four days, dream, and thus acquire luck in 
gambling. This appears to be similar to the desert Cahuilla prac- 
tice and indicates a semishamanistic use of the drug analogous to its 
status among the Pueblos, 


THE GHOST DANCE. 


The Mohave took up the later or eastern ghost dance, whereas most 
California tribes either were influenced by the less known first wave 
or escaped both. The movement was introduced by a Southern 
Paiute, and appears to have left no impress at all on the Mohave con- 
sciousness. They had their own peculiar and satisfying scheme of 
dreaming, and by 1890 were still so wholly absorbed in their native 
way of doing things that they hardly realized that they were living 
in a new and destructive atmosphere. 


RELIGION AND KNOWLEDGE. 


Tt is interesting that the Mohave are frequently in argument about 
each other’s religious knowledge. Some one announces that he has 
dreamed one of the less common cycles: others deny that there is 
such a myth or cycle, or refuse to admit more than that the assertor 
says so. A man begins a story. Suddenly another interrupts with 
the reproof that what is being told is nothing, a mere mixture of 
things as diverse as Chutaha and coyote tales. The narrator insists 
that he has dreamed it so and it is correct. He is told that his 
dreams are bad; and usually he subsides. Whether a certain man 
is or is not a shaman, or is a legitimate one, or will become a shaman, 
and what his power really is for, are all matters on which whoever 
is minded expresses his opinion freely. 

The Mohave display far more sense of the value of numbers than 
the average Californian Indian. They are constantly using such 
figures as “5 or 6”—“5, 6” they say—and “40 or 50,” apparently 
with a reasonably correct idea of the numbers denoted, especially 


780 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


if persons are referred to. They are not much given to tallies, and 
one rarely sees them operating with counters or marks in the sand. 
Simple addition or subtraction of numbers below 100 they carry on 
readily in their heads. 

The number 4 is brought into myth and religious act at every 
opportunity. 

There is a word for year, kwathe, but its etymology is unknown. 

The Mohave are utterly unlike the true southwestern Indians, and 
essentially in the status of the central and northern California 
tribes, in lacking fetishes or any artistic or concretely expressed 
symbolism. The Shoshoneans of southern California express the 
Pueblo spirit much more nearly in their sand paintings and ritual- 
istic implements. In fact the gap between the southwesterners 
proper and the Yumans of the Colorado is profound as regards re- 
hgion. There is no trace among the latter of kiva, altar, mask, 
offering, priest, initiation, fraternity, or color symbolism, all so 


characteristic of the town-dwelling tribes. Most of these elements — 
recur, though in abbreviation or pallid substitute, among the Luisefio — 


and Gabrielino; but among the Mohave they are replaced by the 
wholly predominant factor of dreaming. 


BN te 


Cuaprer 52. 
THE YUMA. 


Relation of the Yuma and Mohave, 781; tribal and historical facts, 782; dream- 
ing, 788; song-myth-rites in the lower Colorado region, 784; origin tradi- 
tions of southern California, 788; mourning and adolescence ceremonies, 
792; toloache, 793; the sweat house, 793; the Mohave-Yuma culture, 794. 


RELATION OF THE YUMA AND MOHAVE. 


The Yuma have provided a name not only for an Arizona city and 
county and a fort and reservation in California—all adjoining the 
ereat stream of the Colorado—but for the entire family of tribes to 
which they, the Mohave, the Dieguenio, and many others belong. 
This does not mean that they were the central or prominent tribe of 
the group; for such nomenclatures become established by accident or 
by unconscious fancies of the civilized ear for designations of pic- 
turesque or facile sound. As a matter of fact, the Mohave seem to 
have been at least as numerous as the Yuma ever since they were 
known, equally solidary, rather more venturesome and addicted to 
travel to far parts, and probably more active in their inward life; 
since not only their religious concepts but their songs, the very 
words thereof, and their sacred places are known farther than 
Yuma influence penetrated. That the general lower Colorado cul- 
ture to which both tribes adhered was in its origin and elementals 
more largely the creation of one tribe than of the other or of some 
still different group of the region, it is impossible to say. The 
original focus of the culture is almost certain to have been where 
there was the greatest agglomeration of tribes, about the mouth of 
the Gila, rather than at the upstream limit of the valley lands where 
the Mohave were situate. The lower river was also nearer to influ- 
ences from the south and down the Gila from the east, the direction 
in which higher cultures lay. Yet one receives the impression that 
the most concentrated, energetic, and characteristic form of the 
river civilization in the past century or two has been that which it 
took among the Mohave. 

It also happens that the Mohave are better known than the Yuma, 
so that even if a less extended description of the latter people were 


781 


782 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


not justified by circumstances, it would be inevitable. The follow- 
ing account is therefore limited to comparisons of the two tribes on 
matters in which they are known to differ. In their agriculture, 
manufacture, clothing, hairdress, houses, warfare, and tribal sense, 
the Yuma and Mohave seem to be virtually identical. 


TRIBAL AND HISTORICAL FACTS. 


The Yuma call themselves Kwichyana or Kuchiana, and are 
known to all the other Yumans by dialectic variants of this name, 
whose meaning is not. known to them. The Chemehuevi call them 
Hukwats, the Apache denominate them together with other tribes 
of the family: Hatilshe. A Spanish designation is Garroteros, 
clubbers, perhaps with reference to their mallet or pestle-shaped 
war clubs. The name Yuma first appears in Kino in 1702. Its 
origin is not positively known. It has been thought a misapplica- 
tion of yamayo, the word denoting a chief’s son; but this interpreta- 
tion seems only a conjecture. The existence of such titles for the 
hereditary successors of chieftainship is, however, of interest as 
parallel to Gabrielino and Juanefio custom. 

The tribe may be estimated at 2,500 or more souls before contact 
with the whites. Garcés in 1776 thought there were 3,000. The 
number in 1905 was put at 900, in 1910 at 834. 

The territory of the Yuma was the Colorado bottom about the 
mouth of the Gila. They are said to have occupied the main stream — 
for 15 miles above and 60 miles below the confluence; but the latter 
figure is almost certainly too high. It would bring the Yuma almost 
to the Gulf of California, between which and themselves a number 
of other tribes of allied lineage intervened. In distinction from the 
Mohave, they seem to have inhabited chiefly the western bank of 
the river; but such choices are probably dictated by considerations 
of local topography. 

The Yuma may have been among the first tribes discovered by 
Caucasians in California. In 1540, two years before Cabrillo 
sighted the channel islands, Alarcon, operating in conjunction with 
the Coronado expedition to Zuni, sailed up the great Rio de los 
Tizones, the “ Firebrand River” or Colorado, and established con- 
tact with the natives. He hardly penetrated as far as Mohave 
territory—his 85 leagues would carry him there only if the river 
flowed straight. But he certainly passed what were later the seats 
of the Yuma, and may have seen their ancestors; although Onate 
in 1605 tells us nothing of any people in whom we can recognize 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 788 


the Yuma, and the first positively identifiable mention of them is 
that of Kino, a century later. Alarcon’s brief notices of the Indians 
accord well with the disposition and customs of the historic Yuman 
peoples of the river. It is also in agreement with what is known as 
to freedom of intertribal relations in the region, that Alarcon found 
the natives informed as to details of the equipment and appearance 
of the Spaniards who had reached New Mexico but a few months 
before. 

While it has been asserted that Ofate reached the Yuma, his 
Cohuanas are the Kohuana, a separate tribe nearer the gulf; and 
the Ozaras whom he found at the mouth of the Gila are so described 
as to give the impression that they were a Piman rather than Yuman 
people. Kino and Garcés, like most lone travelers of resoluteness 
and tact, encountered few difficulties from the Yuma; but when two 
missions were soon after established among them they were wiped 
out within a year, in 1781. After the acquisition of California by 
the United States and the setting in of the overland tide of travel 
there were the usual troubles, and Fort Yuma was established to 
hold the tribe in check; but there was no notable resistance to the 
Americans. 

In international friendships and enmities the Yuma belonged on 
the side of the Mohave and were hostile to the Maricopa in the great 
division that extended through the tribes of southern California 
and western Arizona, as already outlined with reference to the 
Chemehuevi. They seem, however, to have been more friendly to 
the Kamia, and through them with the Dieguefio proper, than were 
the Mohave. It was probably their ancient feud with the Maricopa 
that embroiled them with the Pima, a peaceable but sturdy nation of 
farmers, against whom the volatile military ambition of the river 
tribes repeatedly dashed itself. The last great undertaking of the 
Yuma was against these people, and ended disastrously in 1858. 


DREAMING. 


The direct basis of all religion—tradition, ritual song, and shaman- 
istic power—is individual dreaming, in the opinion of the Yuma. 
They hold to this belief as thoroughly and consistently as the Mo- 
have. An autobiographic statement by one of their medicine men 
and myth narrators reveals this attitude more convincingly than it 
can be summarized in general statements: 

Before I was born I would sometimes steal out of my mother’s womb while 


she was sleeping, but it was dark and I did not go far. Every good doctor 
(kwasidhe, almost synonymous with sumach, “ dreamer”) begins to under- 


3625°—25 dL 





784. BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY - [BULL 78 


stand before he is born. When a little boy I took a trip to Avikwame Moun- 
tain and slept at its base. I felt of my body with my two hands, but found it 
was. not there (sic). It took me four days and nights to go there. Later 
I became able to approach even the top of the mountain. At last I reached 
the willow-roof (shade) in front of the dark-house there. Kumastamho was 
within. It was so dark that I could hardly see him. He was naked and very 
large. Only a few great doctors were in there with him, but a crowd of men 
stood under the shade before the house. I now have power to go to Kumastamho 
any time. I lie down and try, and soon I am up there again with the crowd. 
He teaches me to cure by spitting (blowing frothy saliva) and sucking. One 
night Kumastamho spat up blood. He told me: ‘‘ Come here, little boy (this 
is a characteristic concept), and suck my chest.” I placed my hands on his 
ribs and sucked his sickness out. Then he said: “ You are a consumption 
dreamer. When anybody has consumption lay your hands on him and suck 
the pain out continually, and in four months he will be well.” It takes four 
days to tell about Kwikumat and Kumastamho (the origin myth). I was 
present (i. e., at the happenings told in this myth) from the very beginning 
(sic), and saw and heard all. I dreamed a little of it at a time. I would then 
tell it to my friends. The old men would say: ‘‘ That is right! I was there 
and heard it myself.” Or they would say: “ You have dreamed badly. That 
is not right.” And they would tell me right. So at last I learned the whole 
of it right. 

Just so, the Mohave in general admit frankly that they have 
learned much of their knowledge of songs and stories from their 
older relatives, and yet insist that they possess all this knowledge 
through dreams; and like the Yuma, every narrator is convinced 
that he was present at the ancient events he tells of. If these tribes 
could express themselves in our abstract terminology, they would 
probably say that the phenomena of dreams have an absolute reality 
but that they exist in a dimension in which there is no time and in 


which there is no distinction between spiritual and material. 
SONG-MYTH-RITES IN THE LOWER COLORADO REGION. 


The narrative song cycles which largely take the place of dances 
among the Mohave, and have been mentioned for the Chemehuevi 
and Luiseno, are very much less known among the Yuma, the frag- 
mentary information available being mostly from Mohave sources. 
The accessible data for all the Yuman tribes and some of their Sho- 
shonean neighbors are gathered in the appended table. From this 
collocation it is clear that some song series have traveled widely and 
are so definitely international at present that their tribal origin can 
perhaps never be ascertained. It appears further that the Mohave 
have been most active in this religio-aesthetic manifestation. On 
the one hand they have borrowed freely, on the other they have prob- 
ably been drawn upon by their neighbors to an at least equal extent. 


KROBBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 785 


At any rate, they possess much the largest number of cycles: 20 
which they claim as their own, besides at least 10 more sung by 
doctors. Seven of the 20 are shared by one or more other tribes, and 
are likely to be of foreign devising. But the remainder are, so far 
as known, purely Mohave; and this is a greater number of series than 
has been recorded for any other people in the region. And it is not 
likely that the disproportion is altogether due to incompleteness of 
information. The Chemehuevi, for instance, themselves assert that 
they possess no more than four kinds of singings. 


[BULL. 78 








BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 


786 


aaa Bie iat SEEN GS ee ae net we eee ae Ee alee ae ee tz CSL) a ka See le er ele aie wea oo air RS Aig sae Smale ams Re (1) 
eee Mee: Sees mn aes Re gee eee | eee a eee es aoe mek Ce Si TOL T | Ve See es pe a eke ie heir ne eae we ees cae ge” acer ela come | Aled ele era 
Bf NS Nae SE al OA RAE ICS Ne a a Ral lea re PICU Sh Wie aaa ee eke |e ae ne ae ae OR ae ee ra SO eae ey es a Ss 
Sle eek es? Tee = ae San a De actin mea ae a 08 POLS IO EES]? pe ae US GDS arate Mh ae SA ae NS cane amie m Cee Ggenecten | Thema eerie Wa cir 
Re Ge SOR oa. eae te at ae” eee es tee Se 6L I ELV. ede ee OL ELE Ted Sc Sie ae ea ade a ieee Meme) 1c sd eae Oe eRe One Sra aa 
Se TO ik a EPS Se hated aa (eo St la aaa a o> 8 - LULOULTESY= EAA pp | oor PSR SE a Sas oe ad ASS a ae aepesel| Seg gee Slee oer aa Semis a ce 
hehages © gai cet er let care cue oe" 2a Te ae em Soe ae S J * "+! TOMTOUIC SE |o Se eee ae et ee ee a a eee ae © Sian sia erro OSs eee cians anne 
- ae ek eee | aba Oras ee ie ae oe Sea ira A 91 SL DTO STS | aie ee ee a eet RR GR ye cen Sa enc oe gy ELA ELL rs | cana ae ants Sg 
a IN a AN SB ei ie aU lag ae Eel tad ae a ks i a a ea ati al Pee Ci Dal ill ea ie A Pe? OC STCULOU Cal cea cae ee 
w Gaeat” Seees “are glen SCLOOU Sa ULEG) LELIO TAM = aus oaeee wpe aS Mam lige” SSE een, = age haa | Saeko okie gp gee ge SO Ne io ae re Eas aaa Soy Ne ge Saar ee ool ee a a aaa el ag eae ea 
5 lle gi tc Oe I Pees a ee | a rae DIG aha Stik gs aig Ie |p cs Memes Seer eR A prawe oo iie ee | “eat oe Oe ia | ale aera an Wen iniaas | Ek Ren Oa ac iint 
CW, diet le agetame ARCO iat se 0 oui NR rae aise 7 aa oe ae Ware og eat Me Cena a ir ee ae AE hs ae Be ire ge ee ges 
Se eS ee So = Ee ne ae Eb ko eae Meee onl Mena he ioe ey |G rai gator ae SU erin aE, al Eo er PIGSERIOW [eas Sa eR a oer ge ee 
Rieti os ERIE Wa aaa Geena (cocag hen ree es eae Senegal eee ng t= © iS oie © Sache = Spar | SISA 2: lake nicola c= ele ile sie spain = a" Saad memo ea as DAMeZT [oe eee ee ae wee ea 
SO IS aI ade SIRE aR tt kgm ag Or aa i ag (ee eS a ai ei Thay a aera pa nec ST SLLGy aes Sas ome open opie eee eee 
Rees MALT Se aes Cpt are abe ORE Simla bog ee a cee ae ZU CLULDC)' |i Saeancieaee aaa nec aa eee ogee ce 2 Cae iS Ses pasar ra ee reeks CET) AIT | Iailie amie sateen cies ae 
Saas aaa eis aes kare Loe Gis hee pS | eae sale amin Smee AIS eS Ppa Se hte Sac mS el gene eee am it gear aS | Tin eae ee aa ra VAI OOUOUDIUN S| Gua 
Gps SI a aR OFS SBS he ca aa el NAA da ea hs a ia Rea ar Md eae her Pa ee ili ae eg mete ee VYUOIMONULSU-1C t= | anne en ae ae 
Bg IS IRE hal bi age dagger a Bc ae ag A ag ga ac eS gu lg le a i as al eateries Geigy Ne EAS SOC] | aeaben aie ccs cae 
Fase: ec ee aie SB ULBUC! [rine Scan comme ON Giga meas ae ae TA SS Sa ar ce eine SSS Set Obs Sy me SE eres ie ka er Sieeeeeet > Reems SELLE NST Ce 
TS \ es a cee aes ee a a a ee proton CULOUSGA LISTS | onde sacs aa ase a ing SS OIA CT cnn as Sac a tae aria 2S aeeeeie lor OTOUELIU “GAT ST. 
A I er a fs ca ala a lak i pe i (5) ee te cl ack mae teas rie eae Spee ns came ase oot eas ete OTS CG. | Sas ceeleec caade ara. oe g Ose 
oie ans 5 Sie ede" | Ses Ges = e's OO CRE) chet. Sen a ee ae ie an ae ee a ee ee eee ee ee eee eee ee ee eS @mccrs 2 eaLOOC Tg einet se wana a el Cae = ere niece TOC T: 
“OPE TH |i tees Gece | a ae Pe ea GN ea [eet ee N eRaa a  e IE ate a AR  M a  h CH a |SAACII I IO S| pe OF eTJIN, 
eeoa ie Sal dee ice on Pee ae hs carte (io ere at et ik tg Leet Rome ge ee nn he ae OR a Ce Tee aA Pl ee ear | en Nh a a es LS 
Signi aa san WakAS |p cet te mee ea ee |r POI EN A el Fo Se OD cel eH ar Lead BES YAW SS Cie (eed gr sna a aaa Eeablet oS ay HT YN CDS | 
TL VOUBUITTAy Gama one CL LLCULLIN | s| Sn aimee ar ees sae ai) eS Sm ese eo ECU ae ea oes eee et GOUBULN Tals so ae eae Slee coat aa | a eduvuny, 
aia Do etree ai «ete ai Sih | ies et a au eae | ae ge Rae SLE |S eS LS BSAT YV Hess Rae 22" CS AT Vint sca cn was © ial aan |e enn ee a en To ed | ees OSA TU 
I as ee a a ena ime eet ai rks fan eae gh tp ca ee ae 1g hos Saks ea ae SC ae ie en eat rae coe, ae eae tee Ce TULTUAT OA VCC ILO eee Uy 
SDL Gs ieee te aes Real ge ae i ities lad eae oS Calis “al dco eae pie Saag GR ee RO ae ek STR ll ene eC menage eae fee SDPIEGUG= area ce y Spal 
“eTTIMYBO g OUBLIOG *‘TAonyeuleyy gTedeaex ‘ouenselqg *CIUIB edoo009 “edoouey, eumn x “OABYONW 





























~SHIOAOQ DNOG NVWAA—'S Flav, 


HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 787 


KROEBER] 


‘UISIIO UBOTOYSOYY, JO sv pozIuUsoOoaI O1v TOTYIOH pues rediy, ‘duvuroy, 
qyIM poyenbe ‘(1euo0y-eAn y=) vumy-uvu1t{N pues ‘(30s 31q) TejoyTeyD pue (ZuruInour ‘pes) dn10 ssouspuedepul [NyIqQnop Jo ‘osye ‘(Zouvlo) IeMYIAN ‘po}eroosse ‘(KOJ) 
neyieqd pue (7vo-p[ia) THAN ‘(lreq) oreyeurey[yoH :(07}}e1) [yIseVy, ‘(qoveds) remyolq ‘(1ediy,= ‘efdood) redry, ‘(jaeyny= O[1}81) VYOT, ‘(loAOH =) iopyloR f(awMYeyoey = 
‘joyseq surdelos) ieMyey ‘(o[3ve) vdsy ‘(dunui0j-ny=) duewoy, {(spriq ges[=) ,eseE{ :soyaho Suos OUONZEIC, UlOYINOS SULMOT[OJ oy} soars (Aydvis0TTqQIqG 9es) JeIdg zz 

‘roydeyo surpesoid oy} UT peqiiosop o1v AoW, *o[qB4 ST} ULOIF PopITUIO o1B SOATOSUIOY} 04 AvTTNOed sapoAO OALYOW 12 
*“SOATOSUIOY]} 0} IVI[TUIV] 9ULOYDS OY. OFUI IT IY 
Ajueptae Aoyy ‘urey} Aq poziZojoy}Aur use Gavy 0} Was JOU Soop ST OTIGAA “49ND oyoRo]O poonposqzUt 01 JO voUep OY} JO 9UTVU OUONSoIG 9} SI yunyunyy 10 “wingynyFT ‘20734077 og 
*S[ITS Ite} IOJ Ten oT.qnd ou uroj1zed 03 wees OYA 
‘aavyowW oy} Aq poz[Usoo01 JOU 918 SSUOS OY} :OUENZIq Oe SPIOM OY, ‘SUOS oY} 0} 724 PF ‘ITI OY} 0} SIOJoI ynunzp sdeyiog *AUOUTaIID BOUDDSOTOPB SIS O42 ST 724 F 10 ynuUnI PK 61 
‘nhiny st £10}s 04} JO OO OY, + “SpIOM OUSNSEIG *1OY}VIM ITV] oYVUL 04 BuNS gr 
‘pur edooreyy 04 se03 OM JOp[O oy} Aq PoT[Ty ST puw 4seyUO0d 
Bseso[ iosuNoA oY, *S10Y}OIG OM} JO ST[o} A104s OY, “VQuINI’L UIOIJ OYONFeIq WIOYJNOY oI SpIOM OY, ,qNI,, WVOUT 0} PTes ST wvnyoya :poqqna ST Joyseq WY "PDYNDYIF IO ut 
“Ayoyeredos peuoyoos oq prnoys sdeyqied 
yor ‘s8u0s twynvhnyg 10 rj,0hayYQ UTe{UOd 04 Pres SI yNway OUT, “OUENFeIq oq 0} Woes SpAOM oY, *OoTVIp Woo oy} UT ynsay-Nyy :AUOUIOIND SUTUINOUL OAT] VIOULOUIULOD OY, ot 
‘UOT BIOULOUIUIOD SUTUINOUL 94} 3B PasNn SZUOS JO SPUTY OM, gt 
‘QABYOPW UT ,,WOsIod,, SUBOT PIO STU, #1 
*PIIGIOJVM BJO OUIBVU OABYOW OU} ‘DS1uN7-814N7-UIWL VIVAUIOD gr 
‘pdndlLoT BUNK ol} ULOIJ SB OABYOW 94} Aq poztusooe1 sea 3uos poydeizZouoyd y ‘doug 10 a 
*SSUISUTS S,10100P JO SPUTY OIOUL IO U9} OUIVU OAVYOPW OL 11 
“DJOYNWY PoT[vo 01B SSUOS PUB AIO}S OY} ‘fOIOY OY JO OWEN or 
*£i04s 8 9UTTINO 07 1vedde pure ‘ousNseIq UT iv ‘IaAoMOY ‘suOS S4J “oTdood 104)e] OY} WIOIJ WET 
peyovel 41 1BY} VAVT[oq OYONZeIq oY} Jo oWMos puke ‘oYesIN'T puvOoYoUeNes oy} Aq OsTe pootyoRid ST AUOUTEI00 SIU, *“Pol[Py{ STopsvo Ue POI UToEyTI Suraamour v votovId oOusnsoIg oy 6 
“DLINYO poled ‘a[svo oy yNOGyY ¢ 
‘edueuiny, YIM oavyoy oy} Aq poyenbe ‘soatesurey Aq aaaazbuny, poles eq 04 pres , 
‘UMO ITO} JO SpuULy OMY 0} UOTIPpe UT ,,eduvuINy, sUMAUBA ,, SIG) SUIS OAVYOP IL, 9 
‘dupwoy, s8 pouotjuem ospy ,,edueumny, 3u0T,, Joy} sv oavyow oy} Aq poytuept Aduroid sem Suos poydessouoyd & pue ‘SPIOM OABYOJ YIM ZUNS 9q 0} PIBS g 
‘RUIN A OY} UIOIJ OABYOW oy} Aq poMOLOg + 
*JUBOTI GIB NSTVMeYy yi ATQISsOd ‘oAVYOW 94} JO ,,euMAUBA,, OUT ¢ 
‘yedeeM Puy z 
‘sTTBsArgo 10 JoosUT pUNOIsIepuN Ue ‘oyppay puB ‘ARO UI vYa2yIDYDY poT[Vo PIIG B ‘vunyooyvg ‘yeq ‘Dyhundwuny ‘nunwny-vhimy 10 D0YYNIDS' WAO ITE 
jo jueTBamnbe oy} Zuys edoorey oy} Wey} ppvoavyow, oy, “Anois oy} Jo UOIstArp UIoYy NOY oy} Woy ATWO UMOTY oI YNI9xy oy 4dooxa sores OuNZeIG ey, “stTeUN XK 0} uvsoe[pe 
sdnoi3 UvOMOYsSOYS o1¥ SUMINIOD do} SB] OY} SUIPBOY SoqII} OYJ, “S]UVULIOJUTOAVYOP ULOIJ SoqI1} 19Y}O [TB OJ ‘soAyesumoy} WoIy TAonyeMeYO pus ‘ouenserq ‘edoorreyy UO BYBq { 


788 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


Mohave stimulation is further shown in the fact that their sacred 
peak Avikwame or Dead Mountain is sung about by the Yuma and 
Dieguefio, and, according to the Mohave themselves, by the Walapai 
and Maricopa; although the corresponding mythic center of the 
Chemehuevi, Charleston Peak, is in their own territory. Aha’av’- 
ulypo or Eldorado Canyon to the north of Avikwame, which is al- 
most equally important in Mohave tradition, is also known to the 
Yuma. Some of the Mohave song narratives begin or end far 
afield, toward Tehachapi or in the Yavapai country or in Sonora; 
but the two places mentioned certainly dominate their mythic 
geography, and this point of view is reflected in Yuma story, and 
to a less degree among the Diegueno. It should be mentioned that 
some Dieguefio accounts place their “ Wikami” at Picacho Peak 
near Yuma. 

A comparison of the songs—both words and tune—which appear 
to be the concrete elements most frequently and completely trans- 
mitted, should readily solve most of the interrelations of source and 
of borrowing by the several tribes. The narrative material has pre- 
sumably been much more thoroughly broken up and recombined in 
its wanderings from nation to nation; and the social use and ritual 
setting of the cycles are also likely to vary considerably according 
to tribe. 


ORIGIN TRADITIONS OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. 


The account of origins of the Yuma, Mohave, Diegueno, and 
Maricopa is more or less completely known, for some of these tribes 
in several versions. All the stories agree sufficiently closely to allow 
of the recognition of a typical creation myth characteristic of the 
central Yuman tribes. It may be expected that the more remote 
northeastern and southwestern members of the family participated 
in this conglomerate of beliefs to a considerable extent. Much of 
the myth is shared with the neighboring Shoshoneans of southern 
California. The give and take between the two groups can not 
yet be determined fully. But certain distinctive Yuman and Sho- 
shonean ideas emerge clearly. 

The Shoshonean creation has been designated as a myth of emer- 
gence, in the sense that mankind and all things in the world are 
born from mother Earth, with Sky or Night as father. The divinity 
Wiyot, or whatever he may be called, is not the maker but the first 
born, the leader and instructor, of men. As a matter of fact, such 
was the belief only of the Luiseno, Juaneno, and perhaps Gabrielino. 
The hinterland tribes—Cupeno, Cahuilla, and Serrano—evince only 
traces of cosmic interest. With them, the world begins with two 
quarreling brothers, of whom one causes and the other opposes 


3 


KROBBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 789 


death, and one retires to the sky, the other into the earth—is named 
Earth, even, in some accounts. One of the pair manufactures man- 
kind. 

This is also in general the Yuman idea; but these people add the 
fact that the two brothers, the creator and his death-instituting op- 
ponent, are born at the bottom of the sea, and that the younger 
emerges blinded by the salt water. In most Yuman accounts this 
concept of water origin is somewhat hesitatingly blended with earth- 
sky parentage. The Mohave alone have substituted for the ocean 
origin a direct birth from the great mother and father, have re- 
duced the part of the antagonistic younger brother to a minimum, 
forgotten his blindness, and hold men to have been born with the 
gods, not made by them. Their cosmogony therefore assumes the 
same philosophy as that of the Luisefio-Gabrielino—a philosophy of 
distinctly Pueblo type; whereas the other tribes of the region, Yuman 
as well as Shoshonean, adhere to a more personalized and concrete 
conception. As the Mohave and Luisefio-Gabrielino are not in con- 
tact, in fact are separated by tribes like the Cahuilla, their cos- 
mogonies can not be traced to a directly common source. They may 
be specializations, erected more or less independently, through a re- 
weighting of particular ideas which in halting and ineffective form 
were once or are still the common property of all the Indians of 
southern California. Two mythological strata can therefore be 
recognized as regards cosmogony. ‘The underlying one is repre- 
sented by the Serrano, Cahuilla, Diegueno, and in the main by the 
Yuma and Maricopa. The upper crops out among the Gabrielino- 
Luisenho and, some distance away, among the Mohave, with some in- 
dications among the Yuma. 

In the underlying stratum the Yuman names of the creator and his 
brother are Tuchaipa and Kokomat or Yokomatis. These designa- 
tions are common to such distant tribes as the Diegueno and 
Maricopa, and must therefore be regarded as part of an old Yuman 
inheritance. But a curious inconsistence prevails. The Diegueno 
sometimes combine the names into Chaipa-Komat or Chakumat and 
apply this term to the creator, or call him Mayoha, which perhaps 
refers to the sky. At other times Chaipa-Komat is the earth from 
which the first man is made by the creator. The Yuma call the 
creator Kwikumat, whereas his companion, who is no longer his 
brother, is merely Blind Old Man. The Mohave introduce an en- 
tirely new name, Matavilya, for the leading divinity, and retain only 
faint traces of the concept of his companion who disappears under 
ground. 

The creator makes men from clay: the younger brother attempts 
the same, but misshapes his creatures, who turn into web-footed 


790 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


birds—which, it may be added, play a considerable part in the song 
cycles of some Mohave shamans. 

The great divinity, whether creator or leader, offends his daughter 
Frog, and is killed by her swallowing his voidings. This concept 
of the dying god, and of the mourning for him, is universal among 
Yumans and Shoshoneans, and is probably the dominant and most 
poignantly felt motive of every mythology in southern California. 
Its analogue in the Aztec Quetzalcoatl story has already been com- 
mented upon; but it is important that no parallel is known among 
the Pueblos or any true southwestern people. There may have 
been connections with the central and south Mexican story through 
Sonora. But except for dim suggestions, the development of the idea 
is probably local. All the Californians make much of the origin 
of death; and the Yuman and southern Shoshonean tale appears to 
think less of the impending end of the great god himself than of 
the fate of humanity as typified by him. 

Everywhere there follows a concrete and circumstantial narration 
of the preparations for the divinity’s cremation, of Coyote’s plans 
to possess himself of his heart, of the measures taken to prevent this 
design, and of Coyote’s success and consequent execration. The 
Juaneno are the only people known to have accompanied this story 
with a ritualistic practice; but the custom may have been more 
widely spread. This funerary cannibalism clearly rests upon generic 
Californian ideas of death and acts due the dead; and it is char- 
acteristic that its known occurrence is among those of the southern 
Californians nearest to the central part of the State, in which a 
similar custom is reported from the Pomo, although, of course, with- 
out a trace of the associated mythology. The custom further em- 
phasizes what the flavor of the myth itself indicates: that the dying 
god motive is largely a native rather than an imported product. 

Some Dieguefio versions omit the death of Tuchaipa and conse- 
quently Coyote’s theft also. This may be mere incompleteness of 
record; but as the myths in question are all from southerly Dieguenio 
territory, it is not impossible that there existed a south Yuman area, 
centering in Baja California, in which these episodes were dispensed 
with. This would indicate that the dying god concept developed in 
southern California proper, where its ritualistic counterpart also 
has its seat, and inclines the balance toward a Shoshonean rather 
than a Yuman origin for the idea and its principal associations. 

‘The Mohave rather slight Matavilya-Tuchaipa: his chief function 
is to die. His son, or, according to some accounts, younger brother, 
Mastamho, enters at far greater length into the narration, as the 
shaper and ordainer of things on the earth, and the instructor of 
men in all cultural relations. With the Yuma, the disproportion 
is not so marked; but Ku-mastamho is still of great importance. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 791 


Maricopa tradition, so far as it is fragmentarily known, does not 
mention this second great divinity; and the Dieguefio do not know 
him. There is also no specific Shoshonean parallel: Chungichnish, 
who appears after Wiyot’s death, is far too vague and shadowy 
a figure to-compare with the practically active and more human 
Mastamho. This divinity seems therefore to be a creation of the 
Mohave; and this conclusion is confirmed by his definite association 
with the mountain Avikwame. 

One other episode the Yuma and Mohave share with the Dieguefio. 
Sky-Rattlesnake—Kammayaveta, Maihaiowit, Maiaveta, or Umas- 
ereha—is sent from his ocean abode to Avikwame, where, on entering 
the house, his head is chopped off or he is burned. The motive is 
punishment of the doctor of evil design or the desire to acquire his 
ritualistic knowledge. This is an incident not recorded among any 
Shoshonean tribe; but the monster recurs in the Zui Kolowisi and 
is an ancient southwestern concept with water associations. 

The specific common Yuman elements in this cosmogony are the 
rising out of the deep of the creator Tuchaipa, the blindness, opposi- 
tion, and miscreations of his brother Kokomat, and the killing of 
Maiaveta. The complex of ideas associated with the dying god and 
Coyote’s theft of his heart is a general Yuman possession, more 
likely to have originated among the Shoshoneans. Besides the 
fluctuating and often vague belief in Sky and Earth as the initial 
parents of all else, this set of Wiyot-Matavilya concepts is the prin- 
cipal theme of wide scope common to the two families of tribes. The 
Mohave have most largely developed the non- Yuman elements of the 
tradition, as well as the Mastamho cycle, which appears to be a 
special growth that has assimilated a variety of minor elements of 
Yuman origin. The Yuma stand next to the Mohave in both points. 
It does not seem that the contacts of these tribes with Shoshoneans 
were as numerous as the contacts of the Dieguefio, but they evidently 
assimilated more because they were more inclined to mythologize. 
The difference is one between the comparatively active and specialized 
culture of the river tribes and a more generic, simple, and apathetic 
civilization among the Dieguefio. 

It is rather remarkable how closely the Maricopa adhere to the 
common Yuman tradition, if the record is to be trusted, whereas 
their national fortunes in the historic period have been intimately 
linked with those of the Pima, and the nearest of their kinsmen—the 
Yuma, Yavapai, and Mohave—have been their hereditary foes. The 
inference is that the Maricopa, like the Halchidhoma whom they 
subsequently received, were resident on the Colorado at no very an- 
cient period. This is indicated also by their speech, which is said to 
be almost identical with Yuma, but perceptibly different from the 
dialects of the Yuman nomadic mountain tribes of western Arizona. 


792 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


It has indeed often been asserted that the Maricopa were an offshoot 
from the Colorado River tribes; but all such statements appear to be 
assumptions based only on the knowledge that the tribe of Piman 
associations spoke a Yuman language, and to have been devoid, 
hitherto, of substantiation by definite historical evidence. How far 
the general civilization of the Maricopa retains its original cast, 
or, on the other hand, has yielded to the influences of their alien 
but allied neighbors, it is impossible to say, in the almost total 
absence of exact information about them; but, like the Havasupai, 
they bid fair to present valuable material for a study in the interest- 
ing problem of native American acculturation. 


MOURNING AND ADOLESCENCE CEREMONIES. 


The Yuma mourning ceremony, which is called Vyimets, “ crying,” 
and, like that of the Mohave, is generally known in English as an 
“ Annual,” appears to be made especially for distinguished war- 
riors, and not for hereditary chiefs, rich men, or the dead of the 
community at large. This flavoring is distinctly eastern, although 
the commemoration concept itself is preeminently characteristic of 
California. The eastern cast appears in several features, such as 
mimic warfare and the use of a shield. 


The rites are held under an open shade, where two lines of men sing Karwuka 

and Ohoma songs during the night. The former are at the west end, the 
latter at the east, but both face toward the dawn. As this approaches, they 
dance in turn, and then, after it is day, dance again to the east of the shade. 
During the last Karuwuka singing, a handled skin drawn over a willow hoop 
and feathered at the edge, in other words a shield, is displayed; and as a 
climax, the shade is set on fire and an arrow shot against the shield, where- 
upon it and the bow and arrow are cast upon the blazing pile. There are 
other features of a dramatic character whose place in the rite is not clear. 
Two armed men run, another pair pursues shoulder to shoulder, the first turn 
and discharge an arrow which the hinder twain, separating, allow to pass 
between them. There is also said to be a pair of riders who avoid arrows; 
and apparently some symbolic taunting with death in war. The dualism that 
obviously pervades the performance, in spite of formal adherence to the four- 
folding ceremonial pattern of the tribe, seems also connected with the idea 
of antithesis in combat. 
- The Ohoma singers carry a sort of arrow feathered at both ends; the 
Karwuka party is led with a deer-hoof rattle. Karw’uka has already been 
mentioned as being the same word as the Dieguenho Keruk; but the latter rite 
is a much more typicai Californian mourning ceremony. 


This, except for an allusion to its use by the Dieguefio, is the most 
westerly known occurrence of the shield, whose distribution stretches 
through the Pima and Apache to the Pueblo and Plains tribes. 
Neither the Yuma nor the Mohave, however, appear to have used the 
implement very extensively in actual warfare, and there is no men- 


‘ 


‘ 


KROEBER } HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 793 


tion of any heraldry in connection with it. The true Californians 
fought naked, or, in the north, in body armor. 

The Yuma hold an adolescence ceremony for girls, but its specific 
traits are too obscure to allow comparisons. As among the Mohave, 
there is no record of a tribal or societal initiation of boys. Since 
the coast tribes as well as the Pueblos on the other side practice 
initiations, even agreeing in such details as the employment of sand 
paintings, the absence of this set of customs among the Colorado 
River tribes is significant of their specialization in religion. 


TOLOACHE., 


The Yuma dreamers know and use Jimson weed, smalykapita,' 
Mohave malykatu, much as the Mohave do, to stimulate their dreams; 
in other words, as individual shamans. This differentiates the em- 
ployment of the plant from its utilization by the Gabrielino and ad- 
jacent tribes, to whom it is the center of the initiation complex. The 
Yuma-Mohave attitude seems to be that of the Pueblos, to judge by 
the Zufii, who use the drug in medical practice and to attain second 
sight. The Walapai and White Mountain Apache employ the plant. 
The association of Jimson weed with religion is probably con- 
tinuous from the San Joaquin Valley to southern Mexico. Toloache 
is an Aztec word and the plant was worshipped. While little is 
known of its employment, it may be presumed to have been sacred 
to the tribes of northern Mexico, except where unobtainable or rele- 
gated to obscurity by the peyote cult. At bottom, therefore, the 
southern California toloache religion may confidently be ascribed 
to ideas that, like so much else in North America, originated in 
Mexico or Central America. On the other hand, as a specific growth 
this religion is unquestionably local, the Colorado Valley and Pueblo 
use of toloache being of much more elementary character in a more 
highly organized religious setting. In short, we are dealing here 
with an instance of connection between California and the South- 
west in which historical priority must as usual be given to the more 
advanced region; and yet to regard the Californian manifestations 
as merely an imperfect loan from the Southwest would be erroneous. 
Tt is only the source that the Pueblos contributed, and a borrowed 
source at that. The growths upon it were independent: in fact, that 
of the humbler people the more luxuriant. 


THE SWEAT HOUSE. 


A parallel condition is presented by the sweat house, except that 
the discontinuity in recent times is emphasized by the lack of the 
institution among the spatially intermediate Yumans of the great 


ee 
1Probably Datura discolor instead of the D, meteloides used in most of the remainder 
of California, See footnote, page 502. 


794. BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 78 


river. Neither the Yuma, the Mohave, nor, it seems, the Pima and 
Papago of Arizona know the universal Californian sweat house. On 
the other hand, the sweat house correlates with the Pueblo kiva or 
estufa, which in spite of a possible augmentation of its sacred char- 
acter under pressure from the Spaniard, retains some of its former 
functions of man’s club and sleeping place; while even its religious 
associations are never wholly wanting in California. A failure to 
connect the kiva and the sweat house would be more than short- 
sighted. But an immediate derivation of the latter from the former 
would not only be hasty on general grounds, but directly contra- 
dicted by the Yuman gap. Here, too, then, we find entirely new 
associations clustering about the institution in its Pacific coast range; 
even possibly an enlargement of the sweat house into the dance 
house or assembly chamber of.the Sacramento Valley tribes, and its 
definite affiliation with the masked society cult, every particular trait 
of which has obviously been devised on the spot. Again, also, we 
have the indication of an ultimate source in Mexico, the home of the 
temescal; and, to illustrate the principle one step farther, there is 
the Plains sweat lodge, the idea of which must be carried back to the 
same root, but whose concrete form, as well as its place in religion 
and daily custom, are markedly different from those of temescal, 
kiva, or California sweat house. 

Incidentally, the cultural importance of the sweat house is one of 
the bonds that Jinks the Yurok and Hupa to the Californian peoples, 
in spite of the numerous features which their civilization shares with 
that of the North Pacific coast in its narrower sense. The latter tract 
scarcely knows the sweat house. 

The house is ritually significant to the Yuma and Mohave in myth, 
song, and symbolism, but is not itself ritually employed to any extent. 
It is referred to as “ dark house ” and “ dark round.” The open sided 
roof shade has similar though weaker associations as a concept; 
while actually used in cult, the structure is scarcely sacred. The 
ceremonial enclosure constructed by the group of peoples influenced 
by the Gabrielino is as foreign to the river tribes as the sweat house, 
but reappears among the Navaho, and may have a true homologue 
in the court or plaza in which most Pueblo dances are performed. 


THE MOHAVE-YUMA CULTURE. 


A balance may now be struck between the cultural affiliations of 
the lower Colorado tribes with the Indians respectively of the South- | 
west and of California, especially of southern California. Civiliza- 
tional traits such as pottery and emergence myths, which are common 
to al] three areas, may be left out of this consideration. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 795 


The Yuma and Mohave share with the southwestern peoples agri- 
culture; totemic clan exogamy; a tribal sense; a considerable mili- 
tary spirit and desire for warlike renown; and the shield; all of 
which are un-Californian. They also agree with the southwest- 
erners in lacking several generic or widespread Californian traits: a 
regard for wealth; basketry as a well-cultivated art; and the use of 
toloache in an organized cult. 

On the other hand, they resemble the Californians and differ from 
the southwesterners in reckoning descent paternally; in holding pub- 
lic religious mourning commemorations; in hereditary chieftain- 
ship; and in the lack of architecture in stone, a priestly hierarchy, 
masks, depictive art, the loom, and body dress on a notable scale. 

It is clear that there is substantially no less and no more reason 
for reckoning the river tribes in the Southwest than in the California 
culture area. 

That they are more than merely transitional is revealed by a num- 
- ber of peculiarities. These, strangely enough for a people of inter- 
mediate location, are mostly negative: they lack the sweat house, 
the ceremonial enclosure, the initiating society, and the sand paint- 
ing which the Gabrielino and Luiseno on their west share with the 
Pueblos and Navahos to the east. 

The positive particularities of moment are all clearly and closely 
interrelated, and may be designated as the peculiar system of 
song-myth-rites with its reduction of dancing to a minimum and its 
basis of belief in an unusual form of dreams which also lend a 
characteristic color to shamanism. In this one association of re- 
ligious traits, accordingly, rests the active distinctiveness of Yuma- 
Mohave culture; and to this growth must be attributed the local sup- 
pression of elements like the sweat house and the secret society. 

Tt seems likely that when the culture of the Sonoran tribes shall 
be better known, it may link at least as closely as that of the Pueblos 
with that of the lower Colorado tribes and explain much of the 
genesis of the latter. 


CHArTer 53. 
OTHER YUMAN TRIBES. 


The nations on the Colorado, 796; the Cocopa, 796; the Halyikwamai or 
Kikima, 796; Halyikwamai and Akwa’ala, 797; the Alakwisa, 797; the 
Kohuana, 798; the Kamia and Yuma, 798; the Halchidhoma, 799; tribes en- 
countered by Ofnate in 1605, 802; changes in three centuries, 803. 


THE NATIONS ON THE COLORADO. 


Besides the Mohave and Yuma, at least five other tribes of the same 


lineage once occupied the shores of the Colorado. Of these, only 
the Cocopa and Kamia retain their identity, and the latter are few. | 


The others are extinct or merged. In order upstream these tribes 
were the Cocopa, Halyikwamai, Alakwisa, Kohuana, Kamia, Yuma, 
Halchidhoma, and Mohave. 


THE COCOPA, 


The Cocopa, called Kwikapa by the Mohave, held the lowest 
courses of the river, chiefly, it would seem, on the west bank. They 
have survived in some numbers, but have, and always had, their 
seats in Baja California. They are mentioned by name as early 
as 1605. 

THE HALYIKWAMAI OR KIKIMA. 


The Halyikwamai, as the Mohave call them, are the Quicama or 
@uicoma of Alacon in 1540, the Halliquamallas of Onate in 1605, the 
(uiquima or Jalliquamay of Garcés in 1776, and therefore the first 
California group to have a national designation recorded and pre- 
served. Ofate puts them next to the Cocopa, on the east bank of 
the Colorado, Garcés on the west bank between the Cocopa and the 
Kohuana. Garcés estimated them to number 2,000, but his popu- 
lation figures for this region are high, especially for the smaller 
groups. It seems impossible that three or four separate tribes 
should each have shrunk from 2,000 or 3,000 to a mere handful in 
less than a ceritury during which they lived free and without close 
contact with the whites. 

The discrepancies between the habitat assigned by one authority on 
the left bank and the other on the right, for this and other tribes, 
are of little moment. It is likely that every nation on the river 


796 


KROEBEE] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 197 


owned both sides, and shifted from. one to the other, or divided, ac- 
cording to the exigencies of warfare, fancy, or as the channel and 
farm lands changed. The variations in linear position along the 
river, on the contrary, were due to tribal migrations dependent on 
hostilities or alliances. 


HWALYIKWAMAI AND AKWA’ALA. 


The Mohave, who do not seem to know the name Quigyuma or 
Quiquima, say that the Halyikwamai survive, but know them only 
as mountaineers west of the river. West of the Cocopa, that is, in 
the interior of northernmost Baja California, they say is Avi-aspa, 
“Eagle Mountain,” visible from the vicinity of Yuma; and north 
of it another large peak called Avi-savet-kyela. Between the two 
mountains is a low hilly country. This and the region west of Avi- 
aspa is the home of the Akwa’ala or Ekwa’ahle, a Yuman tribe 
whose speech seems to the Mohave to be close to the Walapai dia- 
lect and different from Dieguefio. They were still there in some 
numbers about 30 years ago, the Mohave say, and rode horses. They 
did not farm. They were neighbors of the Kamia-ahwe or Diegueno, 
and occasionally met the Mohave at Yuma or among the Cocopa. 

The Halyikwamai, the Mohave say, adjoined the Akwa/ala on the 
north, near the Yuma, and, like the Akwa’ala, were hill dwellers. 
They also did not farm, but migrated seasonally into the higher 
mountains to collect mescal root, vadhilya. They did not, in recent 
times, come to the river even on visits, evidently on account of the 
old feuds between themselves and the Yuma and Kamia. In the last 
war expedition which the Yuma and Mohave made against the 
Cocopa, about 1855, the Akwa’ala and Halyikwamai were allied with 
the Cocopa. 

It would seem, therefore, that the Halyikwamai or Quigyuma or 
Quiquima are an old river tribe that was dispossessed by its more 
powerful neighbors, took up an inland residence, and of necessity 
abandoned agriculture. 


THE ALAKWISA. 


The country of the Alakwisa is occasionally mentioned by the 
Mohave in traditions, but the tribe seems to have been extinct for 
some time, and fancy has gathered a nebulous halo about its end. 
Here is the story of an old Mohave. 

When I was young an old Mohave told me how he had once come homeward 
from the Cocopa, and after running up along the river for half a day, saw 
house posts, charcoal, broken pottery, and stone mortars. He thought the 


tract must still be inhabited, but there was no one in sight. He ran on, and 
in the evening reached the Kamia, who told him that he had passed through 


7198 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 t 


the old Alakwisa settlements. His Kamia friends said that they had never 
Seen the Alakwisa, the tribe having become extinct before their day, but that 
they had heard the story of their end. It is as follows: 

There was a small pond from which the Alakwisa used to draw their drink- 
ing water, and which had never contained fish. Suddenly it swarmed with 
fish. Some dug wells to drink from, but these, too, were full of fish. They 
took them, and, although a few predicted disaster, ate the catch. Women 
began to fall over dead at the metate or while stirring fish mush, and men 
at their occupations. They were playing at hoop and darts, when eagles 
fought in the air, killed each other, and fell down. The Alakwisa clapped 
their hands, ran up, and gleefully divided the feathers, not knowing that deaths 
had already occurred in their homes. As they wrapped the eagle feathers, some 
of them fell over dead; others lived only long enough to put the feathers on. 

Another settlement discovered a jar under a mesquite tree, opened it, and 
found four or five scalps. They carried the trophies home, mounted them on 
poles, but before they reached the singer, some of them dropped lifeless, and 
others fell dead in the dance. So one strange happening crowded on another, 
and each time the Alakwisa died swiftly and without warning. Whole vil- 
lages perished, no one being left to burn the dead or the houses, until the posts 
remained standing or lay rotting on the ground, as if recently abandoned. So 
the Kamia told my old Mohave friend about the end of the Alakwisa. 


Fabulous as is this tale, it is likely to refer to an actual tribe, 


although the name Alakwisa may be only a synonym of story for 
Halyikwamai or some other familiar term of history. 


THE KOHUANA. 


The Kohuana, Kuhuana, or Kahuene of the Mohave, are the 
Coana of Alarcén and the Cohuana of Onate, who in 1605 found 
them in nine villages above the Halyikwamai. Garcés in 1776 called 
them Cajuenche, put them on the east side of the Colorado, also 
above the Halyikwamai and below the Kamia, and estimated there 
were 3,000 of them. Their fortunes ran parallel with those of the 
Halchidhoma, and the career of the two tribes is best considered 
together. 

THE KAMIA AND YUMA. 


Next above were the Kamia, also recorded as the Comeya, Que- 
maya, Comoyatz, or Camilya, who have already been discussed. 
There is much confusion concerning them, owing to the fact that 
besides the farming tribe on the river, who alone are the true 
Kamia of the Mohave, the Southern Dieguefio call themselves 
KKamiai, and the Mohave call all the Dieguefio “ foreign Kamia.” It 
is, however, well established that a group of this name was settled 
on the Colorado adjacent to the Yuma. 

The Yuma have also been reviewed separately. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 799 
THE HALCHIDHOMA, 


The Halchidhoma or Halchadhoma, as the Mohave know them, 
were unquestionably at one time an important nation, suffered re- 
verses, and at last completely lost their identity among the Mari- 
copa, although there are almost certain to be survivors to-day with 
that tribe. Ofate found them the first tribe on the river below the 
Gila. Kino, a century later, brings them above the Gila. They 
had no doubt taken refuge here from the Yuma or other adjacent 
enemies, but can have profited little by the change, since it brought 
them nearer the Mohave, who rejoiced in harrying them. Garcés 
makes them extend 15 leagues northward along the river to a 
point an equal distance south of Bill Williams Fork. He was among 
them in person and succeeded in patching up a temporary peace 
between them and the Mohave. He calls them Alchedum and Jal- 
chedunes, but they can scarcely still have numbered 2,500 in 1776, as 
he reports. 

The Mohave report that the Kohuana and Halchidhoma once lived 
along the river at Parker, about halfway between the Mohave and 
Yuma territories. This period must have been subsequent to 1776, 
since the location corresponds with that in which Garcés found the 
Halchidhoma, whereas in his day the Kohuana were still below the 
Yuma. Evidently they, too, found living too uncomfortable in 
the turmoil of tribes below the confluence of the Gila—the Mohave 
say that they lived at Aramsi on the east side of the stream below 
the Yuma and were troubled by the latter—and followed the Hal- 
chidhoma to the fertile but unoccupied bottom lands farther up. 
If they had been free of a quarrel with the Mohave, their union with 
the Halchidhoma brought them all the effects of one. 

It must have been about this period of joint residence that the 
Halchidhoma, attempting reprisals, circuited eastward and came 
down on the Mohave from the Walapai Mountains. In this raid 
they captured a Mohave girl at Aha-kwa’-a’i, with whom they re- 
turned to their home at Parker, and then sold to the Maricopa. 
Subsequently, in an attack on the latter tribe, the Mohave found a 
woman who, instead of fleeing, stood still with her baby, and when 
they approached, called to them that she was the captive. They 
took her back, she married again, and had another son, Cherahota, 
who was still living in 1904. Her half-Maricopa son grew up 
among the Mohave, and becoming a shaman, was killed near Fort 
Mohave. This indicates that he reached a tolerable age. 

But the preponderance of numbers and aggressions must have 
been on the side of the Mohave, because they finally drove both 
Halchidhoma and Kohuana south from Parker, back toward the 


3625°—25—52 


SOO BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


Yuma. The Halchidhoma settled at Aha-kw-atho’ilya, a long salty 
- “Jake” or slough, that stretched for a day’s walk west of the river 
at the foot of the mountains. The Kohuana removed less far, to 
Avi-nya-kutapaiva and Hapuvesa, but remained only a year, and 
then settled farther south, although still north of the Halchidhoma. 

After a time the Mohave appeared in a large party, with their 
women and children. They would scarcely have done this if their 
foes had retained any considerable strength. It was a five days’ 
journey from Mohave Valley to the Kohuana. The northerners 
claimed the Kohuana as kinsmen but kept them under guard while 
the majority of their warriors went on by night. They reached the 
settlements of the Halchidhoma in the morning, the latter came out, 
and an open fight ensued, in which a few Halchidhoma were killed, 
while of the Mohave a number were wounded but none fell. In 
the afternoon, the Mohave returned—pitched battles rarely ended 
decisively among any of these tribes—and announced to the Kohuana 
that they had come to live with them. They also invited the 
Halchidhoma to drive them out; which the latter were probably too 
few to attempt. For four days the Mohave remained quietly at the 
Kohuana settlements doctoring their wounded. ‘They had prob- 
ably failed to take any Halchidhoma scalps, since they made no 
dance. The four days over, they marched downstream again, ar- 
rived in the morning, and fought until noon, when they paused to 
retire to the river to drink. The Halchidhoma used this breath- 
ing space to flee. They ran downstream, swam the river to the east- 
ern bank, and went on to Ava-chuhaya. The Mohave took six 
captives and spoiled the abandoned houses. 

After about two days, the Mohave account proceeds, they went 
against the foe once more, but when they reached Ava-chuhaya found 
no one. The Halchidhoma had cut east across the desert to take 
refuge with the Hatpa-’inya, the “ East Pima,” or Maricopa. Here 
ends their career; and it is because of this merging of their remnant 
with the Maricopa that when the Mohave are asked about the latter 
tribe they usually declare them to have lived formerly on the river 
between themselves and the Yuma: the Halchidhoma are meant. 
There can be little doubt that the Maricopa, too, were once driven 
from the river to seek an asylum near the alien and powerful Pima; 
but the Spanish historical notices place them with the latter people 
on the Gila for so long a time back—to at least the beginning of the 
eighteenth century—that their migration must far antedate the period 
which native tradition traverses. 

The Mohave decided to stay on in the land above Aha-kw-atho’ilya, 
which the Halchidhoma had possessed, expecting that the latter 
would return, They remained all winter. There is said to have been 


a 


ee ee a 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 801 


no one left in the Mohave country. In spring, when the mesquite was 
nearly ripe and the river was soon to rise and open the planting sea- 
son, they returned, traveling three days. The Kohuana went with 
them under compulsion, but without the Mohave having to use force. 

For five years the Kohuana lived in Mohave Valley. Then they 
alleged an equally close kinship with the Yuma and a wish to live 
among them. ‘The Mohave allowed them to go. Ten days’ journey 
brought them to their ancient foes. After four years of residence 
here, one of their number was killed by the Yuma and his body hid- 
den. His kinsmen found it and resolved to leave as soon as their 
going would not be construed as due to a desire for revenge—an in- 
terpretation that might bring an immediate Yuma attack upon them. 
They waited a year; and then their chief, Tinyam-kwacha-kwacha, 
“Night traveler,” a man of powerful frame, so tall that a blanket 
reached only to his hips, led them eastward between the mountains 
Kara’epe and Avi-hachora up the Gila. They found the Maricopa at 
Maricopa Wells, recounted the many places at which they had lived, 
and asked for residence among their hosts. Aha-kurrauva, the Mari- 
copa chief, told them to remain forever. 

So the Mohave story, the date of which may refer to the period 
about 1820 to 1840. In 1851 Bartlett reported 10 “ Cawina” sur- 
viving among the Maricopa. But this was an underestimation, as a 
further Mohave account reveals. 

About 1883 the same Mohave who is authority for the foregoing, 
having been told by certain Kohuana who had remained among the 
Mohave, or by their half-Mohave descendants, that there were kins- 
men of theirs with the Maricopa, went to Tempe and there found 
not only Kohuana but Halchidhoma, although the Americans re- 
garded them both as Maricopa. The Kohuana chief was Hatpa’- 
ammay-ime, “ Papago-foot,” an old man, whom Ahwanchevari, the 
Maricopa chief, had appointed to be head over his own people. 
Hatpa’-ammay-ime had been born in the Maricopa country, but his 
father, and his father’s sister, who was still living, were born while 
the Kohuana spent their five years among the Mohave. He enumer- 
ated 6 old Kohuana men as still living and 10 young men—3%6 souls in 
all, besides a few children in school. 

These statements, if accurate, would place the Kohuana abandon- 
ment of the river at least as early as 1820; and the date agrees with 
the remark of an old Mohave, about 1904, that the final migration of 
the tribe occurred in his grandfather’s time. It does not reconcile 
with the fact that a son of the Mohave woman taken captive by the 
Halchidhoma—who are said to have fled to the Maricopa 10 years 
earlier than the Kohuana—was yet living in 1904. In any event, in 


802 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULT. 78 _ 


1776 both tribes were still on the Colorado and sufficiently numerous 
to be reckoned substantially on a par with the Yuma and Mohave; 
in 1850, when the American came, they were merged among the 
Maricopa, and of the seven or eight related but warring Yuman 
nations that once lived on the banks of the stream, there remained 
only three, the Cocopa, Yuma, and Mohave, and a fragment of a 
fourth, the Kamia. The drift has quite clearly been toward the sup- 
pression of the smaller units and the increase of the larger, a tendency 
probably influential on the civilization of the region, and perhaps 
stimulative in its effects. 


TRIBES ENCOUNTERED BY ONATE IN 1605. 


The native information now accumulated allows the valuable find- 
ings of the Onate expedition of 1605, as related by Zarate-Salmeron, 
to be profitably summarized, reinterpreted, and compared with those 
of later date. 4. 

In Mohave Valley, a 10 days’ journey from the mouth of the 
river, as the natives then reckoned and still count, Ofiate found the 
Amacavas or Amacabos. This tribe has therefore occupied sub- 
stantially the same tract for at least three centuries. Their “ Cur- 
raca,” or “ Lord,” is only kwor@aka, “old man.” 

Five leagues downstream through a rocky defile brought Onate 
to Chemehuevi Valley, where more Mohave lived. 


Below the Mohave, evidently in the region about Parker or beyond, | 


Onate encountered an allied nation of the same speech, the Bahace- 
chas. This name seems unidentifiable. Their head, Cohota, was so 
named for his office: he is the kohota or entertainment chief of the 
Mohave. 

On the river of the Name of Jesus, the Gila, Ofate found a less 
affable people of different appearance and manners and of difficult 
speech, who claimed 20 villages all the way up that stream. These he 
calls Ozaras, a name that can also not be identified. The Relation 
gives the impression that this tribe stood apart from all those on the 
Colorado. They do not seem to be the Maricopa, whose speech even 
to-day is close to that of the river tribes. The most convincing ex- 
planation is that they were the Pima or Papago or at least some P1- 
man division, who then lived farther down the Gila than subse- 
quently. This agrees with the statement that they extended to the 
shores of the sea. 

Along the Colorado from the Gila to the ocean all the Colorado 
nations were like the Bahacechas in dress and speech—that is, 
Yumans. 

The first were the Halchidoma, in 8 pueblos, the northernmost 
alone said to contain 160 houses and 2,000 people. 


wg 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 803 


Next came the Cohuana in 9 villages, of 5,000 inhabitants, of 
whom 600 accompanied the expedition. 

Below were the Agolle, Haglli, or Haclli, in 5 (or 100!) settle- 
ments, and next the Halliquamalla or Agalecquamaya, 4,000 or 5,000 
strong, of whom more than 2,000 assembled from 6 villages. 

Finally, in 9 pueblos, reaching down to where the river became 
brackish 5 leagues above its mouth, were the Cocopa. 

The mythical island Zifiogaba in the sea sounds as if it might be 
named from “woman,” thenya’aka in Mohave, and ava, “ house.” 
Its chieftainess, Cifiaca cohota, is certainly “ woman-kohota.” 
“Acilla,” the ocean, is Mohave hatho’ilya. Other modern. dialects 
have “s ” where Mohave speaks “th.” It is clear that the languages 
of the Colorado have changed as little in three centuries as the speech 
of the Chumash that Cabrillo recorded. 


CHANGES IN THREE CENTURIES. 


Apart from the Ozara, on the Gila, Ofate thus encountered seven 
Yuman nations on the left bank of the Colorado. Five of these are 
familiar, two appear under unknown designations, and the Yuma 
and Kamia are not mentioned. Possibly they remained on the Cali- 
fornia side of the river and thus failed of enumeration. But if the 
foreign Ozara held the Gila to its mouth there would have been no 
place for the Yuma in their historic seats. 

Alarc6n’s data, the earliest: of all for the region or for any part 
of California, specify the Quicama (Halyikwamai), Coana (Ko- 
huana), and Cumana (Kamia?), and allude to many elements of 
the culture of later centuries: maize, beans, squashes or gourds, pot- 
tery, clubs, dress, coiffure, transvestites, cremation, intertribal war- 
fare, attitude toward strangers, relations with the mountain tribes; 
as well as characteristic temperamental traits—enthusiasm, resist- 
ance to fatigue, stubbornness under provocation, an ebullient emo- 
tionality. 

Alarcon and Melchior Diaz in 1540, Ofiate in 1605, Kino in 1702, 
and Garcés in 1776, accordingly found conditions on the river much 
as they were when the American came. The tribes battled, shifted, 
and now and then disappeared. The uppermost and lowest were 
the same for 300 years: the Mohave and Cocopa. Among the con- 
flicts, customs remained stable. If civilization developed, it was 
inwardly ; the basis and manner of life were conservative. 


Cuaprer 54. 


ARTS OF LIFE. 


> Osi 


Dress, 804; houses, 809; sweat houses, 810; boats, 812; food, 814; fishing, 815; ‘ 
hunting, 817; bows, 817; textiles, 819; pottery, 822; musical instruments, — 


823; money, 824; tobacco, 826; various, 827. 


This and the following two chapters on society and religion aban- — 


don the nationally descriptive presentation which has so far been 
followed for a comparative one. They are included for the conven- 


+o te 


ience of those whose interest is generally ethnographic rather than — 
intensive or local; but they make no attempts at completeness. On — 


topics for which information is abundant or fruitfully summarizable 


it is collected here and reviewed. Subjects on which knowledge is — 
irregular, or profuse but miscellaneous, or complicated by intricate — 
considerations, have been omitted. For all such matter, the reader — 


is referred to the appropriate passages in the tribal accounts which 
make the body of this book, and which can be assembled through the 
subject index. 

DRESS. 


The standard clothing of California, irrespective of cultural 


provinces, was a short skirt’ or petticoat for women, and either 


nothing at all for men or a skin folded about the hips. The breech- — 


clout is frequently mentioned, but does not seem to have been aborig- 
inal. The sense of modesty as regards men was very slightly de- 


veloped. In many parts all men went wholly naked except when ~ 
the weather demanded protection, and among all groups old men — 


appear to have gone bare of clothing without feeling of impropriety. 
The women’s skirt was everywhere in two pieces. A smaller apron 
was worn in front. A larger back piece extended at least to the 
hips and frequently reached to meet the front apron. Its variable 
materials are of two classes, buckskin and plant fibers. Local supply 


was the chief factor in determining choice. If the garment was of — 


skin, its lower half was shit into fringes. This allowed much 
greater freedom of movement, but the decorative effect was also 
felt and made use of. Of vegetable fibers the most frequently 
used was the inner bark of trees shredded and gathered on a cord. 
Grass, tule, ordinary cordage, and wrapped thongs are also reported. 

As protection against rain and wind, both sexes donned a skin 
blanket. This was either thrown over the shoulders like a cape, 

804 


" KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 805 


or wrapped around the body, or passed over one arm and under the 
other and tied or secured in front. Sea-otter furs made the most 
prized cloak of this type where they could be obtained. Land 
otter, wildeat, deer, and almost every other kind of fur was not 
disdained. The woven blanket of strips of rabbit fur or bird skin 
sometimes rendered service in this connection, although primarily 
an article of bedding. 

There was not much sewing. It was performed with bone awls, 
apparently of the same types as used in basket coiling (Fig. 67, a-/). 
In the northwest, where no coiled baskets were made, awls were 
used to slit lamprey eels. 

The typical California moccasin, which prevailed over central and 
northwestern California, was an unsoled, single-piece, soft. shoe, 
with one seam up the front and another up the heel. This is the 
Yurok, Hupa, and Miwok type. The front seam is puckered, but 
sometimes with neat effect. The heel seam is sometimes made by a 
thong drawn through. The Lassik knew a variant form, in which 
a single seam from the little toe to the outer ankle sufficed. The 
draw string varied: the Miwok did without, the Lassik placed it 
in front of the ankle, the Yurok followed the curious device of hav- 
ing the thong, self-knotted inside, come out through the sole near 
its edge, and then lashing it over instep and heel back on itself. 
This is an arrangement that would have been distinctly unpractical 
on the side of wear had the moccasins been put on daily or for long 
journeys. Separate soles of rawhide are sometimes added, but old 
specimens are usually without, and the idea does not seem to be 
native. The moccasin comes rather higher than that of the Plains 
tribes, and appears not to have been worn with its ankle portion 
turned down. Journeys, war, wood gathering are the occasions 
mentioned for the donning of moccasins; as well as cold weather, 
when they were sometimes lined with grass. They were not worn 
about the village or on ordinary excursions. 

The Modoc and Klamath moccasin stands apart through eastern 
modification. It appears to have been without stiff sole, but con- 
tained three pieces: the sole and moccasin proper, reaching barely 
to the ankle; a U-shaped inset above the toes, prolonged into a 
loose tongue above; and a strip around the ankles, sewed to the 
edge of the main piece, and coming forward as far as the tongue. 
The main piece has the two seams customary in California. The 
ankle piece can be worn turned down or up; the draw string passes 
across the front of the tongue. The Atsugewi moccasin is also 
three-piece and therefore probably similar in plan. 

Southern California is a region of sandals; but the desert 
Cahuilla wore a high moccasin for travel in‘the mountains. The 


806 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 





























Fig. 67.—Bone awls. a, Pomo; b, Maidu; ec, d, e, Yokuts; f, Yuki; 
g, h, Miwok. 





KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 807 


hard sole curls over the thick but soft upper, and is sewed to it 
from the inside by an invisible stitch. The upper has its single 
seam at the back. The front is slit down to the top of the instep, and 
held together by a thong passed through the edges once or twice. 
The appearance of this moccasin is southwestern, and its structure 
nearly on the plan of a civilized shoe. It reaches well up on the calf. 

Moceasins and leggings in an openwork twining of tule fibers 
were used in northeastern California and among the Clear Lake 
Pomo as a device for holding 
a layer of soft grass against the 
foot for warmth. 

The skin legging is rarer 
than the moccasin. It was 
made for special use, such as 
travel through the snow. 

The only snowshoe used in 
California is a rather small 
oval hoop, across which from 
one to three thongs or grape- 
vines are tied longitudinally 
and transversely (Fig. 68, a-d). 
The nearest parallels are in 
prehistoric pieces from the cliff- 3 


ad 

dweller area (Fig. 68, @). 
In southern California the #7 “S WOODEN Hoop. 
sandal of the Southwest begins 
to appear. In its character- LASHINGS OF WEB. 
istic local form it consists of 
mescal fiber, untwisted bundles ~~~ ~~> TOE STRAP. 
of which are woven back and 
é 


forth across: 4 loop ed cord, Fic. 68.—The Californian snowshoe. a, Kla- 
forming a pad nearly an inch — math-Modoc, two-ply rawhide thong; 0, 








: Maidu, wrapped thong; c, Yurok, two-ply or 
thick. Cia k 62.) The Colo- four-ply grapevine; d, Nongatl, double thong, 
rado River tribes have aban- untwisted; e, prehistoric, Mesa Verde, Colo. 


doned the use of this form of sandal, if ever they possessed it. In 
recent years they have worn simple rawhide sandals; but their very 
slender opportunities to hunt render it doubtful whether this is a type 
that antedates the introduction of horses and cattle among them. The 
Chemehuevi are said to have worn true moccasins. There is no clear 
report of any sandal north of Tehachapi. 

The woman’s basketry cap, a brimless cone or dome, is generally 
considered a device intended to protect. against the chafe of the 
pack strap. That this interpretation is correct is shown by the 
fact that in the south the cap is worn chiefly when a load is to be 


808 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


carried; whereas in the north, where custom demands the wearing 
of the cap at all ordinary times, it is occasionally donned also by 
men when it becomes of service to them in the handling of a dip 
net which is steadied with the head. The woman’s cap is not, 
however, a generic California institution. In the greater part of the 
central area it is unknown. Its northern and southern forms are 
quite distinct. Rather surprisingly, their distribution shows them 
to be direct adjuncts or dependents of certain basketry techniques. 
The northern cap coincides with the Yerophylium technique and is 
therefore always made in overlaid twining. (Pls. 14, 70, 71, 73, 7.) 
The range of the southern cap appears to be identical with that of 
baskets made on a foundation of H'picampes grass, and is accord- 
ingly a coiled product. (Pls. 53, 78, d.) There can be no question 
that tribes following other basketry techniques possessed the ability 
to make caps; but they did not do so. It is curious that an object 
of evident utilitarian origin, more or less influenced by fashion, 
should have its distribution limited according to the prevalence of 
basketry techniques and materials. 3 

Two minor varieties of the cap occur. Among the Chemehuevi 
the somewhat peaked, diagonally twined cap of the Great Basin 
Shoshoneans was in use. It also occurs among the typical southern 
California tribes as far as the southern Diegueno by the side of the 
coiled cap. (PI. 73, d.) This is likely to have been a comparatively 
recent invasion from the Great Basin, since coexistence of two types 
side by side among the same people is a condition contrary to pre- 
valling ethnic precedent. | 

The Modoc employ but little overlay twining, and most of their 
caps are wholly in their regular technique of simple twining with 
tule materials. The Modoc cap averages considerably larger and is 
more distinctly flat topped than that of the other northern Cali- 
fornians. 

The hair net worn by men (pls. 55, a, 72) centers in the region of 
the Kuksu religion, but its distribution seems most accurately de- 
scribed as exclusive of that of the woman’s cap. Thus the Kato 
probably used the net and not the cap; the adjacent Wailaki reversed 
the situation. There are a few overlappings, as among the Yokuts, 
who employed both objects. The head net is also reported for the 
Shasta of Shasta Valley, but may have penetrated to them with the 
Ixuksu elements carried into this region in recent years by the 
ghost dance. 

Some tattooing (Figs. 45, 46) was practiced by most groups; 
facially more often than on the body, and more by women than by 
men. The most abundant patterns, taking in the whole cheeks, are 
found in the region of the Yuki and Wailaki; elsewhere the jaw is 
chiefly favored. 





Sat isi Ei — 


BULLETIN 7sorPLALeaza 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 





—— 2 





HUPA WOMAN AND MEN 





BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN, 78. PLAT Baw 





FROM BUENA VISTA LAKE INTERMENTS 


Above, head net and hair rolled in fashion of Lower Colorado tribes; below, cotton blanket, probably 
of Pueblo manufacture, with rude armholes punched out 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN: 78> PLATE: 73 


spr sips 


¢ 


x 
ee 


eotese 12> 





—-. «2 


BASKETS AND CAPS 


a, Chemehuevi carrying basket, diagonally twined; b, Luisefno, crude plain twining; c, Ca- 
huilla; d, Cahuilla caps, diagonally twined and coiled; e, Yurok tobacco baskets; 7, Yurok 
cap 





BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 74 












| RITUAL CULTS OF CALIFORNIA 
' Northwestern System of Dances of Wealth Display 
® LUQUEL 3 ccs Cine tat webs as Rk eee 
fullest Development: White Deerskin and Jumping Dances ¥XkLB 
OnE OGNGE OY = Ne a noe, bone cee eee Yj 
' Probable Origin amony the Vurok....---- -----—- 6 
J AnOWh-1Os0e /aaks Hotere = 2) Se oe ee x 
Central System of Secret Society and Kuksu Dances 
- PFOORGIC EIQUIS tate a. |. ee re 
‘ DEFIDITEI LEDOTT CMD ae. 28: 2 aoe eee 
Indicated Origin anong the Southern Wintun._- ey 
ADOW 10 CBS AORING SR. 0) > pe te ee x 
-6 Reported as a recent introduction..---------- 


R 
Southern System of Jimsonweed Initiation 






PrOCHOlETLUOITS Ee ee ~ = Ag le ee 
; Definitely, REPOrled =. 2. = ee eae ee Was 
Probable Origit and Soread. 2 ee eS ee 
| Chungichnich Form with Sand Parnrings—--— -.- 
5 Traditional Origin of Chungrchnich Form....... © 
. Traditional Spread of Chungichnich Form. .—--- <-~ 
| VOHOW TD LOL0E SACKING Bo) a ee ee 
’ Desert System of Dreamed Singings 
. FI OCAOLS LI DIITS Sea 2. See ee an 
DESI NIF ely ReEVOTT ERs. See ae ee ii233% 
Indicated Origin among the Mohave_-_ ~~ “Oo 











y, 
LN) 

AS 
\ 
. 


77/72 cease ae yet Se 
RET ABN RE ET 
SS SE ee 
SS ee Meee 


Ti 

. 

: 
sneeneed 
ny 





Se 
—- 


| 


ip 





OOVOOD 
reretere] 


?, 
rae 


rae 2, 





<2 





oO 
o, 
£5 





© 





soseee, 
CKRKS 
SKK 








groper] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 809 


HOUSES. 


The houses of native California are difficult to classify except in 
summary fashion. The extreme forms are well differentiated, but 
are all connected by transitions. The frame house of the Yurok and 


_ Hupa is a definite type whose affinity with the larger plank house 


of the North Pacific coast is sufficiently evident. Southward and 
eastward from the Yurok it becomes smaller and more rudely made. 
Bark begins to replace the split or hewn planks, and before long a 
conical form made wholly of bark slabs is attained. This in turn, 
if provided with a center post, need only be covered with soil to 
serve as the simple prototype of the large semisubterranean house 
of the Sacramento Valley. Again, the bark is often partly replaced 
by poles and sticks. If these are covered with thatch we have a 
simple form of the conical brush house. This in turn also attains 
the gabled, rectangular form of the plank house, as with the Ca- 
huilla, or again is made oval, or round and domed, as among the 
Pomo and Chumash. In the latter case it differs from the semisub- 
terranean house only in the lack of earth covering and its consequent 
lighter construction. A. further transition is afforded by the fact 
that the earth house almost invariably has foliage of some kind as its 
topmost covering immediately below the dirt surfacing of the roof. 
The brush house is often dug out a short distance. The Chumash 
threw the earth from the excavation up against the walls for a 
few feet. The earth-covered house proper is only a little deeper 
and has the covering extending all the way over. 

Neither shape, skeleton structure, nor materials, therefore, offer 
a satisfactory basis for the distinction of sharp types. A classi- 
fication that would be of value would have to rest on minute analysis, 
preceded in many cases by more accurate information than is now 
available. Among numerous tribes the old types of houses have 
long since gone out of use. Among most of the remainder they have 
been at least partly modified, and the majority of early descriptions 
are too summary to be of great service. 

Nor does a consideration of distributions hold much present prom- 
ise of fuller understanding. The earth-covered house was made 
from the Modoc, Achomawi, and Yuki south to the Miwok; then 
again in the extreme part of southern California. The bark house 
is found chiefly among mountain tribes, but no very close correla- 
tion with topography appears. The well-fashioned plank house 
is definitely to be associated with the northwestern culture. The 
earth lodge of the Sacramento Valley region is evidently connected 
with the Kuksu religion on one side, since the southward distribu- 
tion of the two appears to coincide. Northward, however, this 
form of house extends considerably beyond the cult. The southern ~ 


810 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULL, 78 


earth lodge probably has the center of its distribution among the 
Colorado River tribes. It appears to have penetrated somewhat 
farther west than the religious influences emanating from this dis- 
trict. From the Chumash to the southern valley Yokuts communal 
houses were in use. But the larger specimens of the earth lodges 
of the Sacramento Valley district must also have sheltered more 
people than we reckon to a family, and the same is definitely stated 
for the thatched houses of some of the Pomo. 

As regards outward affiliations, there is the same uncertainty. 
Are we to reckon the semisubterranean house of interior British 
Columbia as one in type with the Navaho hogan simply because 
the two are roofed with earth; or is the hogan essentially of the 
type of the Plains tepee by reason of its conical shape and tripod 
foundation? Until such broader problems are answered, it would 
probably be premature to interpret the history of dwellings in 
aboriginal California.? 

Views and plans of dwellings and dance houses will be found in 
Plates 9, 11, 12, 18, 46, 56, and Figures 4, 19, 23, 24, 25, 35, 39, 63. 

The separate hut for the woman in her periodical illness seems 
to be a northern Californian institution. Information is irregular, 
but the groups who affirm that they formerly erected such structures 
are the Yurok, Karok, Hupa; probably the other northwestern 
tribes; the Shasta and Modoc; the northern Maidu; and apparently 
the Pomo. The Yuki and Sinkyone deny the practice, but their ~ 
position renders unconfirmed negative statements somewhat doubt- 
ful. South of the Golden Gate there is no clear reference to sep- 
arate huts for women except among the Luisefio, and the Yokuts 
specifically state that they did not build them. 


SWEAT HOUSES. 


The sweat house is a typical California institution, if there is any; 
yet, characteristically, it was not in universal use. The Colorado 
River tribes lacked it or any substitute; and a want of reference to 
the structure among a series of Shoshonean desert tribes—the east- 
ernmost Cahuilla, the Chemehuevi, the eastern Mono—indicates that 
‘these must perhaps be joined to the agricultural Yumans. The non- 
use of the sweat house among the Yuma and Mohave appears to be 
of considerable significance, since on their other side the edifice 
was made by some of the nomadic tribes of the Southwest, and—as 
the kiva or estufa—a related type is important among the Pueblos. 

The Californian sweat house is an institution of daily, not occa- 
sional, service. It isa habit, not a medicinal treatment; it enters into 


1A searching analysis of house types in California has recently been made by F. 
Krause (see bibliography). 


KROBBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA S11 


ceremony indirectly rather than specifically as a means of purifica- 


tion. It is the assembly of the men and often their sleeping quar- 
ters. It thus comes to fulfill many of the functions of a club; but is 
not to be construed as such, since ownership or kinship or friendship, 
not membership, determines admission; and there is no act of initia- 
tion. 

In line with these characteristics, the California sweat house is a 
structure, not a few boughs over which a blanket is thrown before 
entry is made. It is earth covered, except in the northwest, where 
an abundance of planks roof a deep pit. Consequently, a substantial 
construction is requisite. A center post is often, or always, set up; 
logs, at any rate, have to be employed. 

Warmth was produced directly by fire, never by steam generated 
on heated stones. While the smoke was densest the inmates lay close 
to the floor. Women were never admitted except here and there on 
special ceremonial occasions, when sweating was a subsidiary feature 
or wholly omitted. 

In general, the sweat house was somewhat smaller than the living 
house. This holds of the northwestern tribes, the Yokuts, and those 
of southern California. Inthe region of the Kuksu religion the dance 
house or ceremonial assembly chamber, built much like the sweat house 
elsewhere but on a much ampler scale, has come to be known as 
“sweat house” to both Indians and whites. It is not certain how 
far this large structure really replaced the true sweat house in and 
about the Sacramento Valley. ‘The two seem generally to have 
existed side by side, as is known to have been the case among the 
Pomo and Patwin, but the smaller edifice has lost its proper identity 
in description under the unfortunate looseness of nomenclature; 
much as among tribes like the Yana and Achomawi the Indians 
now speak of “sweat houses” inhabited by families. In these latter 
cases, however, there is some indication that the earth-covered dwell- 
ings were on occasion used for sweating. Some careful, because be- 
lated, inquiries remain to be made. 

In extreme northeastern California the Plains form of sweat 
house has obtained a foothold: a small dome of willows covered with 
mats, large enough for a few men to sit up in, heated by steam. 
This is established for the Modoc, while less complete descriptions 
suggest the same for the Shasta, Achomawi, and Washo; but among 
at least some of these groups the steam sweat house is of modern in- 
troduction. 

It is rather notable that there is no indication of any fusion 
or hybridization of the Californian and the eastern types of sweat 
house, even in the region where they border. This condition is 
typical of cultural phenomena in native America, and probably 


812 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 — 


throughout the world, as soon as they are viewed distributionally 
rather than in their developmental sequence. Civilizations shade by 
endless transitions. Their elements wander randomly, as it seems, 
with little reference to the circumstances of their origin. But 


analogous or logically equivalent elements rigidly exclude each other 


more often than they intergrade. 
Sweat houses are illustrated in Plates 10, 13, 14, 56, 60, and Fig- 
ures 5, 6. : 
BOATS. 


Native California used two types of boat—the wooden canoe 
and the tule balsa or shaped raft of rushes. Their use tends to be 
exclusive without becoming fully so. Their distribution is deter- 
mined by cultural far more than by physiographic factors. 

The northwestern canoe was employed on Humboldt Bay and 
along the open, rocky coast, but its shape as well as range indicate 
it to have been devised for river use. It was dug out of half a red- 
wood log, was square ended, round bottomed, of heavy proportions, 
but nicely finished with recurved gunwales and carved-out seat. A 
similar if not identical boat was used on the southern Oregon coast 
beyond the range of the redwood tree. The southern limit is marked 
by Cape Mendocino and the navigable waters of Eel River. Inland, 
the Karok and Hupa regularly used canoes of Yurok manufacture, 
and occasional examples were sold as far upstream as the Shasta. 
This boat is a river type, only secondarily used on the ocean, and 
evidently a local specialization of an old North Pacific coast form. 
(Pls. 3, 5, 18, 15.) 

The southern California canoe was a seagoing vessel, indispensa- 
ble to the Shoshonean and Chumash islanders of the Santa Barbara 
group, and considerably employed also by the mainlanders of the 


shore from Point Concepcion and probably San Luis Obispo as far — 


south as San Diego. It was usually of lashed planks, either be- 
cause solid timber for dugouts was scarce, or because dexterity in 


woodworking rendered such a construction less laborious. The dug- | 


out form seems also to have been known, and perhaps prevailed 
among the manually clumsier tribes toward San Diego. A double- 
bladed paddle was used. The southern California canoe was mari- 
time. There were no navigable rivers, and on the few sheltered bays 
and lagoons the balsa was sufficient and generally employed. The 


ends of this canoe seem to have been sharp and raised and the beam — 


narrow. It is not certain whether the Chumash canoe was built en- 
tirely.of planks or was a dugout with planks added. 

A third type of canoe had a limited distribution in favorable 
localities in northern California, ranging about as far as overlay 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF GALIFORNIA 813 


twining, and evidently formed part of the technological culture 
characteristic of this region. A historical community of origin with 
the northwestern redwood canoe is indubitable, but it is less clear 
whether the northeastern canoe represents the original type from 
which the northwestern developed as a specialization, or whether the 
latter, originating under northern influences, gave rise to the north- 
eastern form as a marginal deterioration. This northeastern canoe 
was of pine or fir, burned and chopped out, narrow of beam, without 
definite shape. It was made by the Shasta, Modoc. Atsugewi, Acho- 
mawi, and northernmost Maidu. 

The balsa has a nearly universal distribution, so far as drainage 
conditions permit, the only groups that wholly rejected it in favor 
of the canoe being the group of typical northwestern tribes. It is 
reported from the Modoc, Achomawi, Northern Paiute, Wintun, 
Maidu, Pomo, Costanoans, Yokuts, Tiibatulabal, Luisefio, Dieguefo, 
and Colorado River tribes. For river crossing, a bundle or group 
of bundles of tules.sufficed. On large lakes and bays well-shaped 
vessels, with pointed and elevated prow and raised sides, were often 
navigated with paddles. The balsa does not appear to have been in 
use north of California, but it was known in Mexico, and probably 
has a continuous distribution, except for gaps due to negative en- 
vironment, into South America. 

Except for Drake’s reference to boats among the Coast Miwok— 
perhaps to be understood as balsas—there is no evidence that any 
form of boat was in use on the ocean from below Monterey Bay to 
Cape Mendocino. A few logs were occasionally lashed into a rude 
raft when seal or mussel rocks were to be visited. 

A number of interior groups ferried goods, children, and perhaps 
even women across swollen streams in large baskets or—in the 
south—pots. Swimming men propelled and guarded the little ves- 
sels. This custom is established for the Yuki, Yokuts, and Mohave, 
and was no doubt participated in by other tribes. 

The rush raft was most often poled; but in the deep waters of 
San Francisco Bay the Costanoans propelled it with the same double- 


bladed paddle that was used with the canoe of the coast and archi- 


pelago of southern California, whence the less skillful northerners 
may be assumed to have derived the implement. The double paddle 
is extremely rare in America; like the “ Mediterranean” type of 
arrow release, it appears to have been recorded only from the Es- 
kimo. The Pomo of Clear Lake used a single paddle with short, 
broad blade. The northwestern paddle is long, narrow, and heavy, 
having to serve both as “pole” and as “oar”; that of the Klamath 
and Modoc, whose waters were currentless, is of more normal shape. 
(Pl. 67, f-2.) Whether the southerners employed the one-bladed 


814 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


paddle in addition to the double-ended one does not seem to be 
known. 
FOOD. 


Plants appear to have furnished a larger part of the diet than 
animals in almost all parts of California. Fish and mollusks were 
probably consumed in larger quantities than flesh in regions stocked 
with them, especially the salmon-carrying rivers of northern Cali- 
fornia, the Santa Barbara Archipelago, Clear and Klamath Lakes, 
the larger bays like that of San Francisco, and in a measure the 
immediate coast everywhere. Of game, the rodents, from jack rab- 
bits to gophers, together with birds, evidently furnished more food 
the seasons through than deer and other ruminants. Foods ‘re- 
jected varied locally, of course, but in general northern California 
looked upon dog and reptile flesh as poisonous, but did not scruple 
to eat earthworms, grasshoppers, hymenopterous larvee, certain spe- 
cies of caterpillars, and similar invertebrates when they could be 
gathered in sufficient masses to make their consumption worth while. 
In south central California the taboos against dogs and reptiles were 
less universal, and south of Tehachapi and east. of the Sierra snakes 
and lizards were eaten by a good many groups. In much the greater 
part of the State acorns constituted a larger part of the diet than 
any other food, and a lengthy though simple technique of gathering, 
hulling, drying, grinding, sifting, leaching, and cooking had been 
devised. Many other seeds and fruits were treated similarly; buck- 
eyes (Aesculus), for instance, and the seeds of various grasses, sages, 
composite, and the like. These were whipped into receptacles 
with seed beaters, which varied only in detail from one end of the 
State to the other (Pls. 24, 6, 29, 50; Fig. 57); collected in close- 
woven or glue-smeared conical: baskets (Pl. 73, a; contrast the open- 
work basket for acorns and loads, Pls. 9, 14, 23, 6); parched with 
coals in trays; winnowed by tossing in trays; ground; and then 
eaten either dry, or, like acorn meal, as lumps of unleavened bread 
baked by the open fire or as boiled gruel. Leaching was on sand 
which drained off the hot water. In the north, the meal was spread 
directly on the sand (PI. 14); in central California fir leaves were 
often interposed; in the south, also an openwork basket. Pulveriza- 
tion was either by pounding in a mortar or rubbing on the undressed 
metate or oval grinding slab (Pls. 16, 44, 45, 60, 66; Figs. 27, 58). 
The history and interrelations of the various types of these imple- 
ments is somewhat intricate and has been discussed in the chapters 
on the Maidu, Chumash, Luisefio, and Cahuilla. The grinding 
process had become a well-established cultural pattern. Besides 
seeds, dried salmon, vertebree, whole small rodents, berries, and fruits 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF TNDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 815 


were often pulverized, especially for storage. In analogous manner, 
other processes of the acorn and seed preparation complex were ex- 
tended to various foods: leaching to wild plums, parching to grass- 
hoppers and caterpillars (Pl. 61). This complex clearly dominates 
the food habits of California. 

Where the acorn fails, other foods are treated similarly, though 
sometimes with considerable specialization of process; the mesquite 
bean in the southern desert, the pifion nut east of the Sierra, the 
water lily in the Klamath-Modoc Lakes. 

Agriculture had only touched one periphery of the State, the 
Colorado River bottom, although the seed-using and fairly sedentary 
habits of virtually all the other tribes would have made possible 
the taking over of the art with relatively little change of mode of 
life. Evidently planting is a more fundamental innovation to peo- 
ple used to depending on nature than it seems to those who have 
once acquired the practice. Moreover, in most of California the 
food supply, largely through its variety, was reasonably adequate, 
in spite of a rather heavy population—probably not far from one 
person to the square mile on the average. In most parts of the 
State there is little mention of famines. 

More detailed reflections on the food quest of the California 
Indian have been expressed in the last of the chapters on the Yokuts. 


FISHING. 


In fresh-water. and still bays fish are more successfully taken by 
rude people with nets or weirs or poison than by line. Fishhooks 
are therefore employed only occasionally. This is the case in Cali- 
fornia. There was probably no group that was ignorant of the 
fishhook, but one hears little of its use. The one exception was on 
the southern coast, where deep water appears to have restricted the 
use of nets. The prevalent hook in this region was an unbarbed or 
sometimes barbed piece of haliotis cut almost into a circle. Else- 
where the hook was in use chiefly for fishing in the larger lakes, and 
in the higher mountains where trout were taken. It consisted most 
commonly of a wooden shank with a pointed bone lashed backward 
on it at an angle of 45° or less. Sometimes two such bones projected 
on opposite sides (Fig. 28). The gorget, a straight bone sharpened 
on both ends and suspended from a string in its middle, is reported 
from the Modoc, but is likely to have had a wider distribution. 

The harpoon was probably known to every group in California 
whose territory contained sufficient bodies of water. The Colorado 
River tribes provide the only known exception. The type of harpoon 
is everywhere substantially identical. The shaft, being intended for 


3625 °—25 03 





816 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (Buu. 78 


thrusting and not throwing, is long and slender. The foreshaft is 
usually double, one prong being slightly longer than the other, pre- 
sumably because the stroke was most commonly delivered at an angle 
to the bottom. The toggle heads are small, of bone and wood tightly 
wrapped with string and pitched. The socket is most frequently in 
or near the end. The string leaving the head at or near the middle, 
the socket end serves as a barb. This rather rude device is sufficient 
because the harpoon is rarely employed for game larger than a 
salmon. The lines are short and fastened to the shaft. 

A heavier harpoon which was perhaps hurled was used by the 
northwestern coast tribes for taking sea lions. Only the heads have 
been preserved. These are of bone or antler and possess a true barb 
as well as socket. A preserved Chumash harpoon has a detachable 
wooden foreshaft tipped with a flint blade and lashed-on bone barb. 
The foreshaft itself serves as toggle. 

There is one record of the spear thrower; also a specimen 
from the Chumash. This is of wood and is remarkable for its exces- 
sively short, broad, and unwieldy shape. It is probably authentic, 
but its entire uniqueness renders caution necessary in drawing infer- 
ences from this solitary example. 

The seine for surrounding fish, the stretched gill net, and the dip 
net were known to all the Californians, although many groups had 
occasion to use only certain varieties. The form and size of the dip 
net, of course, differed according as it was used in large or small 
streams, in the surf, or in standing waters. The two commonest 
torms of frame were a semicircular hoop bisected by the handle, and 
two long diverging poles crossed and braced in the angle (Pls. 
4, 7). <A kite-shaped frame was sometimes emnloyed for scoop- 
ing (Pl. 6). Nets without poles had floats of wood or tule stems. 
The sinkers were grooved or nicked stones, the commonest type of 
all being a flat beach pebble notched on opposite edges to prevent 
the string slipping. Perforated stones are known to have been 
used as net sinkers only in northwestern California, and even there 
they occur by the side of the grooved variety. They are usually 
distinguishable without difficulty from the perforated stone of south- 
ern and central California which served as a digging stick weight, 
by the fact that their perforation is normally not in the middle 
(Fig. 7). The northwesterners also availed themselves of naturally 
perforated stones. 

Fish weirs were used chiefly in northern California, where the 
streams carry salmon. In the northwest such “dams” sometimes 
became the occasion of important rituals, Fish traps are shown in 
Plates 83 and 59. 


K ROEBER |} HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 817 


Fish poison was fed into small streams and pools by a number of 
tribes: the Pomo, Yana, Yokuts, and Luiseno are mentioned, and 
indicate that the practice was widely spread. Buckeyes, the squirt- 
ing cucumber, and soaproot (Chlorogalum) as well as probably other 
plants were employed. 


HUNTING. 


Among hunting devices, the bow was the most important. Deer 
were frequently approached by the hunter covering himself with 
a deer hide and putting on his own head a stuffed deer head (PI. 8; 
Fig. 31). This method seems not to have been reported from the 
south. This area also used snares little, if at all; whereas in the 
northwest deer were perhaps snared more often than shot. Dogs 
seem to have been used in hunting chiefly in northern California. 
Driving large game into a brush fence or over a cliff was a rather 
unusual practice, though specifically reported from the Mountain 
Maidu. The surrounding of game—rabbits, antelope, occasionally. 
deer or elk—was most practicable in relatively open country and is 
therefore reported chiefly from the southern two-thirds of the State. 
Rabbits were frequently driven into long, low, loose nets. Through 
southern California a curved throwing stick of southwestern type, of 
boomerang shape but unwarped (Fig. 55), was used to kill rabbits, 
other small game, and perhaps birds. Traps, other than snares for 
deer, quail, and pigeons, were little developed. Deadfalls are occa- 
sionally reported for rodents. The Achomawi caught large game in 
concealed pits. 


BOWS. 


The bow was self, long, and narrow in the south, sinew-backed, 
somewhat shorter, thin, and flat in northern and central California. 
Of course, light unbacked bows were used for small game and by 
boys everywhere. The material varied locally. In the northwest 
the bow is of yew and becomes shorter. and broader than anywhere 
else; the wood is pared down to little greater thickness than the 
sinew, the edge is sharp, and the grip much pinched. Good bows, of 
course, quickly went out of use before firearms, so that few examples 
have been preserved except low-grade modern pieces intended for 
birds and rabbits. But sinew backing is reported southward to the 
Yokuts and Koso. The Yokuts name of the Kitanemuk meant 
“large: bows.” This group, therefore, is likely to have used the 
southern self bow. On the other hand, the short Chemehuevi bow 
was sinew backed, and a backed Chumash specimen has been pre- 
served, 


S18 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The following are measurements of the California bows in one 
museum: 

















ni Melle 
Tan” | siteenes | sixteen 
Sinew-backed: | 
Yard) pees Mets Te AT os DAN. OMS Mees 32-52 | 122-40 5-9 
Tolowa;( 2a sets ope | recta oe a) ae eee 39 1 24-30 9-10 
VebivOy ur Uceu vera eye ttee ls mp bia 44-54 | 128-8 10-12 
Northerm:Waintun?:( 2) 2 tee. er ee ne a 44-45 22-24 11-12 
MiwGlkitt Lise: ears scans acest. ete cen ees Ae ae 44 22 14 
Self: ? 
Kiamath-Modoei(3)s Sect eat  ek dnere 40-43 | 1 25-35 9-14 
PomO!L)t 5 iit SE Soe. Sole ee ee ee 8 BN 56 1 20 13 
i Okintet (8).2 3: tet eet ee ae eee ss 40-56 19-24 8-14 
Twoiseho Ch eet es OS ieee fie pele See 64 19 16 
Cahuilla (6). bes). set te ailate peewage 52-56 17-20; ated 
Mohave. (7): moss ae ate Sister nett rom, 53-70 18209 0b te Spey 











1 Grip pinched in from this maximum. 


The arrow was normally two-pieced, its head most frequently of 
obsidian, which works finer and smaller as well as sharper than flint. 
The butt end of the point was frequently notched for a sinew lashing. 
The foreshaft was generally set into the main shaft. For small game 
shot at close range one-piece arrows frequently sufficed; the stone 
head was also omitted or replaced by a blunted wooden point. Cane 
was used as main shaft wherever it was available, but nowhere 
exclusively. Irom the Yokuts south to the Yuma the typical fight- 
ing arrow was a simple shaft without head, quantity rather than 
effectiveness of ammunition appearing the desideratum. The same 
iribes, however, often tipped their deer arrows with stone. 

The arrow release has been described for but three groups. None 
of these holds agree, and two are virtually new for America. The 
Maidu release is the primary one, the Yahi a modification of the 
Mongolian, the Luiseno the pure Mediterranean, hitherto attributed 
in the New World only to the Eskimo. This remarkable variety in 
detail is not wholly uncharacteristic of California. 

The arrow, in the north, was bent straight in a hole cut through 
a slab of wood (Pl. 16), and polished with Hyudsetum. or -in two 
grooved pieces of sandstone. The southern straightener and pol- 
isher is determined by the cane arrow: a transversely grooved 
rectangle of steatite set by the fire. Among pottery-making tribes 
clay might replace steatite. This southwestern form extends north 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 819 


to the Yokuts and Mono (PI. 49); the Maidu possessed it in some- 
what aberrant form. 


TEXTILES. 


Basketry is unquestionably the most developed art in California. 
It is of interest that the principle which chiefly emerges in connec- 
tion with the art is that its growth has been in the form of what 
ethnologists are wont to name “complexes.” That is to say, mate- 
rials, processes, forms, and uses which abstractly considered bear 
no intrinsic relation to one another, or only a slight relation, are in 
fact bound up ina unit. A series of tribes employs the same forms, 
substances, and techniques; when a group is reached which abandons 
one of these factors, it abandons most or all of them, and follows a 
characteristically different art. 

This is particularly clear of the basketry of northernmost Cali- 
fornia. At first sight this art seems to be distinguished chiefly by 
the outstanding fact that it knows no coiling processes. Its southern 
line of demarcation runs between the Sinkyone and Kato, the Wailaki 
and Yuki, through Wintun and Yana territory at points that have 
not been determined with certainty, and between the Achomawi (or 
more strictly the Atsugewi) and the Maidu. Northward the art ex- 
tends far into Oregon west of the Cascades. The Klamath and 
Modoe do not fully adhere to it, although their industry is a re- 
lated one. 

Further examination reveals a considerable number of other traits 
that are universally followed by the tribes in the region in question. 
Wicker and checker work, which have no connection with coiling, 
are also not made. Of the numerous varieties of twining, the plain 
weave is substantially the only one employed, with some use of sub- 
sidiary strengthening in narrow belts of three-strand twining. The 
diagonal twine is known, but practiced only sporadically. Decora- 
tion is wholly in overlay twining, each weft strand being faced with 
a colored one. The materials of this basketry are hazel shoots for 
warp, conifer roots for weft, and Yerophyllum, Adiantum, and alder- 
dyed Woodwardia for white, black, and red patterns, respectively. 
All of these plants appear to grow some distance south of the range 
of this basketry. At least in places they are undoubtedly sufficiently 
abundant to serve as materials. The limit of distribution of the art 
can therefore not be ascribed to botanical causes. Similarly, there 
is no reason why people should stop wearing basketry caps and 
pounding acorns in a basketry hopper (PI. 24, a) because their 
materials or techniques are different. That they do evidences the 
strength of this particular complex. (Compare Pls. 23. 24, 73, e, 7.) 

In southern California a definite type of basket ware is adhered to 
with nearly equal rigidity. The typical technique here is coiling, 


820 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (Buty. 78 


normally on a foundation of straws of /'picampes grass. The sew- 
ing material is sumac or Juncus. 'Twined ware is subsidiary, is 
roughly done (PI. 73, 6), and is made wholly in Juncus, a material 
that, used alone, forbids any considerable degree of finish. Here 
again the basketry cap (Pl. 73, d) and the mortar hopper (PI. 44, a) 
appear, but are limited toward the north by the range of the tech- 
nique. (Compare Pls. 55, ¢, e; 73, ¢.) 

From southern California proper this basketry has penetrated to 
the southerly Yokuts and the adjacent Shoshonean tribes. Chumash 
ware also belongs to the same type, although it generally substitutes 
Juncus for the Fpicampes grass. Both the Chumash and the Yokuts 
and Shoshoneans in and north of the Tehachapi Mountains have de- 
veloped one characteristic form not found in southern California 
proper—the shouldered basket with constricted neck. This is rep- 
resented in the south by a simpler form—a small globular basket. 
The extreme development of the “ bottle neck” type is found among 
the Yokuts, Kawaiisu, and Tiibatulabal. The Chumash on the one 
side, and the willow-using Chemehuevi on the other, round the shoul- 
ders of these vessels so as to show a partial transition to the southern 
California prototype. (Compare Yokuts, Pl. 50; Mono and Ka- 
walisu, Pl. 55, d, e; Chumash, Pls. 50, 52, 53, 54; Chemehuevi, Pls. 
59, 73, a.) | 

The Colorado River tribes slight basketry to a very unusual 
degree. (Pl. 55, b.) They make a few very rude trays and fish 
traps. The majority of their baskets they seem always to have 
acquired in trade from their neighbors. Their neglect of the art 
recalls its similar low condition among the Pueblos, but is even more 
pronounced. Pottery making and agriculture are perhaps the influ- 
ences most specifically responsible; although it is observable that 
the river tribes show httle skill or interest in anything mechanical 
or economic. 

Central California from the Yuki and Maidu to the Yokuts is an 
area in which coiling and twining occur side by side. There were 
probably more twined baskets made but they were manufactured 
for rougher usage and were generally undecorated. Show pieces 
were almost invariably coiled. The characteristic technique is there- 
fore perhaps coiling, but the two processes were nearly in balance. 
The materials are not as uniform as in the north or south. The most 
characteristic plant is perhaps the redbud, Cercis occidentalis, which 
furnished the red and often the white surface in coiling and twining. 
Willows are also widely used; and Carea root fibers provide the 
Pomo and Yokuts with a splendid material for weft and especially 
wrapping. Dogwood, maple, hazel, pine, tule, and grape are also 
employed, some rather consistently by a single group or two, others 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA $21 


only occasionally, but over a wide area. The most common tech- 
niques are coiling with triple foundation and plain twining. Diag- 
onal twining is, however, more or less followed, and lattice twining, 
single-rod coiling, and wickerwork all have a local distribution, 
including in each case the Pomo. Twining with overlay is never 
practiced. Forms are variable, but not to any notable extent. Oval 
baskets were made in the Pomo region, but there was no shape of 
as pronounced a character as the southern Yokuts bottle neck. 

It is rather clear that a number of local basketry arts developed 
in central California on this generic foundation. The most complex 
of these is without any question that of the Pomo and their immediate 
neighbors. The many specialties and peculiarities of this art have 
been set forth in detail in the account of this group. It may only 
be added that the Pomo appear to be the only central Californian 
group that habitually makes twined baskets with patterns. 

Another definite center of development includes the Washo and 
in some measure the Miwok. Both of these groups practiced single- 
rod coiling and have evolved a distinctive style of ornamentation 
characterized by a certain lightness of decorative touch. (Pls. 76, 
55, f.) This ware, however, shades off to the south into Yokuts 
basketry with its southern California affiliations, and to the north 
into Maidu ware. 

The latter in its pure form is readily distinguished from Miwok 
as well as Pomo basketry, but presents few positive peculiarities. 
Costanoan and Salinan baskets have perished so completely that no 
very definite idea of them can be formed. It is doubtful whether 
a marked local type prevailed in this region. The Yuki, wedged 
in between the Pomo and tribes that followed the northern Calli- 
fornia twining, make a ware which in spite of its simplicity can not 
be confounded with that of any other group in California (PI. 75) ; 
this in spite of the general lack of advancement which pervades 
their culture. 

It thus appears that we may infer that a single style and type 
underlies the basketry of the whole of central California; that this 
has undergone numerous local diversifications due only in part to 
the materials available, and extending on the other hand into its 
purely decorative aspects; and that the most active and proficient of 
these local superstructures was that for which the Pomo were respon- 
sible, their creation, however, differing only in degree from those 
which resulted from analogous but less active impulses elsewhere. 
In central California, therefore, a basic basketry complex is less 
rigidly developed, or preserved, than in either the north or the south. 
The flora being substantially uniform through central California, 


822 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


differences in the use of materials are generally in themselves sig- 
nificant of incipient national diversifications. 

The Modoc constitute a subtype within the area of twining. They 
overlay chiefly when they use XYerophyllum or quills, it would seem ; 
and the majority of their baskets, which are composed of tule fibers 
of several shades, are in plain twining. But the shapes and patterns 
of their ware have clearly been developed under the influences that 
guide the art of the surrounding tribes, and the cap and hopper oc- 
cur among them. it 

It is difficult to decide whether the Modoc art is to be interpreted 
as a form of the primitive style on which the modern overlaying 
complex is based, or as an adaptation of the latter to a new and 
widely useful material. The question can scarcely be answered with- 
out full consideration of the basketry of all Oregon. 

The awl with which coiled basketry was made, and with which 
such little sewing as existed was performed, was usually of bone, 
in the desert south also of spines. Figure 67 shows a series of 
central Californian forms. Among the northwestern tribes, who 
did not coil, a blunter awl survives in use for dressing lamprey eels; 
and buckskin was presumably sewn with sharp specimens. 

Cloth is unknown in aboriginal California. Rush mats are twined 
like baskets or sewn. The nearest approach to a loom is a pair of 
sticks on which a long cord of rabbit fur is wound back and forth to 
be made into a blanket by the intertwining of a weft of the same 
material, or of two cords. The Maidu, perhaps the Chumash, and 
therefore probably other tribes also, made similar blankets of strips 
of goose or duck skin, and in other cases of feather-wrapped cords. 
The rabbit-skin blanket has, of course, a wide distribution outside of 
California; that of bird skins may have been devised locally. 


POTTERY. 


The distribution of pottery in California reveals this art as 
due to southwestern influences. - It 1s practiced by the Yuma, Mo- 
have, and other Colorado River tribes; sporadically by the Cheme- 
huev1; more regularly by the Diegueno, Luiseno, Cupefio, Serrano, 
and Cahuilla; probably not by the Gabrielino: with the Juanefo 
status unknown. 

A second area, in which cruder pottery is made (PI. 51), lies to 
the north, apparently disconnected from the southern California 
one. In this district live the southern and perhaps central Yokuts, 
the Tiibatulabal, and the western Mono. This ware seems to be 
pieced with the fingers; it is irregular, undecorated, and the skill to 
construct vessels of any size was wanting. 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BUELETING78°° PLATE. #5 


AR AA BILL, 
AA WERESRREA Aaa ta ERAS: 
ike * SAAR ARS Beane dns 
AGA saa a 


ER ORE tea RR aes coa 


Bree ee 





YUKI BASKETS 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATES 





MIWOK COILED BASKETS, TRIPLE AND 
SINGLE ROD FOUNDATION 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULEETING?S. “PLATES ¢7 





PATWIN HESI DANCERS 





PATWIN HESI APPROACH, WITH 
FLAG, INFLUENCED BY MOD- 
ERN GHOST DANCE CULT 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN :78 --PEAMESZS 





YAHI SHOOTING IN HUNTER’S POSITION, 
AND DRILLING FIRE 


Kropnerk] | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA $23 


The southern Californians tempered with crushed rock, employed 
a clay that baked dull reddish, laid it on in thin spiral coils, and 
smoothed it between a wooden paddle and a pebble. They never 
corrugated, and no slipped ware has been found in the region; but 
there is some variety of forms—bowls, jars, pots, oval plates, short- 
handled spoons, asymmetrical and multiple-mouthed jars, pipes 
executed in a considerable range of sizes. Designs were solely in 
yellow ocher, and frequently omitted. They consisted chiefly of 
patterns of angular lines, with or without the corners filled in. 
Curves, solidly painted areas, and semirealistic figures were not 
attempted. (Pls. 49, 62, 68; Figs. 64, 65.) The ware is light, brittle, 
and porous. The art during the last generation has been best pre- 
served among the Mohave, and seems at all times to have attained 
greatest development on the Colorado River. But the coast. tribes 
may have been substantial equals before they came under Caucasian 
influence; except that they decorated less. An affinity with 
Pima and Seri ware is unmistakable; but it is far from attaining 
identity. There is no direct or specific resemblance to any present 
or ancient Pueblo pottery; but rather close parallels in prehistoric 
ware from the Papago and Gila country. ‘This argues either a local 
origination of Colorado River pottery under generic southwestern 
influence or a more direct stimulus or importation from Sonora. 
Potsherds indistinguishable from the modern ware occur on the sur- 
face of ancient sites on the Diegueno coast. Whether they extend to 
the earlier deposits remains to be ascertained; but they testify that 
the art is not an entirely recent one. Pottery was not established in 
California as a direct adjunct of agriculture, its distribution being 
considerably greater. 





MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. 


The rattle is of three kinds in the greater part of California: the 
split clap stick for dancing (Pls. 67, ¢, 77), the gravel-filled cocoon — 
bunch for shamanistic practices and ritualistic singing (Fig. 37; 
Pl. 67, d), and the bundle of deer hoofs for the adolescent girl. 
South of Tehachapi these are mostly replaced by a single form, whose 
material varies between turtle shell and gourd according to region. 
The northwest does not use rattles except in the adolescence cere- 
mony ; in which some tribes, such as the Hupa and Sinkyone, employ 
a modification of the clap stick, the Karok, Tolowa, and others the 
more general deer hoofs. The latter are known as far south as the 
Dieguefio, but seem to be associated with hunting or mourning cere- 
monies at this end of the State. The clap stick penetrated south to 
the Gabrielino. 


824 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY _ Taonnaas 


The notched scraper or musical rasp has been reported only from 
the Salinans. 

California is a drumless region, except in the area of the Kuksu 
cult. There a foot drum, a segment of a large cylinder of wood, is 
set at the back of the dance house, and held very sacred. Various 
substitutes exist elsewhere: the Yurok beat a board with a paddle, the 
Maidu and Diegueno strike or rub baskets, the Mohave do the same 
before a resounding jar. But these accompaniments belong to gam- 
bling or shamans’ or narrative songs; none of the substitutes replace 
dance drums. 

Whistles of bone or cane are employed far more frequently in 
dances than the drum by practically all tribes, in fact, although 
of course in quite different connections. 

The bull-roarer has been reported from several scattered tribes. 
(Pl. 44, df.) As might be expected, its function is religious, but 
is not well known and seems to have varied. ‘To the Luiseno it was 
a summons. It was not used by the northwestern nations. 

The only true musical instrument in our sense is the flute, an open 
reedless tube, blown across the edge of one end. Almost always it 
has four holes, often more or less grouped in two pairs, and is inno- 
cent of any definite scale. It is played for self-recreation and court- 
ship. (PI. 438.) The Mohave alone know a reeded flageolet. 

The musical or resonant bow, a sort of jew’s-harp, the only 
stringed instrument of California, has been recorded among the 
Pomo, Maidu, Yokuts, and Diegueno, and no doubt had a wider dis- 
tribution. It was tapped as a restful amusement, and sometimes in 
converse with spirits. : 

It is remarkable, although abundantly paralleled among other 
Indians, that the only two instruments capable of producing a melody 
were not used ceremonially. The cause must be their imperfection. 
The dance was based on song, which an instrument of rhythm could 
enrich, but with which a mechanically produced melody would have 
clashed. | 

It is also a curious fact that the comparatively superior civilization 
of the northwestern tribes was the one that wholly lacked drum, bull- 
roarer, and musical bow, and made minimal employ of rattles. 


MONEY. 


Two forms of money prevailed in California: the dentalium shell, 
imported from the far north; and the clamshell disk bead. Among 
the strictly northwestern tribes dentalia were alone standard. In a 
belt stretching across the remainder of the northern end of the State, 
and limited very nearly, to the south, by the line that marks the end 
of the range of overlay twined basketry, dentalia and disks were used 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 825 


side by side. Beyond, to the end of the State, dentalia were so spo- 
radic as to be no longer reckoned as money, and clam currency was the 
medium of valuation. It had two sources of supply. On Bodega 
Bay the resident Coast Miwok and neighboring Pomo gathered the 
chells of Sawidomus aratus or gracilis. From Morro Bay near San 
Luis Obispo to San Diego there occurs another large clam, 7ivela or 
Pachydesma crassatelloides. Both of these were broken, the pieces 
roughly shaped, bored, strung, and then rounded and polished on a 
sandstone slab. The disks were from a third of an inch to an inch in 
diameter, and from a quarter to a third of an inch thick, and varied 
in value according to size, thickness, polish, and age. The Pomo 
supplied the north; southern and central California used Pachydesma 
beads. The southern Maidu are said to have had the latter, which 
fact, on account of their remoteness from supply, may account for 
the higher value of the currency among them than with the Yokuts. 
But the Pomo Savidomus bead also reached them. 

From the Yokuts and Salinans southward, money was measured 
on the circumference of the hand. The exact distance traversed by 
the string varied somewhat according to tribe; the value in our 
terms appears to have fluctuated locally to a greater degree. The 
available data on this system have been brought together in Table 6 
in the chapter on the Chumash. The Pomo, Wintun, and Maidu 
ceem not to have known the hand scale. They measured their strings 
in the rough by stretching them out, and appear to have counted 
the beads when they wished accuracy. . 

Associated with the two clam moneys were two kinds of valuables, 
both in cylindrical form. The northern was of magnesite, obtained 
-n southeastern Pomo territory. This was polished and on baking 
took on a tawny or reddish hue, often variegated. These stone cylin- 
ders traveled as far as the Yuki and the Miwok. From the south 
came similar but longer and slenderer pieces of shell, white to violet 
in color, made sometimes of the columella of univalves, sometimes out 
of the hinge of a large rock oyster or rock clam, probably Hinnites 
giganteus. The bivalve cylinders took a finer grain and seem to 
have been preferred. Among the Chumash such pieces must have 
been fairly common, to judge from grave finds. To the inland 
Yokuts and Miwok they were excessively valuable. Both the mag- 
nesite and the shell cylinders were perforated longitudinally, and 
often constituted the center piece of a fine string of beads; but, 
however displayed, they were too precious to be properly classifiable 
as ornaments. At the same time their individual variability in size 
and quality, and consequently in value, was too great to allow them 
to be reckoned as ordinary money. They rank rather with the 
obsidian blades of northwestern California, as an equivalent of 
precious stones among ourselves. 


$26 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The small univalve Olivella biplicata and probably other species 
of the same genus were used nearly everywhere in the State. In 
the north they were strung whole; in central and southern California, 
frequently broken up and rolled into thin, slightly concave disks, 
as by the southwestern Indians of to-day. Neither form had much 
value. The olivella disks are far more common in graves than clam 
disks, as if a change of custom had taken place from the prehistoric 
to the historic period. But a more likely explanation is that the 
olivellas accompanied the corpse precisely because they were less 
valuable, the clam currency either being saved for inheritance, or, 
if offered, destroyed by fire in the great mourning ceremony. 

Haliotis was much used in necklaces, ear ornaments, and the like, 
and among tribes remote from the sea commanded a considerable 
price; but it was nowhere standardized into currency. 


TOBACCO. 


Tobacco, of two or more species of Vecotiana, was smoked every- 
where, but by the Yokuts, Tiibatulabal, Kitanemuk, and Costanoans 
it was also mixed with shell lime and eaten. 

The plant was grown by some of the northern groups: the Yurok, 
Hupa, and probably Wintun and Maidu. This limited agriculture 
restricted to the people of a small area remote from tribes with 
farming customs is remarkable. The Hupa and Yurok are afraid 
of wild tobacco as likely to have sprung from a grave; but it is as 
likely that the cultivation produced this unreasonable fear by ren- 
dering the use of the natural product unnecessary, as that the super- 
stition was the impetus to the cultivation. 

Tobacco was offered religiously by the Yurok, the Yahi, the 
Yokuts, and presumably by most or all other tribes; but exact data 
are lacking, offering being a rather lmited practice of the Cali- 
fornians. 

The pipe is found everywhere, and with insignificant exceptions is 
tubular. In the northwest it averages about 6 inches long and is of 
hard wood scraped somewhat concave in profile, the bowl lined with 
inset soapstone. For some distance about the Pomo area the pipe 
is longer, the bowl end abruptly thickened to 2 inches, the stem 
slender. In the Sierra Nevada the pipe runs to only 3 or 4 inches 
and tapers somewhat to the mouth end. ‘The Chumash pipe has 
been preserved only in its stone exemplars. These usually re- 
semble the Sierra type, but are often longer, normally thicker, and 
more frequently contain a brief mouthpiece of bone. Ceremonial 
specimens are sometimes of obtuse angular shape. The pottery- 
making tribes of the south used clay pipes most commonly. These 
were short, with shouldered bowl end. In all the region from the 


dl ieee La 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 827 


Yokuts south. in other words wherever the plant was available, a 
simple length of cane frequently replaced the worked pipe; and 
among all tribes shamans had all-stone pieces at times. The Modoc 
pipe was essentially eastern: a stone head set on a wooden stem. The 
head is variable, as if it were a new and not yet established form: a 
tube. an L, intermediate forms, or a disk. (Compare Fig. 29 with 
PI, 30.) 

The Californians were light smokers, rarely passionate. They 
consumed smaller quantities of tobacco than most eastern tribes and 
did not dilute it with bark. Smoking was of little formal social] 
consequence, and indulged in chiefly at bedtime in the sweat house. 
The available species of Vicotiana were pungent and powerful in 
physiological effect, and quickly produced dizziness and sleep. 


VARIOUS. 


The ax and the stone celt are foreign to aboriginal California. 
The substitute is the wedge or chisel of antler—among the Chumash 
of whale’s bone—driven by a stone. This maul is shaped only in 
northwestern California. (Pl. 19.) The extreme south and south- 
east of the State seem to have lacked even the wedge. An adz of 
shell lashed to a curved stone handle is restricted to the northwest- 
erunres, cb). 19.) | 

The commonest string materials are the bark or outer fibers of 
dogbane or Indian hemp, Apocynum cannabinum, and milkweed, 
Asclepias. From these fine cords and heavy ropes are spun by hand. 
Nettle string is reported from two groups as distant as the Modoc 
and the Luisefio. Other tribes are likely to have used it also as a 
subsidiary material. In the northwest, from the Tolowa to the Coast 
Yuki. and inland at least to the Shasta, Indian hemp and milkweed 
are superseded by a small species of iris, 7. macrosiphon, from each 
leaf of which thin, tough, silky fibers are scraped out. The manu- 
facture is very tedious, but results in an unusually fine, hard, and 
even string. In the southern desert Agave fibers yield a coarse, stiff 
cordage, and the reed, Phragmites, is also said to be used. Barks of 
various kinds, mostly from unidentified species, are used for wrap- 
pings and lashings by many tribes, and grapevine is a convenient 
tying material for large objects. Practically all Californian cord- 
age, of whatever weight, was two-ply before Caucasian contact be- 
came influential; although three-ply bow strings have been reported. 

The carrying net is essentially southern so far as California is con- 
cerned, but connects geographically as well as in type with a net 
used by the Shoshonean women of the Great Basin. It was in use 
among all the southern Californians except those of the Colorado 
River and possibly the Chemehuevi, and extended north to the 


828 " BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Yokuts and Koso. (Figs. 53, 59.) The shape of the utensil is that 
of a small hammock of large mesh, gathered at the ends on loops 
which can be brought together by a heavy cord. <A varying 
type occurs in an isolated region to the north among the Pomo 
and Yuki. Here the ends of the net are carried into a con- 
tinuous headband. ‘This arrangement does not permit of a con- 
traction or expansion to accommodate the load as in the south. The 
net has also been mentioned for the Costanoans, but its type there 
remains unknown. It is possible that these people served as trans- 
mitters of the idea from the south to the Pomo. A curious device is 
reported from the Maidu. The pack strap, when not of skin, 
is braided or more probably woven. Through its larger central por- 
tion the warp threads run free without weft. This arrangement 
allows them to be spread out and to enfold a small or light load some- 
what in the fashion of a net. ; 

The carrying frame of the Southwest has no analogy in California 
except on the Colorado River. Here two looped sticks are crossed 
and their four lengths connected with light cordage. Except for 
the disparity in weight between the frame and the shell of the coy- 
ering, this type would pass as a basketry form, and at bottom it 
appears to be such. The ordinary openwork conical carrying basket 
of central and northern California is occasionally strengthened by 
the lashing in of four heavier rods. In the northeastern corner of 
the State, where exterior influences from other cultures are recog- 
nizable, the carrier is sometimes of hide fastened to a frame of four 
sticks. ! 

The storage of acorns or corresponding food supplies is provided 
for in three ways in California. All the southern tribes construct a 
large receptacle of twigs irregularly interlaced like a bird’s nest. 
This is sometimes made with a bottom, sometimes set on a bed of 
twigs and covered in the same way. The more arid the climate, the 
less does construction matter. Mountain tribes make the receptacle 
with bottom and lid and small mouth. In the open desert the chief 
function of the granary is to hold the food together, and it becomes 
little else than a short section of hollow cylinder. Nowhere is there 
a worked-out technique. The diameter is from 2 to 6 feet. The 
setting is always outdoors, sometimes on a platform, often on bare 
rocks, and occasionally on the ground. (Pl. 60.) The Chumash 
seem not to have used this type of receptacle. 

In central California a cache or granary is used which can also 
not be described as a true basket. It differs from the southern form 
in usually being smaller in diameter but higher, in being constructed 
of finer and softer materials, and in depending more or less directly 
in its structure on a series of posts which at the same time elevate it 
from the ground. This is the granary of the tribes in the Sierra 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 829 


Nevada, used by the Wintun, Maidu, Miwok (PI. 38), and Yokuts, 
and in somewhat modified form—a mat of sticks covered with 
thatch—by the western or mountain Mono. It has penetrated also 
to those of the Pomo of Lake County who are in direct communica- 
tion with the Wintun. 

In the remainder of California large baskets—their type, of course, 
determined by the prevailing style of basketry (Pls. 9, 54)—are set 
indoors or perhaps occasionally in caves or rock recesses. In the 
desert south there was some storage in jars hidden in cliff crevices. 

The flat spoon or paddle for stirring gruel is widely spread in 
California, but far from universal. It has been found among all 
the northwestern tribes, the Achomawi, Atsugewi, Shasta, Pomo, 
Wappo, southern Maidu, northern Miwok, Washo, and Diegueno. 
The Yokuts and southern Miwok, at times also the Washo, use in- 
stead a looped stick, which is also convenient for handling hot cook- 
ing stones. The Colorado River tribes, who stew more civilized 
messes of corn, beans, or fish in pots, tie three rods together for a 
stirrer. Plates 17, 44, and Figure 38 illustrate types of stirrers. 

Cradles or baby carriers (Pls. 35, 39, 40) have been discussed in one 
of the chapters on the Yokuts. 

Fire was made only by the drill, except that the Pomo are said 
sometimes to have scraped together two rough pieces of quartz. 
The materials of the fire drill (Pls. 77, 78; Fig. 66) varied consider- 
ably according to locality; borer and hearth were sometimes of the 
same wood. The drill, whether for fire or for perforation, was 
always twirled by hand rubbing. The Pomo pump-drill is taken 
over from the Spaniards. 


Cuapter 55. 
SOCIETY. 


Political organization, 830; the chief, 832; social stratification, 834; exogamy 
and totemism, 834; marriage, 839; various social habits, 889; kinship 
taboos, 840; disposal of the dead, 841; war, 848; gaming, 846. 


POLITICAL ORGANIZATION. 


Tribes did not exist in California in the sense in which the word 
is properly applicable to the greater part of the North American 
Continent. When the term is used in the present work, it must 
therefore be understood as synonymous with “ethnic group” rather 
than as denoting political unity. 

The marginal Mohave and the Yuma are the only Californian 
eroups comparable to what are generally understood as “tribes” 
in the central and eastern United States: namely a fairly coherent 
body of from 500 to 5,000 souls, usually averaging not far from 
2,000; speaking in almost all cases a distinctive dialect or at least 
subdialect; with a political organization of the loosest, perhaps; but 
nevertheless possessed of a considerable sentiment of solidarity as 
against all other bodies, sufficient ordinarily to lead them to act as 
a unit. The uniquely enterprising military spirit displayed by the 
Yuma and Mohave is undoubtedly connected with this sense of 
cohesion. 

The extreme of political anarchy is found in the northwest, where 
there is scarcely a tendency to group towns into higher units, and 
where even a town is not conceived as an essential unit. In practice 
a northwestern settlement was likely to act. as a body, but it did so 
either because its inhabitants were kinsmen or because it contained 
a man of sufficient wealth to have established personal relations of 
obligation between himself and individual fellow townsmen not re- 
lated to him in blood. The Yurok, Karok, and Hupa, and probably 
several of the adjacent groups, simply did not recognize any organ- 
ization which transcended individuals and kin groups. 

In north central California the rudiments of a tribal organization 
are discernible among the Pomo, Yuki, and Maidu, and may be as- 
sumed to have prevailed among most other groups. <A tribe in this © 
region was a small body, evidently including on the average not much 


830 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 8S3l 


more than 100 souls. It did not possess distinctive speech, a number 
of such tribes being normally included in the range of a single dialect. 
Each was obviously in substance a “ village community,” although the 
term “village ” in this connection must be understood as implying a 
tract of land rather than a settlement as such. In most cases the 
population of the little tribe was divided between several settlements, 
each presumably consisting of a few households more or less con- 
nected by blood or marriage; but there was also a site which was re- 
garded as the principal one inhabited. Subsidiary settlements were 
frequently abandoned, reoccupied, or newly founded. The principal 
village was maintained more permanently. The limits of the terri- 
tory of the group were well defined, comprising in most cases a nat- 
ural drainage area. A chief was recognized for the tribe. There is 
some indication that his elevation was normally subject to popular 
approval, although hereditary privileges are likely to have limited 
selection to particular lineages. The minor settlements or groups of 
kinsmen had each their lesser chief or headman. There was usually 
no name for the tribe as such. It was designated either by the 
name of its principal settlement or by that of its chief. Among for- 
eigners these little groups sometimes bore names which were used 
much like true tribal names; but. on an analysis these generally 
prove to mean only “people of such and such a place or district.” 
This type of organization has been definitely established for the 
Wailaki, Yuki, Pomo, and Patwin, and is likely to have prevailed 
as far south as the Miwok in the interior and the Costanoans or 
Salinans on the coast and inland to the Maidu and Yana. In the 
northeast, among Shasta, Atsugewi, and Achomawi, there are re- 
ports of chiefs recognized over wider districts, which would suggest 
somewhat larger political units. 

The Yokuts, and apparently they alone, attained a nearer approach 
to a full tribal system. Their tribes were larger, ranging from 150 
to 400 or 500 members, possessed names which do not refer to locali- 
ties, and spoke distinctive dialects, although these were often only 
slightly divergent from the neighboring tongues. The territory of 
each tribe was larger than in the region to the north, anda principal 
permanent village rarely looms up with prominence. 

The Shoshoneans of Nevada, and with them those of the eastern 
desert fringe of California, possessed an organization which appears 
to be somewhat akin to that of the Yokuts. They were divided into 
croups of about the same size as the Yokuts, each without a definite 
metropolis, rather shifting within its range, and headed by a chief 
possessing considerable influence. The groups were almost through- 
out named after a characteristic diet: thus, “ fish eaters” or “ moun- 


3625°—25 54 





832 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


tain-sheep eaters.” It is not known how far each of these tribes 
possessed a unique dialect: if they did, their speech distinctness was 
in most cases minimal. Owing to the open and poorly productive 
nature of the country, the territory of each of these Shoshonean 
vroups of the Great Basin was considerably more extensive than in 
the Yokuts habitat. 

Political conditions in southern California are obscure, but are 
likely to have been generally similar to those of north central Cali- 
fornia. Among the Chumash, towns of some size were inhabited 
century after century, and these undoubtedly were the centers if not 
the bases of political groups. Among the Serrano and Diegueno, 
groups that have been designated as “clans” appear to have been 
pretty close equivalents of the Pomo tribelets or “ village communi- 
ties” in owning a drainage territory, in the size of this area, and in 
their numbers. Cahuilla, Cupefio, and Luisefio may also prove to 
conform. The larger towns of the Gabrielino and Chumash may 
represent concentrations like those of the Patwin and Clear Lake 
Pomo. In at least part of southern California, however, the local 
groups were assigned to totemic moieties and practiced habitual if 
not rigorous exogamy. They may therefore be the typical tribelets 
of other parts of the State somewhat remodeled under the influence 
of a social pattern. 

The Mohave and other Yuman tribes of the Colorado Valley waged 
war as tribal units. Their settlements were small, shifting, appar- 
ently determined in the main by the location of their fields, and enter 
little into their own descriptions of their life. It is clear that a 
Mohave’s sense of attachment was primarily to his people as a body, 
end secondarily to his country. The California Indian, with the 
partial exception of the Yokuts, always gives the impression of being 
attached first of all to a spot, or at most a few miles of stream or 
valley, and to his blood kindred or a small group of lifelong asso- 
ciates and intimates. 

It should be added that the subject of political organization and 
government is perhaps in as urgent need of precise investigation 
as any other topic in the field of California ethnology. 


THE CHIEF. 


Chieftainship is wrapped in the obscurity of the political organi- 
zation to which it is related. There were hereditary chiefs in 
most parts of California. But it is difficult to determine how 
far inheritance was the formally instituted avenue to office, or was 
only actually operative in the majority of instances. In general, it 
seems that chieftainship was more definitely hereditary in the south- 
ern half or two-thirds of the State than in the north. Wealth was 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 833 


a factor of some consequence in relation to chieftainship everywhere, 
but its influence seems also to have varied according to locality. 
In the south, liberality perhaps counted for more than possession of 
wealth. The northwestern tribes had rich men of great influence, 
but no chiefs. Being without political organizations, they could 
not well have had the latter. 

The degree of authority of the chief is difficult to estimate. 
This is a matter which can not be judged accurately from the rela- 
tions between native groups and intruders belonging to a more 
highly civilized alien race. To understand the situation as between 
the chief and his followers in the routine of daily life, it is neces- 
sary to have at command a more intimate knowledge of this life 
before its disturbance by Caucasian culture than is available for 
most Californian groups. It seems that the authority of the chief 
was considerable everywhere as far north as the Miwok, and by no 
means negligible beyond; while in the northwest the social effect 
of wealth was so great as to obtain for the rich a distinctly command- 
ing position. Among certain of the Shoshoneans of southern Cah- 
fornia the chief, the assistant or religious chief, and their wives or 
children, were all known by titles; which ‘fact argues that a fairly 
ereat deference was accorded them. Their authority probably did 
not lag much behind. Both the Juanefio and the Chumash are said 
to have gone to war to avenge slights put upon their chiefs. The 
director of rituals as an assistant to the head chief is a southern 
California institution. Somewhat similar is the central Yokuts’ 
practice of having two chiefs for each tribe, one to represent each 
exogamous moiety. The chief had speakers, messengers, or similar 
henchmen with named offices, among the Coast Miwok, the interior 
Miwok, the Yokuts, the Juanefio, and no doubt among other groups. 

The headman of a settlement seems to have been head of a group of 
kinsmen and must be distinguished from the heads of political 
groups, although this is usually difficult in the absence of detailed 
information because the same word often denotes both offices. 

The chief was everywhere distinctly a civil official. If he com- 
manded also in battle, it seems to have been only through the acci- 
dent of being a distinguished warrior as well. The usual war 
leader was merely that individual in the group who was able to 
inspire confidence through having displayed courage, skill, and 
enterprise in combat. It is only natural that his voice should have 
carried weight even in time of peace, but he seems not to have 
been regarded as holding an office. This distinction between the 
chief and the military leader appears to apply even to the warlike 
Yuma and Mohave. 

There were no hereditary priests in California. A religious of- 
fice often passed from father to son or brother’s son, but the suc- 


834 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


cessor took his place because his kinship had caused him to ac- 
quire the necessary knowledge, rather than in virtue of his descent 
as such. 

The shaman, of course, was never an official in the true sense of 
the word, inasmuch as his power was necessarily of individual ac- 
quisition and varied directly according to his supernatural potency, 
or, as we should call it, his gifts of personality. 


SOCIAL STRATIFICATION, 


Social classes of different level are hardly likely to develop in 
sO primitive a society as that of California. It is therefore highly 
distinctive of the northwestern area that the social stratification 
which forms so important an element in the culture of the North 
Pacific coast appears among these people with undiminished vigor. 
The heraldic and symbolic devices of the more advanced tribes a 
thousand miles to the north are lacking among the Yurok: the 
consciousness of the different value of a rich and a poor man Is as 
keen among them as with the Kwakiutl or the Haida. 

The northwest perhaps is also the only part of California that 
knew slavery. This institution rested wholly upon an economic 
basis here. The Chumash may have held slaves; but precise in- 
formation is lacking. The Colorado River tribes kept women cap- 
tives from motives of sentiment, but did not exploit their labor. 

Wealth was by no means a negligible factor in the remainder of 
California, but it clearly did not possess the same influence as in 
the northwest. There seems to have been an effort to regulate mat- 
ters so that the chief, through the possession of several wives, or 
through contributions, was in a position to conduct himself with 
liberality, especially toward strangers and in time of need. On the 
whole, however, he was wealthy because he was chief rather than 
the reverse. Among the Colorado River tribes a thoroughly demo- 
cratic spirit prevailed as regards property, and there is a good deal 
of the Plains sentiment that it behooves a true man to be con- 
temptuous of material possessions. 


EXOGAMY AND TOTEMISM, 


California was long regarded as a region lacking clans, group 
totems, or other exogamous social units. The Colorado River tribes 
were indeed known to be divided into clans, and the Miwok into 
moieties, both carrying certain rather indirect totemic associations. 
But these seemed to be isolated exceptions. More recent informa- 
tion, however, shows that some form of gentile organization was 
prevalent among nearly all groups from the Miwok south to the 


K ROEBER ]} HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 835 


Yuma; and the principal types which this organization assumes 
have become clear in outline. 

In brief, the situation, which is reviewed in Figure 69, is this: 
Almost everywhere within the area in question the units are exoga- 
mous. Nearly always they are totemic. Descent is invariably patri- 
linear. In the extreme south or southeast the division of society is on 


<e5\aiaies aaeimeeieenel an 


Exogamy and Totemism.. 


Patrilinear Totemic Clans. 

Patrilinear Local Clans 

Patrilinear Totemic Moieties and Local Clans 
Patrilinear Totenuc Moietves. 

Patrilinear Totemic Moreties with Subdivisions 
Information wanting. 

M oiekes, Clans, and Totemism lacking 
Suggestions of Matrilinear Reckoning. 
















































































Fig. 69.—Exogamy and totemism in California. 


the basis of multiple clans, in the San Joaquin Valley of moieties, in 
the middle—that is, roughly in the region of the northern part of 
southern California—there are clans and moieties. ‘Toward the 
head of the San Joaquin Valley there is a tract over which clans, 
moieties, and totems are all lacking. This tongue of clanless area 
seems to represent an intrusive influence from the desert Shosho- 
neans on the east. It perhaps did not disrupt the continuity of 


836 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


totemic social organization between central and southern California, 
since there is no definite information available on the most south- 
westerly group of the Yokuts, the Chumash, the Kitanemuk, or the 
Gabrielino. The map suggests the possibility that at least some of 
these groups possessed moieties or totems and thus served to link 
central and southern California into one continuous chain. 

It is hardly possible to doubt that this totemic clan or moiety 
system of California stands in a positive historic relation to that of 
the Southwest. The fact of its being a patrilinear system, whereas 
the southwestern Indians reckon descent in the female line, indi- 
cates only that the connection is ancient and indirect. Both the other 
North American regions in which totemic clans or moieties prevail, 
the North Pacific coast and the eastern side of the continent, are 
divided into patrilinear and matrilinear subareas. The continental 
distribution is such that it would be more than hazardous to assume 
the patrilinear institutions of the North Pacific, the Kast, and the 
Southwest-California area to have been derived from one common 
source, and the matrilinear institutions of the same three regions 
from a second origin. It is as clear as such matters can be that a 
system of gentile organization developed around three centers— 
of which at least that of the north Pacific coast is likely to have 
been independent of the others—and that within each area, with the 
growth and diversification of the institution, paternal and then 
maternal reckoning grew up. Such seeming to be the course of devel- 
opment, we need be under no hesitation in linking the totemic 
exogamy of California with that of the Southwest, in spite of its 
decisive patrilinear character; and this conclusion holds even if the 
exogamy should prove to be but slightly or brokenly connected on 
the map with that of the Southwest. 

As to the age of exogamy in the two regions, there can be 
little doubt that as in most matters probable precedence should be 
given to the Southwest on the ground of the generally greater rich- 
ness of its culture. It is only necessary to guard against the hasty 
inference that, because the connection is almost certain, and the 
radiation from New Mexico and Arizona into California probable, 
this movement has been a recent one whose course can still be traced 
ky the present location of this or that particular tribe. As between 
the patrilineate of the Californians, on the other hand, and the 
matrilineate of the Pueblos, the former, representing a presumably 
older type, may well prove to be at least equally ancient in absolute 
time. 

The clans of the Colorado River tribes are fairly numerous, a 
dozen or more for each group. They have no names as such, but 
are each characterized by the use of a single name borne by all the 


KROFBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 837 


women of a clan. These women’s names can often not be analyzed, 
but are understood by the Indians as denotive of an animal or 
object which is clearly the totem of the clan. This system is common 
without material modification to all the Yumans of the river, but 
the totemic references vary considerably, and the women’s names 
even more. The latter must have fluctuated with considerable readi- 
ness, since only a small proportion of the total number known are 
common even to two tribes. The clans enter into myth, but are 
without ritual function. Details will be found in the first of the 
chapters on the Mohave. 

With the Dieguefio and Luisefio the system loses many of its char- 
acteristics. 'Totemism, direct or indirect, is wholly lacking. The 
groups are numerous and small. Their names when translatable are 
mostly those of localities, or have reference to a locality. The native 
theory is clearly that each clan is a local kin group. How far this 
was actually the case is difficult to determine positively. 

With the Cupefio, Cahuilla, and Serrano, the institution is rein- 
vigorated. The local groups persist as among the Luisefio and 
Dieguefio and bear similar names. They are classed, however, in 
two great totemic moieties, named after the coyote and wild cat. 
With the Serrano, at least, the moieties do not determine marriage, 
groups of the same moiety sometimes intermarrying more or less 
regularly. 

From here on northward follows the gap in our knowledge. It 
is, however, certain that the Shoshonean Kawaiisu and Tiibatulabal, 
and the southern Yokuts such as the Yaudanchi and Yauelmani, 
were at least substantially free from the influence of any exogamous 
system. 

When this negative or doubtful zone has been passed through, we 
find ourselves well in the San Joaquin Valley. Here, among the 
central Yokuts, according to some slender indications among the 
Salinans, probably among the northern Yokuts, and among all the. 
Sierra Miwok, clans have wholly disappeared. The exogamous 
moiety, however, remains, and its totemic aspects are rather more 
developed than in the south. The Miwok carry the totemic scheme 
farthest, dividing the universe as it were into totemic halves, so that 
all its natural contents are potential totems of one or the other moiety. 
Among the other groups of this region the totemism is generally 
restricted to a limited number of birds or animals. ‘Moieties are 
variously designated as land and water, downstream and upstream, 
blue jay and coyote, bullfrog and coyote, or bear and deer. The 
totem is spoken of as the “dog,” that is, domestic animal or pet, of 
each individual. Among the Miwok the personal name refers to an 
animal or object of the individual’s moiety, but the totem itself is 


838 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


hardly ever expressed in the name, the reference being by some im- 
plication which can hardly be intelligible to those who do not know 
the individual and his moiety. 

The western Mono, at least in the northern part of their range, 
have come under the influence of the Miwok-Yokuts system, but this 
has assumed a somewhat aberrant shape among them. They sub- 
divide each moiety into two groups which might be called clans except 
for the fact that they are not exogamous. The names of these groups 
have not yielded to certain translation. The Mono themselves seem 
to identify them with localities, which may be a correct representa- 
tion of the facts, but is scarcely yet established. 

Matrilinear descent has once been reported for a single Yokuts 
tribe, the Gashowu, but is so directly at variance with all that is 
known of the institutions of the region as to be almost certainly an 
error of observation. On the other hand, there are more positive 
indications of a reckoning in the female line among some of the 
Pomo and Wappo; and these are the more credible because the Pomo 
le outside of the exogamic and totemic area of California. The facts 
pointing to Pomo matrilineate are, however, slight; and it is clear 
that the institution was at most a sort of suggestion, an undeveloped 
beginning or last vestige, and not a practice of much consequence. 

Totemic taboos were little developed in California. Among most 
groups the totem seems to have been killed and eaten without further 
thought. Belief in descent from the totem is also weak or absent, 
except for some introduction of the moiety totems into the cosmogony 
of the Shoshoneans of the south. 

The exogamic groups of California have rather fewer religious 
functions than is customary in North America. The Colorado River 
clans seem to have no connection with ritual. The clans of the Sho- 
shoneans were perhaps, in some tribes, the bodies that conducted 
ceremonies, the instruments for ritual execution; although the rites 
were in no sense peculiar, but substantially identical for each clan. 
It appears also that these ritually functioning groups or “ parties” 
sometimes included several “clans” and admitted individuals who 
had broken away from their hereditary bodies. It is thus likely 
that these religious bodies really crystallized around chiefs rather 
than on a clan basis. Indeed, the word for such a_ religiously 
functioning group is merely the word for chief. In the San Joaquin 
Valley the moieties assume ceremonial obligations, usually reciprocal, 
and evidently in the main in connection with the mourning anni- 
versary ; but these arrangements begin to fade out toward the north, 
among the Miwok. 


+ “uate a 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 839 
MARRIAGE. 


Marriage is by purchase almost everywhere in California, the 
groups east of the Sierra and those on the Colorado River providing 
the only exceptions. Among the latter there is scarcely a formality 
observed. A man and woman go to live together and the marriage 
is recognized as long as the union endures. While some form of 
bride purchase is in vogue over the remainder of the State, its import 
is very different according to locality. The northwestern tribes 
make it a definite, commercial, negotiated transaction, the absence of 
which prior to living together constitutes a serious Injury to the 
family of the girl, whereas a liberal payment enhances the status of 
both bride and groom. In the southern half of the State, and among 
the mountaineers of the north, payment has little more significance 
than an observance. It might be described as an affair of manners 
rather than morals. Formal negotiations are often omitted, and in 
some instances the young man shows his intentions and is accepted 
merely on the strength of some presents of game or the rendering of 
an ill-defined period of service before or after the union. Even 
within comparatively restricted regions there is considerable differ- 
ence in this respect between wealthy valley dwellers and poor high- 
landers: the northern Maidu furnish an interesting case in point. 

So far as known the levirate or marriage of the widow by her dead 
husband’s brother was the custom of all California tribes except those 
of the Colorado River. The same may be said of the widower’s mar- 
riage to his dead wife’s sister, or in cases of polygamy to two sisters 
or to a mother and daughter. These customs must therefore be 
looked upon as basic and ancient. institutions. The uniformity of 
their prevalence is in contrast to the many intergrading forms 
assumed by the marriage act, and in contrast also to the differ- 
ences as regards exogamy, render it probable that if an attempt be 
made to bring the levirate and marriage with the wife’s sister into 
relation with these other institutions, the former must be regarded as 
antecedent—as established practices to which marriage, exogamy, 
and descent conformed. 


VARIOUS SOCIAL HABITS. 


A rigid custom prescribes that the widow crop or singe off her 
hair and cover the stubble as well as her face with pitch, throughout a 
great part of central California. This defacement 1s left on until 
the next mourning anniversary or for a year or sometimes longer. 
The groups that are known to follow this practice are the Achomaw], 
Shasta, Maidu, Wintun, Kato, Pomo, and Miwok; also the Chuk- 


chansi, that is, the northern hill Yokuts. Among the southern 


840 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Yokuts the widow merely does not wash her face during the period 
in which she abstains from eating meat. Beyond the Yokuts, there 
is no reference to the custom; nor is it known from any north- 
western people. 

A mourning necklace is northern. The northwestern tribes braid 
a necklace which is worn for a year or longer time after the death 
of a near relative or spouse. The Achomawi and northwestern 
Maidu, perhaps other groups also, have their widows put on a neck- 
lace of lumps of pitch. 

A belt made of the hair cut from her head was worn by the widow 
among the Shastan tribes, that is the Shasta, Achomawi, and At- 
sugewi. With the Yokuts and in southern California belts and hair 
ties and other ornaments of human hair reappear, but do not have so 
definite a reference to mourning. 

The couvade was observed by nearly all Californians, but not in its 
“classic” form of the father alone observing restrictions and pre- 
tending to lie in. The usual custom was for both parents to be 
affected equally and for the same period. They observed food re- 
straints and worked and traveled as little as possible in order to 
benefit their child; they did not ward illness from the infant by 
shamming it themselves. The custom might well be described as a 
semicouvade. It has been reported among the Achomawi, Maidu, 
Yuki, Pomo, Yokuts, Juaneio, and Diegueho. Among the Yurok, 
Hupa, Shasta, and with them presumably the Karok and other — 
northwestern tribes, there are restrictions for both parents, but 
those for the father are much shorter. 

Fear toward twins is known to be felt by the Yurok, Achomawi, 
and northwestern Maidu of the hills. It is likely to have prevailed 
more widely, but these instances suggest a most acute development 
of the.sentiment in northern California. 

The child’s umbilical cord was saved, carefully disposed of, or 
specially treated. The Diegueno, Luiseno, Juaneno, and Chukchansi 
Yokuts buried it. The Tachi Yokuts tied it on the child’s abdomen. 
The Hupa and Yurok kept it for a year or two, then deposited it in 
a split tree. 


KINSHIP TABOOS, 


The taboo which forbids parents-in-law and childreh-in-law to 
look each other in the face or speak or communicate was a central 
Californian custom. It is recorded for the Kato, Pomo, Maidu, 
Miwok, Yokuts, and western Mono; with whom at least the southerly 
Wintun must probably be included. The Yuki, the eastern Mono, 
the Tiibatulabal, and the Kawaiisu seem not to have adhered 
to the practice, whose distribution is therefore recognizable as hold- 
ing over a continuous and rather regular area. There is no mention 


— =. s 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 841 


of the habit in regard to any northwestern or southern tribe. Actu- 
ally, the mother-in-law is alone specified in some instances, but these 
may be cases of loose or incomplete statements. Accuracy also neces- 
sitates the statement that among the Kato and Pomo the custom had 
rather a feeble hold, and that these people did not hesitate to address 
a parent-in-law as long as they spoke in the plural or third person— 
a device which the Miwok and western Mono also made use of as 
an allowable circumvention of the taboo when there was the requisite 
occasion. 

It may be added that among the Yana and the western Mono, two 
far-separated and unrelated peoples, brother and sister also used 
plural address. For the Yana it is stated that a certain degree of 
avoidance was also observed; but this was not very acute. This 
custom can be looked for with some likelihood among the intervening 
nations, but to predict it would be rash. There are many purely 
local developments in Californian culture: witness the sex diversity 
of speech among the Yana. 

As in other parts of America, no reason for the custom can be 
obtained from the natives. It is a way they have, they answer; or 
they would be ashamed to do otherwise. That they feel positive 
humiliation and repugnance at speaking to a mother-in-law is cer- 
tain; but this sentiment can no more be the cause of the origin of 
the custom than a sense of shame can itself have produced the mani- 
fold varieties of dress current among mankind. It can hardly be 
doubted that a sense of delicacy with reference to sexual relations 
lies at the root of the habit. But to imagine that a native or un- 
historically minded civilized person might really be able to explain 
the source of any of his institutions or manners is to be unreasonable. 


DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 


The manner of disposing of the dead fluctuated greatly according 
to region in California. The areas in which cremation was prac- 
ticed seem to aggregate somewhat larger than those in which burial 
was the custom, but the balance is nearly even, and the distribution 
quite irregular. Roughly, five areas can be distinguished. (Tig. 70.) 

Southern California burned.* 

Interment was the rule over a tract which seems to extend from 
the Great Basin across the southern Sierras to the Chumash and 
Santa Barbara Islands. This takes in the Chemehuevi, the eastern 
Mono, the Tiibatulabal, the southern Yokuts, the Chumash, and 
perhaps a few of the adjacent minor Shoshonean groups. 

A second region of cremation follows. This consists of the en- 
tire central Sierra Nevada, the San Joaquin Valley except at its 


1The Vanyume should be added to the southern cremation area delineated in Fig- 
ure 70. 


S 





head, the lower Sacramento Valley, and the coast region for about 
the same distance. Roughly, the range is from the Salinans and 
central Yokuts to the Pomo and southern Maidu. 

The second area of burial takes in all of the tribes under the in- 
fluence of the northwestern culture, and in addition to them the 


849 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 | 
| 
| 


Disposal of the Dead : 


Cremation 
3 Burial 





Ite. 70.—Cremation and earth burial in California, 


Yuki, at least the majority of the Wintun, and most of the northern 
Maidu. 

The Modoc in the northeastern corner of the State again cremate. 
For the adjoining Achomawi the evidence conflicts. It is possible 
that this northern region was connected with the central area of 
cremation through the Yahi and northwestern Maidu of the foot- 
hills. 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA $43 


It seems impossible to establish any correlation between custom 
and environment in this matter. Treeless and timbered regions 
both cremated and in other cases interred. 

It does appear that the southern and central culture areas can be 
described as regions of prevailing cremation, the northwestern cul- 
ture as one of burial. The practice of each of the two interring 
regions has to some extent penetrated the adjacent parts of the 
central area. Interment, however, extends farther beyond the 
outer limits of the northwestern culture than almost all other in- 
stitutions or elements which are definitely characteristic of the north- 
west—basketry and dentalia for instance. [I*urthermore, there is 
the curious tongue of burying peoples from the Santa Barbara 
Islands to the eastern Mono. This group can scarcely correspond to 
any primary cultural stratum. 


WAR. 


Warfare throughout California was carried on only for revenge, 
never for plunder or from a desire for distinction. The Mohave 
and Yuma must, indeed, be excepted from this statement, but their 
attitude is entirely unique. Perhaps the cause that most commonly 
originated feuds was the belief that a death had been caused by 
witchcraft. No doubt theft and disputes of various sorts also con- 
tributed. Once ill feeling was established, it was likely to continue 
for long periods. 

Torture has been reported as having been practiced by several 
tribes, such as the Maidu and the Gabrielino. It appears to have 
been considered merely a preliminary to the execution of captives, 
which was the victors’ main purpose. As a rule, men who could be 
seized in warfare were killed and decapitated on the spot. Women 
and children were also slaughtered more frequently than enslaved. 
The Colorado River tribes made a point of capturing young women, 
but did not abuse them. There is no record of any attempt to hold 
men as prisoners. 

Scalps were taken in the greater part of California, brought home 
in triumph, and celebrated over, usually by a dance around a pole. 
Women as well as men generally participated. Some tribes made 
the dance indoors, others outside. There was no great formality 
about this scalp dance of victory. It may often have been celebrated 
with great abandon, but its ritual was loose and simple. The Mohave 
and Yuma alone show some organization of the ceremony, coupled 
with a considerable manifestation of dread of the scalps themselves 
—a southwestern trait. 


‘ 


844 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY. [BULL. 78 


It is rather difficult to decide how far the scalp taken was literally 
such and how far it was the entire head. <A fallen foe that could be 
operated upon in safety and leisure was almost always decapitated, 
and his head brought home. Sometimes it is said that this head was 


danced with. In other localities it was skinned at the first oppor- — 
tunity and the scalp alone used in the dance. The scalp, however, — 
was always a larger object than we are accustomed to think of — 
with the habits of eastern tribes in mind. The skin taken usually — 
extended to the eyes and nose, and included the ears. There is no ~ 
evidence of an endeavor to preserve scalps as permanent trophies to — 
the credit of individuals; nor of a feeling that anything was lost — 


by a failure to secure scalps, other than that an occasion for a 
pleasant celebration might be missed thereby. 


It is significant that it remains doubtful whether the Yokuts, the 


Valley Maidu, and the Pomo took scalps or performed a scalp dance. 
If they did so, it was clearly with less zest than most of their neigh- 
bors. All of the tribes in question are peoples of lowland habitat, 
considerable wealth, and comparative specialization of culture. 

In the northwestern area no scalps were taken, and the victory 
dance was replaced by one of incitement before battle. In this dance 
the fully armed warriors stood abreast, with one or more of their 
number moving before them. With the Yurok and Hupa, and 


perhaps some of their immediate neighbors also, this dance was | 


also or particularly made when two hostile parties gathered for set- 
tlement of a feud; and, as might be expected, as often as not re- 
sulted in a new fight instead of the desired peace. The north- 
western habit of not scalping extended at least as far south as the 
Sinkyone and as far east as the Shasta. The Wintun on the 
Trinity River are also said to have taken no scalps and may there- 
fore be supposed to have practiced the associated form of incite- 
ment dance.- Finally, there is an echo of the Yurok custom from as 


far away as the Maidu of the northern Sacramento Valley, who it is’ 


said had a war dance performed by armed negotiators. 


The battle weapon of California was the bow. Spears have been_ 


mentioned as in use by a number of tribes, but all indications are 
that they were employed only sporadically in hand-to-hand _ fight- 
ing and not for hurling from the ranks. It is probable that. they 
were serviceable in an ambush or early morning rush upon the un- 
suspecting sleepers in a settlement. In a set fight the spear. could 
not be used against a row of bowmen by unarmored and unorganized 
warriors. 

Southern California used the Pueblo type of war club, a rather 


short, stout stick expanded into a longitudinal mallet head. This 


KROPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 845 


seems to have been meant for thrusting into an opponent’s face 
rather than for downright clubbing. The Mohave, at any rate, 
knew a second form of club, a somewhat longer, straight, and heavy 
stick, which served the specific purpose of breaking skulls. In cen- 
tral California mentions of clubs are exceedingly. scarce. If they 
were used they were probably nothing but suitable sticks. When 
it came to hand-to-hand fighting the central Californian was likely 
to have recourse to the nearest stone. Rocks were also favored by 
the northwestern tribes, but in addition there ere some examples of 
a shaped war club of stone in this region. This club was a little 
over a foot long and rudely edged, somewhat in the shape of a 
narrow and thick paddle blade. This type has affiliations with the 
more elaborate stone and bone clubs used farther north on the 
Pacific coast. 

Slings seem to have been known to practically all the California 
tribes as toys, and in some parts were used effectively for hunting 
water fowl. The only definite reports of the use of slings in warfare 
are from the Wintun of Trinity River and the western Mono, both 
mountaineers. 

The shield, which is so important to the Plains Indian and to 
the southwestern warrior, was known in California only to the 
Mohave, Yuma, and perhaps Dieguefio—that is to say, the local rep- 
resentatives of the Yuman family. It was a round piece of un- 
ornamented hide. There is no reference to symbolism, and it ap- 
pears to have been carried only occasionally. Not a single original 
specimen has been preserved. Much as tribes like the Mohave speak 
of war, they rarely mention the shield, and its occurrence among 
them and their kinsmen is of interest chiefly as an evidence that 
the distribution of this object reached the Pacific coast at one point 
at least. | 

Armor enters the State at the other end as an extension from an- 
other extra-Californian culture. It is either of elk hide or of rods 
twined with string in waistcoat shape. (Pl. 18.) The rod type is re- 
ported from the northwestern tribes, the Achomawi, and the northern 
mountain Maidu. Elkskin armor has been found among the same 
groups, as well as among the Modoc, Shasta, northern valley Maidu, 
and Wailaki. These closely coincident distributions indicate that the 
two armor types are associated, not alternative; and that, confined 
to the northernmost portion of the State, they are to be understood 
as the marginal outpost of a custom that centers in the culture of 
the North Pacific coast. | 

The greater part of central California appears to have been armor- 
less and shieldless. 


546 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [punt 78 


GAMING. 


The endless games of the North American Indians have been re- 


duced by Mr. Stewart Culin to a few fundamental types: 
Games of dexterity: 
With a dart— 
Outdoor—Hoop and pole. 
Hand—Ring and pin. 
With a ball—Shinny, lacrosse, ete. 
Games of chance: 
Pure chance—Dice. 
Guessing—Hand or stick. 


Among amateurs, the guessing games come out entirely according 
to luck; amone skillful players they depend on concealment and 
reading of facial and bodily expression, and are therefore in reality 
games of mental ability, or rather of will and character. 

As a rule, all of these games were known to all the California 
Indians, and, with some exceptions, no game existed in more than 
one form among the same group. 

The hoop-and-pole game was perhaps the chief one which was en- 
tirely unknown in some districts. The Yurok and Hupa did not pos- 
sess 1t, and it seems to have been lacking also through the remainder of 
the northwestern part of the State. It is an interesting circumstance, 
illustrating in one of several concrete ways the fact that at the north- 
western corner of California is ethnographically the last southern 
frontier of the North Pacific coast “ culture area,” that this hoop- 
and-pole game, favorite over a large part of the continent, also holds 
but a small part in the amusements of most of the coast tribes from 
Oregon to Alaska. 

The dignity of this game is upheld at the opposite end of the State, 
where the Mohave deem it the means of gambling best befitting a 
man. They play it with a small string-wound hoop, and long poles 
that are slid so as to fall, if possible, on or under the rolling hoop 
when this finally comes to rest. The Luisefio and Dieguefio, the 
other tribes of the south, the Salinan and Costanoan groups, the 
Maidu, the Pomo, the Shasta, and the Modoc, played substantially 
the same game. Among the Yokuts, Mono, and Miwok of the Sierra. 
Nevada, youths and boys played a simpler and typically Californian 
variety. A small block was thrown or slid, and then poles darted 
after it. ‘his must be a slovenly degeneration of an original hoop 
game. 

The ring-and-pin or hand variety of the same game, in which 
several rings or loops are strung to the butt end of a pin on which 
they are to be caught, is widespread in California, but varies charac- 
teristically according to habits of life and, ultimately, environment. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNTA 847 


The fishing tribes of the northwest, as far south as the middle course 
of Kel River, including the Tolowa, Yurok, Hupa, Chimariko, Shasta, 
and Sinkyone (Fig. 14), employed salmon vertebre as “rings.” 
On the headwaters of Eel River, where the streams run smaller and 
hunting must largely replace fishing, the Wailaki used deer bones. 
In the South, the Luiseno favored acorn cups; while the agricultural 
Mohave made their rings of pumpkin rind. The Klamath and 
Modoc employed a single-looped ball, made of the same tule rush 
that is the material of most of their industries. Maidu and Yokuts 
did without this game, so far as known. 

Of the many possible varieties of ball games, each group usually 
specialized on one. The Pomo played a kind of lacrosse, with a rude 
small net. Still simpler rackets are found among the southern 
Maidu. With the Miwok and Yokuts the net has degenerated into a 
mere loop at the end of a stick, serving to pick up or pocket the ball 
rather than bat it. Among both these groups this rudimentary form 
of the racket 1s perhaps due to the shinny stick being the standard 
form of ball-propelling implement. The Miwok women, but not the 
men, also batted a soft hair-stuffed ball with baskets resembling the 
common utilitarian seed beater. 

The Mohave knew nothing of lacrosse, but clung to simple shinny, 
played with a small block or ball and plain curved sticks. With 
these they played as our boys play shinny or hockey on the ice. 

It would have been difficult to find many suitable fields for such 
an active free-running game in the rocky canyons of the northwest- 
ern tribes; even the bars and river benches are narrow, rough, and 
uneven. Here, accordingly, the game was played with a double ball 
of two string-tied blocks of wood, impossible to propel far by strik- 
ing, and requiring to be picked up with the end of the stick and 
thrown. Maneuvering thus took the place of speed; the players 
grappled like wrestlers, and a number of men could participate 
within a small area. (PI. 79.) 

Elsewhere than in the northwest the double-ball game is essentially 
or wholly one for women, as over most of the continent. This is the 
case among the Shasta, Modoc, Achomawi, Washo, Maidu, and 
Miwok. Among the last three groups the “ball” has degenerated 
into merely the connecting string, though this is heavy and some- 
times knotted at the ends. 

Through most of the south, and along the coast as far north at least 
as Monterey, sticks or bats were often dispenesd with, and the game 
became essentially a football race. The contestants covered a long 
distance, each hurling, with his feet only, his little wooden ball. 
Speed. and endurance were counted as even more valuable factors 





3625°—25 DO 


548 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


toward victory than skill in manipulation. Dieguenio, Luiseno, Cos- 
tanoan, and presumably the intervening groups competed in this 
way, which was familiar also to the Indians of Arizona. ‘The Chu- 
mash, however, knew shinny; and in the interior the ball race had 
penetrated to the Maidu and Miwok. This latter people followed all 
the varieties of ball play: rackets for men and for women, shinny, 
double ball for women, and football race. 

Dice were everywhere preeminently if not entirely a woman’s 
game. <A set numbered four, six, or eight, each only two-sided; the 
count of the various combinations of pieces falling face up or face 
down varied locally. 

The Yurok, Tolowa, Wiyot, and Hupa used four’ mussel-shell 
disks; the Pomo, Wailaki, and northern Yokuts, six split sticks; the 
Mohave, Diegueno, and Luiseno, four painted boards; the southern 
Yokuts, Chumash, and Chemehuevi, filled walnut shells. (Fig. 54.) 
Among the Miwok split acorns were employed; and among the Mono, 
acorn cups. The Modoc used either the Californian sticks or a north- 
ern type consisting of four beaver teeth. Some tribes played on a 
flat basket, others on a stone. 

The ball game, whatever its character, was well fitted for competi- 
tion between towns or districts, and was often heavily backed with 
stakes; but, except with the Mohave and perhaps the Yokuts, who 
favored respectively the rolling hoop and the shinny stick, the 
gambling game above all others, and therefore the man’s game par 
excellence, among the California tribes, was the “ hand” or “ grass” 
game, a contest of guessing. Tremendous energy and concentration 
were thrown into this play, which was passionately followed. Songs 
and sometimes drumming were regular features, without which the 
stimulus to play hard would be weakened, and the contestants’ luck 
magically diminished. Actually, the singing and rhythmic swaying 
aided the hiding player to conceal his knowledge of the location of 
the “ace” by enabling him better to control his expression. 

A public ritual, a dance, even a mourning ceremony, could hardly 
take place without the accompaniment, at least at the conclusion, of 
the guessing game. It is hard for us to realize to the full the large 
degree to which this amusement or occupation entered into the life 
not so much of a professional class of gamblers as of all the Cali- 
fornia Indians. ‘Their avarice, and the importance to them of their 
wealth, hardly allowed them to bet as recklessly, and to strip them- 
selves as completely of all belongings on a run of ill luck, as some 
of the eastern tribes, with whom liberality rather than possession 
carried prestige; but they made up in the frequency, the duration, 
and the tenacity of their play. 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 79 





DOUBLE-BALL SHINNY AT HUPA: PAIRS OF PLAYERS WRES- 
; TLING TO KEEP EACH OTHER FROM THE BALL 





BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLET ING 73.) PE Ad Base 





NORTHERN MIWOK FEATHER CAPE WORN BY MOCHILO PER- 
FORMER IN KUKSUYU DANCE 


. 





KROEBER ] _ HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF ‘CALIFORNIA $49 


Two types of the game occur, and these do not differ fundamen- 
tally. In the northwest a bundle of 25 or 50 slender rods is used, 
one being painted in the center. These sticks are shuffled, in sight of 
the opponent, with a peculiar rolling twist, divided behind the back, 
and then shown, the middle portions concealed in the hands. After 
some deliberation, and frequent false or pretended starts, the op- 
ponent guesses for the hand containing the one marked stick, indi- 
cating his decision by pointing past the other hand. If he is right, 
he wins nothing but the privilege of playing; if wrong, one counter 
eoes to the player, who shuffles again. An expert player always 
knows the place of the marked rod among its many plain fellows, 
even behind his back, and frequently displays it alone against the 
pack in his other hand, to tempt his opponent to incline to the latter; 
or, divining the tendency of his mind, misleads him with a single 
unmarked rod. 

Shasta women, the northern Wintun, and the Modoe play like the 
northwestern tribes; but through the remainder of the State, from 
the Shasta men and Achomawi to the Diegueno, the implements are 
two small bones, or short sticks, one of them marked with a band. 
These are concealed in the two hands behind the back, under a mat, 
or often wound in two wisps of grass in view of the opponent, 
whence the popular American name of the game. Some tribes use 
only one small bone, guessing for the full hand; mostly they em- 
ploy four, handled by two men on a side; the southern Indians 
usually attach string loops to pass over the fingers; but such ditf- 
ferences do not. seriously alter the course of the play. 

The counters are everywhere sticks. Contrary to our custom, 
the Indians rarely begin with an equal number of markers on the 
two sides, but with a neutral pile from which winnings are al- 
lotted to this or that contestant. Only after this stock 1s exhausted 
do they begin to win from each other; and the game continues 
until one side is without sticks. This may be an affair of minutes. 
But if fortunes are fluctuating and ability even, one contest may 
be prolonged for hours. If the losers, without a word, continue 
to play, they are understood to bet in the ensuing game an amount 
the equal of that which was.staked by both parties in the first 


game. At least such is the Hupa custom. 


Among the Mohave several varieties of the guessing games are 
played. One of these, shared by them with some of the tribes of the 
Southwest, is a smaller informal affair pertaining to idie moments. 
A bit of stick is hidden in one of four little hillocks of sand. Dex- 
terity of manipulation and perception seems the deciding factor in- 
stead of control of the features. 

The Coast Miwok, some of the Maidu, and the Washo, played the 
regular “hand” game, but also guessed whether the number of a 


850 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


handful of manipulated sticks was odd or even. Among the Pomo 
the sticks were counted off by fours after the remainder had been 
guessed at. This procedure is suggestive of a Chinese form of 
gambling, but the geographical compactness of the area over which 
this subtype of guessing game is found indicates its distribution 
from a native origin. | 

The “four-stick game” of Mr. Culin is another local variety, 
which has been found only among the Lutuami, Achomawi, northern 
Paiute, and Washo—all at least partly Californian—and _ possibly 
the Chinook of Oregon. Among most or all of these tribes it does 
not replace but occurs by the side of the usual guessing game. Two 
of the sticks are heavy, two short and thin. The guessing is for 
the order in which they are grouped under a basket or mat. 

When one reflects that in reality chance is no greater factor in the 
standard forms of the guessing game than in the American national 
card game, the decisive element being the match of character against 
character, the fascination which the game exercises on the Indian’s 
mind is easy to understand. 

The economic basis of life and the estimation of the purpose of 
wealth among the Indians are so different from our own, that gam- 
bling, instead of incurring odium, was not only sanctioned but ap- 
proved. Nevertheless the underlying human similarity of the emo- 
tional processes connected with the practice is revealed in a most 
interesting way by the common belief in a connection between success 
at play and in relations with the opposite sex: “ Luck in love,” the 
reverse at cards, and vice versa, is our proverbial superstition. But 
the Indian, regarding, like the ancient Hebrew and _ ourselves, 
sexual affairs as normally destructive of supernatural or magical 
potency, draws in a particular case an opposite inference. ‘Two 
Yokuts myths relate how the favorite hero of these tales, Limik, 
the prairie falcon, was uniformly successful in winning all stakes, 
in the one case at shinny, in the other with the hoop and poles, until 
the coyote was induced to disguise himself as the victor and thus 
take advantage of the latter’s wife. As soon as this misfortune, al- 
though unknown, befell the falcon, his luck turned, until he had Jost 
everything. The modern gambler would perhaps expect the oppo- 
site event, 





CHAPTER 56. 
RELIGION AND KNOWLEDGE. 


Shamanism, 851; cult religions, 855; the mourning anniversary, 859; girls’ 
adolescence ceremony, 861; boys’ initiations, 866; New Year observances, 
866; offerings, 867; the ghost dance, 868; calendar, 873 ; numeration, 875. 


SHAMANISM. 


The shamanistic practices of most California groups are fairly uni- 
form, and similar to those obtaining among the North American In- 
dians generically. The primary function of the California shaman is 
the curing of disease. The latter is almost always considered due to 
ihe presence in the body of some foreign or hostile object, rarely to an 
abstraction or injury of the soul. The Mohave are the only tribe 
for whom there is definite record that shamans recovered souls, 
though the attitude of other southern Californians 1s such that the 
belief may well have prevailed among them also. Over most of Cali- 
fornia the shaman’s business is the removal of the disease object, and 
this in the great majority of cases is carried out by sucking. Sing- 
ing, dancing, and smoking tobacco, with or without the accompani- 
ment of genuine trance conditions, are the usual diagnostic means. 
Manipulation of the body, brushing it, and blowing of breath, saliva, 
or tobacco smoke are sometimes resorted to in the extraction of the 
disease object. 

As contrasted with the general similarity of the practices of the 
established shaman, there is a considerable diversity of methods 
employed by the prospective shaman in the acquisition of his super- 
natural powers. This diversity is connected with a variety of be- 
liefs concerning guardian spirits. 

Tn central California, from the Wailaki and Maidu to the Yokuts, 
the euardian spirit is of much the same character as with the Indians 
of the central and eastern United States, and is obtained in much 
the same way. A supernatural being in animal or other form is seen 
and conversed with during a trance or dream. Sometimes the spirits 
come to a man unsought, sometimes there is a conscious attempt to 
acquire them. 

For southern California information on these matters is tantaliz- 
ingly scant and vague. The few statements recorded from Indians 
seem mostly made under the pressure of questioning, It remains to 

851 


852 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


be established that a definite belief in personal guardian spirits 
obtained in southern California. This doubt is strengthened by the 
fact that the concept of the guardian spirit, and, consequently, the 
institution of shamanism in its most commonly accepted form, seem 
to have been very weak among the tribes of the southwestern United 
States, especially the Pueblos. 

Among the Colorado River tribes it is certain that there was no 
behef in a guardian spirit of the usual kind. Shamans derived 
their power by dreaming of the Creator or some ancient divinity, or, 
as they themselves sometimes describe it, from having associated be- 
fore their birth—in other words, during a previous spiritual exist- 
ence—with the gods or divine animals that were on earth at the be- 
ginning. The culture of the Colorado River tribes is so specialized 
that a positive inference from them to the remaining southern Cali- 
fornians would be unsound; but it must be admitted that their status 
increases the probability that the latter tribes did not share the cen- 
tral Californian and eastern ideas as to the source of shamanistic 
power. 

In northern California, and centering as usual among the north- 
western tribes, beliefs as to the source of shamanistic power take a 
peculiar turn. Among peoples like the Yurok the guardian in the 
ordinary sense scarcely occurs. The power of the shaman rests not 
on the aid or control of a spirit, but upon his maintenance in 
his own body of disease objects which to nonshamans would be 
fatal. These “pains” are animate and self-moving, but are always 
conceived as minute, physically concrete, and totally lacking human 
shape or resemblance. Their acquisition by the shaman is due to a 
dream in which a spirit gives them to him or puts them in his body. 
This spirit seems most frequently to be an ancestor who has had 
shamanistic power. The dream, however, does not constitute the 
shaman as such, since the introduced “ pain” causes illness in him as 
in other persons. His condition is diagnosed by accepted shamans, 
and a long and rigorous course of training follows, whose object is 
the inuring of the novice to the presence of the “ pains” in his body 
and the acquisition of control over them. Fasting and analogous 
means are employed for this purpose, but the instruction of older 
shamans seems to be regarded as an essential feature, culminating in 
what is usually known as the “ doctors’ dance.” This dance is there- 
fore substantially a professional initiation ceremony. ‘There is no 
doubt that it provided the opportunity for the establishment of sha- 
mans’ societies as organized bodies, but this step seems never to have 
been taken in California. 

From the Yurok and Hupa this peculiar type of shanfanism 
spreads out gradually, losing more and more of its elements, to at 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 853 


least as far as the Maidu. Already among the Shasta the shaman 
controls spirits as well as “pains,” but the name for the two is 
identical. With the Achomawi and Maidu the “ pain” and the spirit 
are differently designated. Here the doctor’s concern in practice 
still is more largely with the “ pains,” but his control of them rests 
definitely upon his relation to his spirits and their continued assist- 
ance. ‘The doctor dance persists among all these tribes. It is practiced 
also by the northerly Wintun and Yuki. The Yuki shamans possess 
and acquire spirits very much like the central Californians, and the 
spirits are sometimes animals. The “pain” is still of some im- 
portance among them, however, and they and the Wintun agree in 
ealling it “ arrowhead.” A line running across the State south of 
the Yuki, and probably through Wintun and Maidu territory about 
its middle, marks the farthest extension of remnants of the north- 
western type of shaman. 

Among the Pomo there is no mention of the doctor dance, while 
indications of a considerable use of amulets or fetishes suggest that 
entirely different sets of concepts obtain.t The Miwok and Yokuts 
also knew of nothing lke a “ doctor dance,” and with them it would 
seem that the Maidu of the south may have to be included. 

It may be added that central and southern California are a unit in 
regarding shamanistic power as indifferently beneficent or malevo- 
lent. Whether a given shaman causes death or prevents it 1s merely 
a matter of his inclination. His power is equal in both directions. 
Much disease, if not the greater part, is caused by hostile or spiteful 
shamans. Witchcraft and the power of the doctor are therefore in- 
dissolubly bound up together. The unsuccessful shaman, particu- 
larly if repeatedly so, was thought to be giving prima facie evidence 
of evil intent, and earnest attempts to kill him almost invariably 
followed. 

In the northwest this intertwining of the two aspects of super- 
natural power was slighter. Shamans were much less frequently 
killed, and then rather for refusal to give treatment or unwilling- 
ness to return pay tendered for treatment, than for outright witch- 
craft. .A person who wished to destroy another had recourse to 
magical practice. This northwestern limitation of shamanism is 
perhaps connected with the fact that among the tribes where it was 
most marked the shaman was almost invariably a woman. In these 
matters, too, tribes as far as the Maidu shared in some measure in 
the beliefs which attained their most clear-cut form among the Yurok 
and Hupa. 


1 See footnote, p. 259. 


854 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


The use of supernatural spirit power was on the whole perhaps 
more largely restricted to the treatment or production of disease in 
California than in most other parts of aboriginal North America. 
There is comparatively little reference to men seeking association 
with spirits for success in warfare, hunting, or love, although it is 
natural that ideas of this kind crop out now and then. There are, 
however, three specialties which in the greater part of the State lead 
to the recognition of as many particular kinds of shamans or “ doc- 
tors,’ as they are usually known in loca] usage. These are rain or 
weather doctors, rattlesnake doctors, and bear doctors. 

The rain doctor seems generally to have exercised his control over 
the weather in addition to possessing the abilities of an ordinary 
shaman. Very largely he used his particular faculty like the prophet 
Samuel, to make impression by demonstrations. All through the 
southern half of the State there were men who were famous as rain 
doctors, and the greatest development of the idea appears to have 
been in the region where central and southern California meet. 
Control of the weather by shamans was, however, believed in to the 
northern limit of the State, although it was considerably less made 
of there. The groups within the intensive northwestern culture are 
again in negative exception. 2 

The rattlesnake doctor is also not northwestern, although tribes as 
close to the focus of this culture as the Shasta knew the institution. 
His business, of course, was to cure snake bites; in some cases also 
to prevent them. Among the Yokuts a fairly elaborate ceremony in 
which rattlesnakes were juggled with was an outgrowth of these 
beliefs. Less important or conspicuous demonstrations of the same 
sort seem also to have been made among a number of other tribes, 
since we know that, the northern Maidu of the valley had some kind 
of a public rattlesnake ceremony conducted by their shamans. There 
appears to have been some inclination to regard the sun as the spirit 
to which rattlesnake doctors particularly looked. 

The bear doctor was recognized over the entire State from the 
Shasta to the Diegueno. The Colorado River tribes, those of the ex- 
treme northwest, and possibly those of the farthest northeastern 
corner of the State, are the only ones among whom this impressive 
institution was lacking. The bear shaman had the power to turn 
himself into a grizzly bear. In this form he destroyed enemies. 

The most general belief, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley and 
southern California, was that he became actually transmuted. In 
the region of the Wintun, Pomo, and Yuki, however, it seems to have 
been believed that the bear doctor, although he possessed undoubted 
supernatural power, operated by means of a bear skin and other 


KROPBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 855 


paraphernalia in which he encased himself.? Generally bear shamans 
were thought invulnerable, or at least to possess the power of return- 
ing to life. They inspired an extraordinary fear and yet seem rather 
to have been encouraged. It is not unlikely that they were often 
looked upon as benefactors to the group to which they belonged 
and as exercising their destructive faculties chiefly against its foes. 
In some tribes they gave exhibitions of their power; in others, as 
among the Pomo, the use of their faculties was carefully guarded 
from all observation. Naturally enough, their power was generally 
considered to be derived from bears, particularly the grizzly. It is 
the ferocity and tenacity of life of this species that clearly impressed 
the imagination of the Indians, and a more accurately descriptive 
name of this caste would be “ grizzly bear shamans.” 

Throughout northern California a distinction is made between the 
shaman who sings, dances, and smokes in order to diagnose, in other 
words, is a clairvoyant, and a second class endowed with the executive 
power of sucking out disease objects, that is, curing sickness. This 
grouping of shamans has been reported from the Hupa, Wiyot, 
Nongatl, Yuki, Pomo, and Maidu. It has not been mentioned among 
more southerly peoples. It thus coincides in its distribution with the 
concept of the “pain” as a more or less animate and self-impelled 
thing. and the two ideas can scarcely be interpreted as other than 
connected. The sucking shaman seems to be rated higher than the 
one that only sings; as is only natural, since his power in some meas- 
ure presupposes and includes that of his rival. It is not unlikely, 
however, that certain singing shamans were believed to possess an 
unusual diagnostic power against illness, and no doubt all such 
matters as finding lost objects and foretelling the future were their 
particular province. 


CULT RELIGIONS. 


The cults or definitely elaborated religions of California have been 
described in detail in the accounts given of the peoples among whom 
they are perhaps most intensively practiced, and who may be assumed 
to have had somewhat the largest share in their development: the 
Yurok, Wintun (compare especially Tables 1-4), Gabrielino and 
Luisefio (see also Table 7), and Mohave (Table 8). The respective 
ranges of the four systems are plotted on Plate 74. Certain compara- 
tive aspects of these cult types will be considered here. 

It appears from Plate 74 that the specific northwestern cultus 1s 
separated from that of north central California by a belt of tribes that 
participate‘in neither. 





2There may be confusion as regards this area, either in the customs themselves or in 
the information about them, between true bear shamans and bear impersonators in 
Kuksu rituals. 


856 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLn. 78 


The religions of north central and southern California, or Kuksu 
and “toloache,” on the other hand, seem to have overlapped in the 
region of the northern Yokuts and Salinans. It is unlikely that the 
two cults existed side by side with undiminished vigor among the 
same people; one was probably much abbreviated and reduced to 
subsidiary rank, while the other maintained itself in flourishing or 
substantially full status. Unfortunately the tribes that seem to have 
shared the two religions are the very ones whose institutions have 
long since melted away, so that data are exceedingly elusive. It is 
not improbable that fuller knowledge would show that the two reli- 
gions reacted toward each other like the basketry complexes that have 
been discussed: namely, that they were preserved integrally, and 
normally to the exclusion of each other. 

This seems on the whole to be what has happened in southern Cali- 
fornia, where the Jimson-weed religion emanating from the Gabrie- 
lino and the system of song-myth cycles issuing from the Colorado 
River tribes existed side by side to only a limited extent among the 
Diegueno and perhaps some of the Cahuilla and Serrano. [ven in 
these cases of partial mixture it is possible that the condition is not 
ancient. A recent wave of propaganda for the Jimson-weed cult 
radiated southward and perhaps eastward from the Gabrielino during 
mission times—may in fact have succeeded in then gaining for the 
first time a foothold—particularly because civilization had’ sapped 
the strength of the older cults in regions where these had previously 
been of sufficient vitality to keep out this “ toloache ” religion. 

In any event there are certain ceremonies of wide distribution in 
California which must be considered as belonging to a more gener- 
alized and presumably older stratum of native civilization than any 
of the four great cults referred to. Most prominent among these 
simpler rituals is the adolescence ceremony for girls. The dance of 
war or victory occupies second place. To these must be added in 
northwestern and north central California the shamans’ dance for 
instruction of the novice, and in north and south central California 
various exhibitions by classes or bodies of shamans. Generally speak- 
ing, all these rites are dwarfed among each people in proportion as the 
nation adheres to one of the four organized cults; but they rarely dis- 
appear wholly. They are usually somewhat colored by ritualistic 
ideas developed in the greater cults. Thus the adolescence rites of the 
Hupa, the Maidu, and the Luisefo are by no means uniform. And 
yet, with the partial exception of the latter, they have not been pro- 
foundly shaped by the cults with which they are in contact, and can 
certainly not be described as having been incorporated in these cults. 
In short, these old or presumably ancient rites, which are all animated 
by essentially individual motives as opposed to communal or world 


= 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 857 


purposes, evince a surprising vitality which has enabled them to 
retain certain salient traits with but little modification during periods 
when it may be supposed that the more highly florescent religions 
grew or were replaced by others. 

The mourning anniversary belongs to neither class and is best 
considered separately. 

The Kuksu and toloache systems shared the idea of initiation into 
a society. This organization was always communal. The organiza- 
tion of the society was also of very simple character, particularly 
in the south. In the Kuksu society two grades of initiates were 
recognized, besides the old men of special knowledge who acted as 
directors.® 

The Kuksu cult impersonates spirits and has developed a fair 
wealth of distinctive paraphernalia and disguises for the several 
mythic characters. This is a feature which probably developed on 
the spot. It can not well have reached central California from either 
the Southwestern or the North Pacific coast areas, since the inter- 
vening nations for long distances do not organize themselves into 
societies; not to mention that the quite diverse northwestern and 
toloache religions are present as evidences of. growths that would 
have served to block the transmission of such influences. 

The dances and costumes of the toloache cult are extremely simple. 
Ritual actions refer unceasingly to mythology, and the ground paint- 
ing is only one of several manifestations of an actively symbolizing 
impulse, but there are no disguises or impersonations. The vision- 
producing drug gives the cult an inward-looking and mystic char- 
acter and discourages meaningless formalism. 

The cults of the Colorado River tribes are bare of any inclina- 
tion toward the formation of associations or bodies of members. 
They rest on dreams, or on imitations of other practitioners which 
are fused with inward experiences and construed as dreams. ‘These 
dreams invariably have a mythological cast. Ritually the cults con- 
sist essentially of long series of songs, but most singers know a cor- 
responding narrative. Dancing is minimal, and essentially an ad- 
junct for pleasure. Concretely expressed symbolism is scarcely 
known; disguises, ground paintings, altars, religious edifices, drums, 
and costumes are all dispensed with. 

The northwestern cults adhere minutely to certain traditional 
forms, but these forms per se have no meaning. ‘There is no trace 
of any cult organizations. The esoteric basis of every ceremony 
is the recitation of a formula, which is a myth in dialogue. The 
formulas are jealously guarded as private property. Major rites 


3Jt is doubtful whether the Miwok, Yokuts, Costanoans, and Salinans—in other words, 
the southern Kuksu dancing tribes—possessed a society. 


858 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


always serve a generic communal or even world-renewing purpose 
and may well be described as new year rites. Dance costumes and 
equipments are splendid but wholly unsymbolic. All performances 
are very rigorously attached to precise localities and spots. 

It is clear that as tnese four cults are followed from northwestern 
California southeastward to the lower Colorado, there is a suc- 
cessive weakening of! the dance and all other external forms, of 
physical apparatus, of association with particular place or struc- 
ture; and an increase of personal psychic participation, of sym- 
bolism and mysticism, of speculation or at least emotion about 
human life and death, and of intrinsic interweaving of ritualistic 
expression with myth. The development of these respective qual- 
ities has nothing to do with the development of principles of organ- 
ization, initiation, and impersonation or enactment, since the latter 
principles are adhered to in the middle of our area and unknown 
at the extremities. 

As organizations, the Kuksu and toloache cult associations are de- 
cidedly weak. They aim usually to include all adult males, and 
even where some attempt at discrimination is made, as perhaps 
among the Wintun, the proportion of those left out of membership 
seems to be small. There is no internal hierarchy; recognized 
priests can scarcely be spoken of with propriety; and there never is 
an elaboration of structure through the coexistence of parallel and 
equivalent societies within the community. On all these sides, the 
Californian religious bodies are much less developed than those 
of the Southwest and the Plains. 

To compensate for the simplicity of organization in the Kuksu 
and toloache religions, initiation looms up largely, according to some 
reports almost as if it were the chief function of the bodies. Novices 
were often given a formal and prolonged education. Witness the 
woknam, the “ he-dance” or “school” of the Yuki, the orations of 
the Maidu and Patwin, the long moral lectures to Luiseno boys and 
girls. That these pedagogical inclinations are an inherent part of 
the idea of the religious society is shown by the fact that the Yurok 
and Mohave, who lack societies, do not manifest these inclinations, 
at least not in any formal way. In the Southwest, education seems 
less important than in California, relatively to the scheme of the 
whole religious institution; and for the Plains the difference is still 
greater. It appears, therefore, that these two aspects, initiation and 
organization, stand in inverse ratio of importance in North American 
cult societies. 

Police and military functions of religious societies are very 
strongly marked among the Plains tribes; are definitely exercised by 
the bow or warrior societies of the Southwest, and perhaps stand 
out larger in native consciousness than in our own, since ethnolo- 


KROFBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 859 


gists have usually approached the religious bodies of this area from 
the side of cult rather than social influence; but such functions are 
exceedingly vague and feeble in California. There may have been 
some regulation of profane affairs by the body of initiates; but the 
chiefs and other civil functionaries are the ones almost always 
mentioned in such matters in California. There certainly was no 
connection of the cult societies with warfare. The first traces of 
an association of cult and war appear on the Colorado River, where 
societies do not exist. The negativeness of the California religious 
bodies in this regard is to be construed as an expression of their lack 
of development of the organization factor. — 

In spite of their performance of communal -and often public rit- 
uals, American religious societies are never wholly divorced from 
shamanism, that is, the exercise of individual religious power; and 
one of their permanent foundations or roots must be sought in 
shamanism. On the Plains there is a complete transition from so- 
cieties based on voluntary affiliation, purchase, age, war record, or 
other nonreligious factors, to such as are clearly nothing but more 
or less fluctuating groups of individuals endowed with similar 
shamanistic powers. Farther east the Midewiwin is little more 
than an attempt at formal organization of shamanism. In the 
Southwest, among the Pueblos, the fraternal as opposed to the 
communal religious bodies can be looked upon, not indeed as 
shamans’ associations, but as societies one of whose avowed pur- 
poses—perhaps the primary one—is curative, and which have 
largely replaced the shaman acting as an individual. Among the 
Navaho the greatest ceremonies seem to be curative. In California 
we have the similarity of name between the Luiseho shaman and 
initiates, pu/—a and pu—pl-em, already commented on; and the /¢ 
or doctoring of the Yuki societies as practically their only function 
besides that of perpetuating themselves by initiation. In spite of 
their loose structure and comparative poverty of ritual, it can not, 
however, be maintained that the societies of California are more in- 
clined to be shamanistic than those of the other two regions. 

Perhaps the most distinctive character of the two Californian 
cult societies is their freedom from any tendency to break up into, 
or to be accompanied by, smaller and equivalent but diverse societies 
as in the Plains, Southwest, and North Pacific coast regions. 

Dance costumes and ornaments are illustrated in Plates 3, 42, 58, 
59. 61, 77, 80, and Figures 20, 21, 44. 


THE MOURNING ANNIVERSARY. 


The anniversary or annual ceremony in memory of the dead bulks 
so large in the life of many California tribes as to produce a first 


860 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 


impression of being one of the most typical phases of Californian 
culture. As a matter of fact, the institution was in force over only 
about. half of the State: southern California and the Sierra Nevada 
region. There can be little doubt that its origin is southern. The 
distribution itself so suggests. The greatest development of mourn- 
ing practices is found among the Gabrielino and Luiseno. It is 
not that their anniversary is much more elaborate than that of 
other groups—the use of images representing the dead is common 
to the great majority of tribes—but it is that these southerners 
have a greater number of mourning rites. Thus the Luisefio- first 
wash the clothes of the dead, then burn them, and finally make the 


image ceremony. Of this they know two distinct forms, and in ad- 


dition there are special mourning rites for religious initiates, and 
the eagle dance, which is also a funerary ceremony. Another cir- 
cumstance that points to southern origin is the fact that the an- 
niversary is held by nearly all tribes in the circular brush enclosure, 
which is not used by the Miwok and Maidu for other purposes, 
whereas in southern California it is the only and universal religious 
structure. Tinally, there are no known connections between the 
anniversary and the Kuksu cult of the Miwok and Maidu, whereas 
the Jimson-weed religion of southern California presents a number of 
contacts with the mourning ceremony. 

It is a fair inference that the anniversary received its principal 
development among the same people that chiefly shaped the Jimson- 
weed cult, namely, the Gabrielino or some of their immediate neigh- 
bors. It is even possible that the two sets of rites flowed northward 
in conjunction, and that the anniversary outreached its mate because 
the absence of the Jimson-weed plant north of the Yokuts checked the 
invasion of the rites based upon it. 

The Mohave and Yuma follow an aberrant form of mourning 
which is characteristic of their general cultural position with ref- 
erence to the remainder of southern California. Their ceremony 
is held in honor of distinguished individual warriors, not for the 
memory of all the dead of the year. The mourners and singers sit 
under a shade, in front of which young men engage in mimic battle 
and war exploits. There are no images and no brush enclosures. 
The shade is burned at the conclusion, but there is no considerable 
destruction of property such as is so important an element of the 
rite elsewhere in California. 

An undoubted influence of the anniversary is to be recognized in 
a practice shared by a number of tribes just outside its sphere of 
distribution: the southern Wintun, Pomo, Yuki, Lassik, and perhaps 
others. ‘These groups burn a large amount of property for the dead 


op) 
= 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 8 


at the time of the funeral. Somewhat similar are the eastern Mono 
practices. 

Some faint traces, not of the mourning anniversary itself, indeed, 
but rather of the point of view which it expresses, are found even 
among the typical northwestern tribes. Among the Yurok and Hupa 
custom has established a certain time and place in every major dance 
as the occasion for an outburst of weeping. The old people in par- 
ticular remember the presence of their departed kinsmen at former 
presentations of this part of the ceremony, and seem to express their 
grief spontaneously. 

On the question of the time of the commemoration, more informa- 
tion is needed. It appears rather more often not to fall on the 
actual anniversary. Among some of the southern tribes it may be 
deferred several years; with the Mohave it seems to be held within a 
few weeks or months after death; the Sierra tribes mostly limit it 
to a fixed season—early autumn. 


GIRLS’ ADOLESCENCE CEREMONY. 


Probably every people in California observed some rite for girls at 
the verge of womanhood: the vast majority celebrated it with a-dance. 
The endless fluctuations in the conduct of the ceremony are indicated 
in Table 9. It appears that in spite of a general basic similarity of 
the rite, and the comparatively narrow scope imposed on its main 
outlines by the physiological event to which it has reference, there 
are very few features that are universal. These few, among which 
the use of a head scratcher and the abstention from flesh are promi- 
nent, are of a specifically magical nature. The wealth of particular 
features restricted to single nations, and therefore evidently de- 
veloped by them, is rather remarkable, and argues that the Cali- 
fornians were not so much deficient in imagination and originality 
as in the ability to develop these qualities with emotional intensity 
to a point of impressiveness. There is every reason to believe that 
this inference applies with equal force to many phases of Californian 
civilization. It merely happens that an unusually full series of 
details is available for comparison on the rite for girls. 

It has been noted several times that poor and rude tribes make 
much more of the adolescence ceremony in California than those pos- 
sessed of considerable substance and specialized institutions. In 
this connection it is only necessary to cite the Yurok as contrasted 
with the Sinkyone, the Pomo as against the Yuki, valley Maidu 
against those of the mountains, Yokuts against Washo, Mohave 
against Diegueno. Precedence in general elaboration of culture 


862 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


must in every instance be given to the former people of each pair; 
and yet it is the second that makes, and the first that does not make, 
an adolescence ceremony. This condition warrants the inference — 
that the puberty rite belongs to the generic or basic stratum of 
native culture, and that it has decayed among those nations that suc- 
ceeded in definitely evolving or establishing ceremonials whose asso- 
ciations are less intimately personal and of a more broadly digni- 
fied import. 

In the northern half of the State the idea is deep rooted that the 
potential influence for evil of a girl at the acme of her adolescence 
is very great. Even her sight blasts, and she is therefore covered 
or concealed as much as possible. Everything malignant in what 
is specifically female in physiology is thought to be thoroughly in- 
tensified at its first appearance. So far as known, all the languages 
of this portion of California possess one word for a woman in the 
periodic illness of her sex, and an entirely distinct term for a girl 
who is at the precise incipiency ¢f womanhood. 

A second concept is also magical: that the girl’s behavior at this 
period of intensification is extremely critical for her nature and 
conduct forever after. Hence the innumerable prescriptions for 
gathering firewood, industry, modest deportment, and the like. 

This concept pervades also the reasoning of the tribes in the 
southern end of the State, but is rather overshadowed by the more 
special conviction that direct physiological treatment is necessary 
to insure future health. Warmth appears to be considered the first 
requisite in the south. Cold water must not be drunk under any 
circumstances, bathing must be in heated water; and in the sphere 
of Gabrielino-Luiseno influence, the girl is cooked or roasted, as 
it were, in a pit, which seems modeled on the earth oven. The 
idea of her essential malignancy is comparatively weak in the south. 

The southern concepts have penetrated in diluted form into the 
San Joaquin Valley region, along with so many other elements of 
culture. On the other hand, the Mohave, and with them presumably 
the Yuma, practice a type of ceremony that at most points differs 
from that of the other southern Californians, and provides an excel- 
lent exemplification of the profound aloofness of the civilization of 
these agricultural tribes of the Colorado River. 

The deer-hoof rattle is consciously associated with the girls? cere- 
mony over all northern California. Since there is a deep-seated 
antithesis of taboo between everything sexual on the one hand, and 
everything referring to the hunt, the deer as the distinctive game 
animal, and flesh on the other, the use of this particular rattle can 


Saas 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA $63 


hardly be a meaningless accident. But the basis of the inverting 
association has not become clear, and no native explanations seem 
to have been recorded. 

A few Athabascan tribes replace the deer-hoof rattle by a modifica- 
tion of the clap-stick which provides the general dance accompani- 
ment throughout central California, but which is not otherwise used 
in the northwest. In southern California the deer-hoof rattle is 
known, but is employed by hunters among the Luisefio, by mourners 
among the Yumans. 

The scarcity of the ritualistic number 4 in Table 9 may be an 
accident of tribal representation in the available data, but gives 
the impression of having some foundation in actuality and a sig- 
nificance. 


3625 °—25—_56 


[BULL. 78 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 


564 


“ams JOU SUTASeOI 41d UT [IT 
*10YWM P[OO OU SOSN [ITH 


‘asnoy Ul Yous.) UT [ITD 


‘OI JO SUL UT [ITH 


*p]IOM 4B YOO] Jou YSN ITH | 


“UOT4JO9ITP OT[OqUIAS ST 4SBe 
:4noqe Yoo, jou seop 


‘oyVMe Sdeey [IID } 


*soAo I0Yy I0AO 


aey ‘eyeme sdooy [IIS {9]}9R1 YOUS poled |Z 


*1098M UL 
ustmI0M Aq <oUBP SUTPNOUOD ‘syYSIU ¢ 10 OT 


“ST[OUS SIJOT]VY O7UT suved 
‘sprvoq pojuied {2379381 Yous poieg 
"1048S SUIUIOUL PIBMO} Sdee’T 


18 





*seinjeej [eIoedg 


+ $UOTILA.I00 





suotnmedey 





jo 








“STUIN) YOd 





SS! i es 











meio; 
ia) = i) 
es = iz) 
n 6B ct 
re ae 
a ey 
= 154 Se 
le) ° 8 
Bla} ow 
. fae) oF 
@ | = 
lar} 





x ay Gmiaic| aes, 
x De oe ee 
x x SX ae lap 
ea Xom BOSC ote cil aks 
Bed Bart eS ico wea 
x Se ES Fel pee. 
x BC (ico hinge 
Sa Ge er 
en Ged Goo 
316 B's a aa 
Seal) ROOM eye | cae 
x oe eee os 
3) @ | 2 
ef Ele) e 
sey 2 i) i) 
wn ioe ao < 
TTSETa)]s 
o = =p = 
5 © is a) 
ict nm ° 
BP Si- 
ES: 
io) oO 
© pad 
= é 








eres 


Se Cees ee ee 

















[-o “quesqe {x “yueseig | 








ANOWAUA) AONAOSATOGY AH, - 





weet] yy [eeeefeee dey 
Pavstallterre we--| yy |ese-f---- fee - 
Beet we--| yy [-eeef----f---- 
ORK dicen Wooo carn AO 
if 
ge ENG peas Se Bre 9 OS 
> Gili ome ee No 9d ee ale 
Sagan ee ail aR eR aed pee x 
aremieilate eeleeee|----|----f 
seecleeeeleeee| vy [eee feeb y 
ele a there sillatoratal eaten ssf y 
2 ie gat ER a SOT vg) ‘x 
xe, O OMS sa ce pie 0 
nisies|ceaalls6 o ilisrevete 
i 
Di Gow = all eo Pis4 |e) 
wi — im o © 
pa tin 5 =a ¢ & 5 
fe) ar} fo) = a = 
SL oah Se Om teehae tee 
SB pe a RSet 
fete wn B © > ard 
oO y 0g o : mS a 
a Ss 9 ° 
S ~ a Se ie) 
4 ay yar cog Ps 
) B ae Ps 
5 ro} : 
oe es 


ion) 


aTav 








tod Be a i 
x Ix |x 
oe Rory 
iis fe eae fos 
cmb oe 
Said | aaa Re 
or Fs -l"0 
x ix ix 
Sige rises 
Sis | 
=) B B 
oO 2) OQ 
fae) (a2) oO 
ofele 
2) | 5 
aio] & 
Slee leo 
Sis] = 


eoee 








‘g0uep Ud | 








*90UBP UTLO AA | 








° 


ow WH Oo RM M 


fas 


*suloUued 


ences fee en ee 


*SUISUIS | 


CE SSSI te s*[-eeeFeoe"* reqemaeqny, 


“7 HOMT [eIqWAQ 


nprey AeypeA 


Pa ee Npre yy TH 
“npreyy ureyuNo yy 
a a TMBULOID 





865 





HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 


























‘pues 4OY UT SoTT 

‘Jayjour Aq posnoy {10}8M P[Od OU SyUTIp 
FICE, Sie. Te SAD OF Senses at. 9 S129 eri ea) ee Poo Se RA |e bee eT ie eae SES aca G. | 0.) 1 NO Rag. See Sis eer "**"9ABTORL 

“oPTUYop 

-ul 31d ut potied {yunip od0eqo. fy10M 
~ I[® UopprIqioy [113 fpotdde ouojs oMUVDSeIN Foo} x foot Se eee fee TO ae Ors Os |) Onekaeiieas = eos Beg) Ais cine owes ee Site lee ee | SC mage IC Oar ae ouenselc(y 

= “YIOM [[B WOPPIGAOJ [ats {poyzuted syoo1 . 
$ -[eepi0,_ anmverp00rg0}. “guyured: poset“! ye ae abe, |e ex  xtho | oF | Olle [ix We ieo-ho fh ofp xed ee ]-2 ee ee ee hx re "*-°OgoSsINT 
Me “YUNIp 09c8q0} SYIOM [[V UsppIqioy [IH Fz |e Pop x foo x | x Px Mee camgal; take PER Re EN hee ae RAT ton) Ge Pee Wee | Cry oe Ai eee ns erpinyeg 





866 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [RULL. 78 


BOYS’ INITIATIONS. 


The description which has sometimes been made of Californian re- 
ligion as characterized by initiation and mourning rites does not 
appear to be accurate. Mourning customs, so far as they are crystal- 
lized into formal and important ceremonies, are confined to a single 
wave of southern origin and definitely limited distribution—the 
mourning anniversary. The girls’ adolescence rite, on the other 
hand, is universal, and clearly one of the ancient constituents of the 
religion of all California as well as considerable tracts outside. 

Boys were initiated into the two great organized religions of the 
State, the Kuksu and the toloache cult. Important as the initiation 
ceremonies were in these cults, it would, however, be misleading to 
regard them as primary: logically, at any rate, the cult comes first; 
the initiation is a part of it. When, therefore, we subtract these two 
religions, there is left almost nothing in the nature of initiations for 
boys parallel to the girls’ adolescence ceremony. 

The only clear instance is in the northeastern corner of the State 
among the Achomawi and Shasta, primarily the former. These 
people practice an adolescence rite for boys comparable to the more 
widespread one for girls. Among each of them a characteristic 
feature is the whipping of the boy with a bow string. The Acho- 
mawi also pierce the boy’s ears and make him fast, besides which he 
performs practices very similar to the deliberate seeking after super- 
natural power indulged in by the tribes of the Plains. The entire 
affair is very clearly an adolescence rather than an initiation rite, 
an induction into a status of life, and not into an organized group. 
It may be looked upon as a local extension to boys oe concepts A 
are universal in regard to girls. 

In southern Garter nia there is sometimes a partial assimilation of 
the boys’ toloache initiation and of the girls’ adolescence ceremony. 
Thus the Luiseno construct ground paintings for both, deliver 
analogous orations of advice to both, and put both sexes under simi- 
lar restrictions. The Kawauisu are said to give toloache to both boys 
and girls. 

But these local and incomplete developments are very far from 
equating the initiations for the two sexes; and neither balances with 
mourning ceremonies. The girls’ adolescence, the boys’ initiation 
into a society, and the mourning anniversary clearly have distinct 
origins so far as California is concerned, and represent separate cul- 


tural planes. 
NEW YEAR OBSERVANCES. 


A first-salmon ceremony was shared by an array of tribes in 
northern California. The central feature was usually the catch- 
ing and eating of the first salmon of the season; after which fishing 


K ROEBER } HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 867 


was open to all. These features constitute the ceremony one of 
public magic. The tribes from which some observance of this 
kind has been reported are the Tolowa, Yurok, Hupa, Karok, Shasta, 
Achomawi, and northern mountain Maidu. The list is probably not 
complete; but it may be significant that all the groups included in 
it are situated in the extreme north of the State, whereas salmon 
run in abundance, wherever there are streams of sufficient size to 
receive them, as far south as San Francisco Bay. It thus seems 
probable that the distribution of the rite was limited not only by the 
occurrence of the fish but also by purely cultural associations. Its 
range, for example, is substantially identical with that of the north- 
ern type of overlaid basketry. 

The first-salmon ceremony is clearly of the type of new year’s 
rituals, but is the only well-marked instance of this type yet found 
in California outside of the hearth of the northwestern culture. The 
idea of ceremonial reference to the opening of the year or season 
‘seems not to have been wholly wanting in north central California, 
especially where the Kuksu religion prevailed, but there is no record 
of its having been worked out into a definite ritual concept. In 
the northwest there were first-acorn and world-renewing ceremonies 
as well as the first-salmon rite. With the Karok these contained the 
superadded feature of new-fire making. All this, however, was an 
essentially local development among the small group of tribes who 
had advanced the northwestern culture to its most intense status. 

In other words, an annual salmon producing or propitiating act 
of magical nature and of public rather than individual reference is 
usual in the northern part of the State, as well as in Oregon, and 
is therefore presumably an ancient institution. Among the specifi- 
cally northwestern tribes this act later became associated with a 
ritualistic spectacle, either the Deerskin or the Jumping dance, which 
probably had no original connection with the magical performance}; 
after which the combination of magic act and dance was applied to 
other occasions of a first fruits or New Year’s character. 


OFFERINGS. 


Offerings of feathered wands are reported from the Chumash, the 
Costanoans, and the Maidu, and may therefore be assumed to have 
had a considerably wider distribution in the central parts of Cali- 
fornia, although neither Yuki nor Pomo seem to know the device. 
The idea is that of the prayer stick or prayer plume of the Southwest, 
and there is probably a connection between the practices of the two 
regions; although this may be psychological, that is, indirectly cul- 
tural, rather than due to outright transmission. This inference is 
supported by the fact that there is no reference to anything like the 
offering of feather wands in southern California where south- 


868 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


western influences are, of course, most immediate. In fact, the prac- 
tice of setting out offerings of any kind is so sparsely mentioned for 
southern California that it must be concluded to have been but 
slightly developed. The Californian feather wand was of somewhat 
different shape from the southwestern prayer plume. It appears 
usually to have been a stick of some length from which single feath- 
ers were loosely hung at one or two places. The northwestern tribes 
are free from the practice. 

Another ultimate connection with the Southwest is found in offer- 
ings or sprinklings of meal. These have been recorded for the 
Pomo, the Maidu, the Costanoans, and the Serrano. In some in- 
stances it is not clear whether whole seeds or flour ground from 
them was used, and it is even possible that the meal was sometimes 
replaced by entire acorns. The southern California tribes should 
perhaps be included, since the use of meal or seeds in the ground 
painting might be construed as an offering. The custom seems, how- 
ever, to have been more or less hesitating wherever it has been re- 
ported. It certainly lacks the full symbolic implications and the 
ritualistic rigor which mark it in the Southwest. Among the Yokuts 
and probably their ‘mountain neighbors offerings of eagle down ap- 
pear to have been more characteristic than of seeds or meal. The 
northwestern tribes can again be set down with positiveness as not 
participating in the custom. 


A 


THE GHOST DANCE. 


The ghost dance, which swept northern California with some vehe- 
mence from about 1871 to 1873 or 1874, is of interest because of its 
undoubted connection with the much more extensive and better known 
wave of religious excitement that penetrated to the Indians of half of 
the United States about 1889 and 1890, and which left most of the 
Californians totally untouched. Both movements had their origin 
among the Northern Paiute of Nevada, and from individuals in the 
same family. The author of the early phophesies may have been 
. the father and was, at any rate, an older kinsman of Wovoka or Jack 
Wilson, the later prophet or Messiah. The ideas of the two move- 
ments and their ritual were substantially identical. There is thus 
little doubt that even their songs were similar, although, unfortu- 
nately, these were not recorded for the earlier movement until after 
its fusion with other cults. 

The question arises why the religious infection which originated 
twice in the same spot in an interval of 15 or 20 years should at the 
first occasion have obtained a powerful, although fleeting, foothold in 
northern California alone, and on its recrudescence should have 
spread to the Canadian boundary and the Mississippi River. That 


HROERER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 869 


the Californians remained impassive toward the second wave is in- 
telligible on the ground of immunity acquired by having passed 
through the first. But that a religion which showed its inherent po- 
tentiality by spreading to wholly foreign tribes should in 1870 have 
been unable to make any eastward progress and in 1890 sweep like 
wildfire more than a thousand miles to the east is remarkable. The 
only explanation seems to be that the bulk of the Indian tribes in the 
United States in 1870 had not been reduced to the necessary condition 
of cultural decay for a revivalistic influence to impress them. In 
other words, the native civilization of northern California appears 
to have suffered as great a disintegration by 1870, 20 or 25 years after 
its first serious contact with the whites, as the average tribe of the 
central United States had undergone by 1890, or from 50 to 100 
years after similar contact began. As regards the Plains tribes, 
among whom the second ghost dance reached its culmination, there 
may be ascribed to the destruction of the buffalo the same influence 
on the breaking up of their old life as the sudden overwhelming 
swamping of the natives by the California gold seekers. In each case 
an interval of from 10 to 20 years elapsed from the dealing of the sub- 
stantial death blow to the native civilization until the realization of 
the change was sufficiently profound to provide a fruitful soil for a 
doctrine of restoration. 

Individual tribes had, of course, been subject to quite various for- 
tunes at the hands of the whites when either ghost dance reached 
them. But it is also known that they accorded the movement many 
locally diverse receptions. Some threw themselves into it with an 
almost unlimited enthusiasm of hope; others were only slightly 
touched or remained aloof. This is very clear from Mooney’s classi- 
cal account of the greater ghost dance, and it can be conjectured that 
an intensive study would reveal the skeptical negative tribes to have 
been so situated that their old life did not yet appear to themselves 
as irrevocably gone, or as so thoroughly subject to the influences of 
Caucasian civilization that they had accepted the change as final. 
Then, too, it must be remembered that the wave, as it spread, de- 
veloped a certain psychological momentum of its own, so that tribes 
which, if left to themselves or restricted to direct intercourse with 
the originators of the movement, might have remained passive, were 
infected by the frenzy of differently circumstanced tribes with whom 
they were in affiliation. 

The same phenomena can be traced in the history of the California 
ghost dance, imperfect as our information concerning it is. The 
Karok and Tolowa seem to have projected themselves into the cult 
with greater abandonment than the Yurok. The Hupa, at least to 
all intents, refused to participate. This is perhaps to be ascribed to 


870 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [RULL. 78 


the fact that they were the only tribe in the region leading a stable 
and regulated reservation life. But it is not clear whether this cir- 
cumstance had already led them to a conscious though reluctant 
acceptance of the new order of things, or whether some other specific 
cause must be sought. | 

On many of the northernmost tribes the effect of the ghost dance 
was quite transient, and it left no traces whatever. It was perhaps 
already decadent when the Modoc war broke out. At any rate it is 
no longer heard of after the termination of that conflict. How far 
the Modoc war may have been indirectly fanned by the doctrine 
remains to be ascertained. Its immediate occasion seems not to have 
been religious. | 

Somewhat farther south the ghost dance took firmer root among 
tribes like the Pomo and southern Wintun, which were beyond the 
most northerly missions but which had been more or less under mis- 
sion influence and whose lands had been partly settled by Mexicans 
in the period between secularization and the Americanization of 
California. The old Kuksu ceremonies were now not only revived 
but made over. A new type of songs, paraphernalia, and ritual 
actions came into existence; and these have maintained themselves 
in some measure until to-day they are strongly interwoven with the 
aboriginal form of religion. The Wintun at least, and presumably 
the Pomo also, are still conscious, however, of the two elements in 
their present cults, and distinguish them by name. Saltu are the 
spirits that instituted the ancient rites, boli those with whom the 
modern dances are associated. 

This amalgamation, strangely enough, resulted in the carrying of 
the Kuksu religion, at a time when it was essentially moribund, to 
tribes which in the days of its vitality had come under its influence 
only marginally or not at all. Evidently the ghost dance element 
acted as a penetrating solvent and carrier. The central Wintun 
took the mixed cult over from the southern Wintun, and the use 
since 1872 of typical Kuksu paraphernalia as far north as the Shasta 
of Shasta Valley evidences the extent of this movement. 

None of the tribes within the mission area seems to have been in 
the least affected by the ghost dance. This is probably not due to 
their being Catholics or nominal Catholics, but rather to the fact 
that their life had long since been definitively made over. Groups 
like the Yokuts, of which only portions had been missionized and 
these rather superficially, also did not take up the ghost dance. 
The cause in this case presumably lies between their geographical 
remoteness and the fact that most of their intercourse was with 
missionized tribes. 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 871 


The Modoc were perhaps the first Californian people to receive 
the early ghost dance from the Northern Paiute. It is hard to con- 
ceive that the Achomawi should have been exempt, but unfortunately 
there appear to be no records concerning them on this point. The 


Ghost Dances. 


_—..- Course of Cult of 1869-73. 
1890 Tribes affected by Cult of 1889-92. x 


Se one 


x  Souce of both Cults. s ue 





Fic. 71.—Ghost dance movements in California. 


same may be said of the mountain Maidu. From the Modoc, at 
any rate, the cult was carried to the Shasta. These transmitted it 
still farther down the Klamath to the Karok. From there it leaped 
the Siskiyou Mountains to the Tolowa, from whom the lower Yurok 
of the river and of the coast took their beliefs. The upper Yurok 
were less affected and the Hupa scarcely at all. Here we lose track 


872 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


of the spread of the dance. Probably all the Athabascan tribes be- 
tween the Whilkut and the Wailaki, at least those that survived in 
sufficient numbers, came under ghost dance influence, but the direc- 
tion in which this influence progressed seems to have been from the 
south northward. Their dance appears to have been associated 
with the erection of large round dance houses of central Californian 
type. The traced course of the movement is: southern Wintun of 
the Sacramento Valley; Long Valley Wintun; southeastern Pomo; 
eastern Pomo; southern, central, and northern Pomo; Huchnom; 
Yuki, Kato, and Wailaki; and north to the Hayfork Wintun, Whil- 
kut, and perhaps Chilula. (Tig. 71.) 

It has already been mentioned how in the Sacramento Valley the 
ghost dance spread from south to north. To this it may be added 
that the Yana received the cult from the valley Maidu to the south 
of them. The question then arises how the dance reached the south- 
ern Wintun. There is no known information on this point. The 
movement may conceivably have traveled directly westward from’ 
the Northern Paiute through Washo and southern Maidu. Yet, on 
the whole, it is hkely that the entry into California was at a single 
point; that is, through the Modoc and Klamath tribes, from whom 
the cult spread southward until, reaching its extreme limit among 
the southern Wintun, it recrystallized and then flowed back north- 
ward. Inquiry among the southern Maidu and northern Miwok 
would probably determine this issue. 

It is not known whether any of the Miwok took up the ghost 
dance. In a number of localities they have during the last genera- 
tion or so erected circular or octagonal dance houses of wood without 
earth covering. These look very much like a ghost dance modifica- 
tion of the old semisubterranean dance house of the Kuksu cults. 
Forty or fifty years ago—that is, about the time of the ghost dance— 
the hill Miwok received a number of new dances, including some of 
the Kuksu series. These came from Costanoan territory to the west, 
but quite possibly represent a cult revival of the imperfectly mis- 
sionized northernmost valley Yokuts or Plains Miwok, original 
neighbors of the hill Miwok, but later domiciled at the Costanoan 
missions.? 

The 1890 ghost dance is reported by Mooney, specifically or by 
implication, for the Achomawi, Washo, Mono, Koso, Yokuts of 
Tule River, Luisefo or other “mission” groups, Chemehuevi, and 
Mohave. The Washo, eastern Mono, Chemehuevi, and perhaps 
Koso could hardly have escaped participation. The Achomawi may 
have been rendered susceptible by a failure to take part in 1872. 
The Mohave were never seriously affected. The Yokuts and Luiseno 
were no doubt interested, but seem never to have practiced the cult. 


1'The northern Miwok of 1923 know nothing of the ghost dance. 


KRORRER |] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 873 
No tribe in California retained for more than a very short time any 
phase of this second ghost dance religion. 


CALENDAR. 


The California Indian did not record the passage of long intervals 
of time. No one knew his own age nor how remote an event was 
that had happened more than two or three years ago. ‘Tallies seem 
not to have been kept for any purpose, and no sticks notched annually 
have been found or reported in the State. Most groups had not 
even a word for “ year,” but employed “ world,” “ summer,” or “ win- 
ter” instead. Where there appear to be words meaning “ year,” 
they seem as often as not to denote “season,” that is, a half year. 

Probably every tribe, however, had a system of measuring time 
within the year. This was by the universally known method of 
naming and reckoning lunations in the round of the seasons. ‘The 
point of interest in this method to the historian of culture rests in 
the means taken to adjust the eternally varying and essentially irrec- 
oncilable lunar and solar phenomena. Half a dozen such calendars 
are known from California. These clearly belong to three types, 
evidently representative of the three cultures of which so much men- 
tion has been made in this book. 

The Maidu knew 12 moons, named after seasonal occurrences. 
The series began in spring, and appears not to have been controlled 
by any solar phenomenon. There can accordingly scarcely have been 
a consistent method, however rude, of adjusting the moon count to 
the year. When the discrepancy became too insistent, something 
was presumably stretched or the reckoning simply suspended until 
matters seemed to tally again. The whole scheme is essentially de- 
scriptive of terrestrial events, and has as little reference to astro- 
nomical events as a system can have and still be called a calendar. In 
line with this attitude of the Maidu is the fact that they made 
definite recognition of the seasons, as shown by a neat nomenclature. 
It should also be added that the upland Maidu counted only the 
winter moons, those of the summer being left unnamed. 

The Yurok calendar has a more astronomical basis, although 
simple enough; and the descriptive element is almost lacking. The 
moons are numbered, not named, at least up to the tenth; the re- 
maining ones have descriptive appellations. The year begins defi- 
nitely at the winter solstice. The summer solstice may have been 
noted also, but does not enter into the system. There was a clear 
recognition of the essential problem of a year calendar, some in- 
dividuals counting twelve moons and others thirteen. The solution 
must have been less clearly formulated, since it is stated that dis- 
putes often took place as to the proper designation of the current 


874. BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Burs 78 


moon. Yet recognition of the solstice as a primary point, however 
inaccurately it may have been determined by offhand appearances 
without mechanically aided observations, would prevent any exces- 
sively gross errors or long-continued conflict of opinion. 

The Yurok system is undoubtedly connected with that of the 
North Pacific coast, where the moons are also frequently numbered 
and fitted into the frame afforded by the solstices. 

The Modoc calendar seems to be a weakening of the Yurok one. 
Basically, the moons are numbered, although their actual names 
are those of the fingers of the hand. But the beginning of the round 
is in summer and is determined by a seasonal harvest; there is no 
mention of the solstices; and none of an intercalary thirteenth 
month. 

The Huchnom and Pomo mostly used descriptive moon names, but 
some “ finger months” are included.* 

In southern California the moon names are probably descriptive, 
but the fixed points of the calendar, and the means of its more 
or less automatic correction, are the two solstices. The Diegueno 
have only six month names; which means that the second half-year 
repeats and balances the first, and presumably that the two solstices 
are pivotal. The Juanefio and Luisefio do not repeat month desig- 
nations within the year, but the former name only five and the 
latter but four periods in each half year. This scheme makes the 
nonlunar periods which include the solstices long and somewhat 
variable, but also accentuates them as primary.’ AII three varieties 
of this calendar must at times have been productive of difficulty 
within the haf-year, but as a perpetual system the scheme is obvi- 
ously self-correcting. Whether any of the southern California 
tribes took actual observations of the solstices is not known. 

This southern calendar is clearly allied to that of the tribes of the 
Southwestern States, who also deal in solstices but describe their 
moons. The Diegueno six-name plan is that of the Zuni. The 
Pueblos definitely determined the solstices with fair accuracy by 
observations made on the horizon from established spots. It is pos- 
sible that they were led to this procedure by their permanent resi- 
dences. These would at least afford an advantage and perhaps a 
stimulus in this direction. 

Astronomical knowledge not directly used in time reckoning was 
shght in northern and central California. The planets were too 


*It appears (see footnote, p. 209) that both finger-count and descriptive calendars 
might coexist among one group in this region, and that the year sometimes began with 
the winter solstice. This suggests that central Californian and North Pacifie coast 
customs have met in the Pomo area. 

5TIt has been doubted whether the southern California periods tally with lunations 
in native consciousness, even though they are called ‘‘ moons.’ See footnote, p. 723. 


KROEBBR | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 875 


difficult to trouble with, except for Venus when it was the morning 
star. The Pleiades are the constellation most frequently mentioned, 
and seem to have had a designation among every tribe. Myths 
usually make them dancing girls, as in so many parts of the world. 
This may prove to be one of the concepts of independent or directly 
psychological origin which have so often been sought but are so 
difficult to establish positively. Orion’s belt is probably recognized 
with the next greatest frequency, and then possibly Ursa Major. 
There are some references to Polaris as the immovable star. The 
Milky Way is known everywhere, and quite generally called the 
ghosts’ road. In southern California stellar symbolism begins to be 
of some consequence, and half a dozen constellations and several 
isolated first magnitude stars are named in addition to those 
recognized farther north. 


NUMERATION. 


The round numbers familar to the Californians in ritual and myth 
are low, as among all American Indians. In the north, from the 
Tolowa and Sinkyone to the Achomawi and mountain Maidu, 5 or 
its multiple 10 is in universal use in such connections (Table 10). 
In the region of the well-defined Kuksu cult 4 takes its place, al- 
though the Pomo evince some inclination to supplement it by 6. 
To the south there is enough uncertainty to suggest that no one num-- 
ber stood strongly in the foreground. The Yokuts favor 6, but 
without much emphasis. The Gabrielino employed 5, 6, and 7 in ad- 
dition to 4; among the Juanefo, 5 is most commonly mentioned ; 
for the Luisefio, probably 3; among the Diegueno, 3 is clearly prev- 
alent in ritual, 4 in myth. For a group of American nations with 
a definite ceremonial cult, and that comprising sacred paintings 
of the world, this is an unusually vague condition. Only the 
Colorado River tribes are positive: 4 is as inevitably significant to 
them as to all the Indians of the Southwest. 

Directional reference of the ritualistic number is manifest in the 
Kuksu tribes, but everywhere else is wanting or at least insignificant, 
except with the Yuman groups. Here there is some tendency to 
balance opposite directions; single pairs are even mentioned alone. 
North or east has the precedence. In the Kuksu region there is a 
definite sequence of directions in sinistral circuit; but the starting 
point varies from tribe to tribe. Association of colors with the direc- 
tions has been reported only from the Diegueno. Its general absence 
is an instance of the comparatively low development of ritualistic 
symbolism in California. 


876 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 


[BULL. 78 


TABLE 10.—RitruAL NUMBERS AND METHODS OF NUMERATION. 


Group. 





Ritual number. 


Units of count. 


1-10 


11-19 


20+ 





Uso ae hee 3S eleee ee teats. 
Wilvoterwii. eta cord 27.2 


Ghimarikots: 375 eS. pee eee 
Tolowans pany: ts amie ete 
Bupa, Ghilila (cst pe ctvee pe) 
Sinko One} ear: alert ee 
Wai lak iced a: pects tebe s2. fee ab 


Katt tee ee 


Wintun— 
Northern 
(EWC TO" ere or eas ee ee 


Southern 
Maidu— 


Mountain 


Yokuts— 
Gerttial orcs een ee. ae 
DOUENOT Wace nett ee 
GOSTANOMTIn the aien ae eee ere 


Haselon 3223 42 Seem Sereeenre 


Salinan 





Chumash 


* Referred to cardinal directions. 
110 among northeastern Pomo, 


ccf ee ee 


ed 



































10 
10 


OVS Ur eC mk 











10 
10 
10 


16 


16— 











10 
10 
10 
10 
10 
10 
10 
10 
10° 
10 
64 
10 
20 
10 
10 
10 
10 
20 


10, 


20, 


16 


210 among northeastern and southern Pomo. 
3 5 among southern Costanoans. 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 8 


~J 
~I 


TaBLe 10.—RriruaL NUMBERS AND MeruHops or NuUMERATION—Continued. 





Units of count. 


























Group. Ritual number. F ——— —— 
110°" 11-19 +} 204 
NpeeriGe SOIUe Shes: ee SIO TO) OU eit Piles OY OPE ohh 5 10 | 10 
Peper ivimG Heide, fe OL eo: Se | SUSHI: ROSE? LU eels 
bapslabed srt eri ie huoshet itl. allt, Weal ees OT) Ole (Ot Oe. WS 
Meee On Pl PSI Rs oe oo OE Ss LE Sy A Sa LOWPASS Ate Et 
Peercrrrsea te DIT PISS OLD. WE MALS 0! PP. SS FE 5 10 | 10 
epiRIGUD.. .penOs Lk Setth. Jil Ie Le 4,8] (10) | 6 | (7) 5) | | 5 
Peaster eA he rw. te OT! SG oi bb heer Miia 8 tao 10 
Memeo rirry. Jatt fais hy tee Cor ok ay Sake aes Porky litay 5 5 5 
miecvero. iF. Pf. or ye: $3 ak 4} devs: de A eee SryOsie PL 10 
AC TAGE) D&E agS NESE 198 uae eee teres es OP Pets ale Ta 5} 10 10 
Mohivet. ari}: Lo. iuAtteudsbals >: Rai de. Ora" haved 5 10 10 
| 
* Referred to cardinal directions. 44 predominates in myth, 3 in ritual action. 


The same Table 10 shows also the distribution in California of 
methods of counting—the basis of all mathematical science. Man- 
kind as a whole, and even the most advanced nations, count as the 
fingers determine. But it is obvious that the unit or basis of numer- 
ation can be one hand, or two, or the fingers plus the toes, that is, 
“one man.” This gives a choice between quinary, decimal, and 
vigesimal systems. Whether from an inherent cause or because of 
a historical accident, practically all highly civilized nations count 
by tens, with hundred as the next higher unit. Peoples less ad- 
vanced in culture, however, are fairly equally divided between a 
decimal numeration and one which operates somewhat more con- 
eretely or personally with fives and twenties. So, too, with the 
Californians. But to judge correctly their inclinations as between 
these two possibilities, it is necessary to distinguish between their 
use of low and high numbers. 

For the first 10 numerals the majority of the Californians have 
stems only for 1 to 5. The words for 6 to 9 are formed from those 
for 1 to 4. This system is replaced chiefly in three regions by a 
truly decimal one, in which the word for 7, for instance, bears no 
relation to that for 2. The first of these three tracts holds the two 
Algonkin divisions of California, the Wiyot and Yurok; and a few 
immediately adjacent Athabascan groups, notably the Hupa and 
Tolowa. The second area comprises the Yokuts, Miwok, and most 
of the Costanoans—in short, the southern half of the Penutian 
family. In the third area are the Plateau Shoshoneans east of the 
Sierra Nevada. 


878 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


These distributions reflect geographical position rather than lin- 
cuistic affinities. The northern Penutians, southern Athabascans, 
and southern California Shoshoneans count by fives instead of tens. 
The map makes it look as if decimal numeration had been taken over 
by the Hupa and Tolowa in imitation of the method of their Algon- 
kin neighbors; but the difficulty in this connection is that the great 
mass of eastern Algonkins count by fives instead of straight to ten. 

For the higher numbers, the corresponding choice is between a 
system based on 20 and 400, or on 10 and 100. In this domain the 
decimal system prevails, showing that the quinary and vigesimal 
methods, even if inherently associated, are not inseparable. The sit- 
uation may be summed up by saying that from 20 up, all California 
counts decimally except the people of two areas. The first comprises 
half or more of the Pomo, most of the southern Wintun, in general 
the western Maidu, and the northerly divisions of the interior Miwok. 
This is precisely the region of intensive development of the Kuksu 
cults. Here the count is by twenties. The second area is that of the 
Gabrielino and Luiseho, with whom the Fernandeno, Juaneno, and 
perhaps Cupeno must be included, but no others. (These peoples 
strictly do not count by twenties, but by multiplying fives.) Now, 
this, strangely enough, is precisely the tract over which the Chun- 
gichnish religion had penetrated in its full form. The connection 
between a system of religious institutions and a method of numera- 
tion in daily life is very difficult to understand, and the bonds must 
be indirect and subtle. That they exist, however, and that it is more 
than an empty coincidence that we are sie vets: is made almost 
indisputable by the fact that the northern tract of decimal counting 
for low numbers coincides very nearly with the area of the north- 
western culture in its purest form as exemplified by New Year’s rites 
and the Deerskin dance. 

That the basing of the vigesimal on the quinary count, although 
usual, is by no means necessary, is shown by the northern and cen- 
tral Miwok, who count the first 10 numbers decimally, but proceed 
from 10 to 20 by adding units of 5, and beyond with units of 20. 
That a people should count first 5 and then another 5 and then pro- 
ceed to operate systematically with the higher unit of 10, is not so 
very foreign to our way of thinking. But that our own psychic 
processes are by no means necessarily binding is proved by this curt- 
ous Miwok practice of beginning with ten straight numeral words, 
then counting twice by fives, and finally settling into a system of 
twenties. 

Two other totally divergent methods of counting are found in 
California. The Chumash and Salinans count by fours, with 16 as 
higher unit, the Yuki by eights and sixty-fours. The latter operate 


KROBBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 879 


by laying pairs of twigs into the spaces between the fingers. Thus 
the anomaly is presented of an octonary system based on the hand. 
The Yuki operate very skillfully by this method: when they are 
asked to count on the fingers like their neighbors, they work slowly 
and with frequent errors. Both these systems run contrary to speech 
affinity: the Chumash and Salinans are the only Hokans that count 
by fours; and the Coast Yuki, Huchnom, and Wappo related to the 
Yuki know nothing of their system of eights. 

Every count that can progress beyond one hand involves arithmeti- 
cal operations of some sort, usually addition. But other processes 
crop out with fair frequency in California. Nine, fourteen, and 
nineteen are sometimes formed from the unit next above. The word 
for 4 is often a reduplicated or expanded 2; or 8 a similar formation 
from 4, Two-three for 6, three-four for 12, and three-five for 15 all 
occur here and there; and the Luisefio count by an indefinitely re- 
peated system of multiplication, as “4 times 5 times 5.” 

The degree to which mathematical operations were conducted other 
than in the counts themselves has been very little examined into. 
The Pomo speak of beads by ten and forty thousands. Every group 
in the State, apparently, knew how to count into the hundreds; how 
often its members actually used these higher numbers, and on what 
occasions, Is less clear. Rapid and extended enumeration argues some 
sense of the value of numbers, and it is likely that people like the 
Pomo and Patwin developed such a faculty by their counting of 
beads. Of direct mathematical operations there is less evidence. An 
untutored Yuki can express offhand in his octonary nomenclature 
how many fingers he has; he evidently can not multiply 10 by 2: 
for he finds it necessary to count his hands twice over to enable him 
to answer. An old Mohave knows at once that 4 times 4 is 16; but 
4 times 8 presents a problem to be solved only by a sorting and add- 
ing up of counters. No Californian language is known to have any 
expression for fractions. There is always a word for half, but it 
seems to mean “part” or “division” rather than the exact mathe- 
matical ratio. 


3625 °—25 





DT 


CuHaprer 57. 
POPULATION: 


Previous estimates and computations, 880; a reconsideration of the data, 882; 
comparison with the population of the continent, 884; the mission area, 
885; population by speech families, 886; decrease of population, S886; condi- 
tions favoring survival and decline, 888; reservation influence, 890; progres- 
sion of the decline, 891; inhabited and uninhabited areas, 891. 


PREVIOUS ESTIMATES AND COMPUTATIONS, 


The strength of the aboriginal population is as difficult to esti- 
mate in California as in most parts of America. Early figures 
of general range, like Powers’s 700,000, are almost invariably far 
too high, and those of more restricted application are either obvious 
impressionistic exaggerations or fail to specify accurately the areas 
really involved. 

There has been only one attempt to approach the subject in a 
critical spirit, and to arrive at conclusions by computation in place 
of guess. This is a valuable essay by Dr. C. Hart Merriam, which 
takes the Franciscan mission statistics as a basis. The argument 
runs as follows: 

In 1834 there were upward of 30,000 converted Indians. A ratio 
of one gentile to every three neophytes may be assumed for this 
period for the territory tapped by the missions. This gives 40,000. 
The population at the missions had, however, long suffered a heavy 
decrease. At least 10,000 must therefore be added to reach the true 
numbers before contact with the Spaniards: total, 50,000. The area 
in question comprises only one-fifth of the nondesert part of the 
State. Hence, natural conditions in the mission strip being on the 
average In no way superior to those elsewhere, there were 250,000 
Indians in the fertile and semifertile portions of California. Add 
10,000 for the deserts, and a grand total of 260,000 is reached. 

Some of the factors in this computation are taken very conserva- 
tively; others must be gravely questioned. The assumption of the 
representativeness of the mission territory in productiveness seems 
fair. The proportion of four natives in 1834 where there had been 
five in 1769 is, if anything, too low, in view of the enormous mor- 


880 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA S81 


tality at some of the missions. The proportion of converts to gen- 

tiles may be accepted as reasonable, statistics being totally lacking. 
On the other hand, the vague report of over 30,000 in 1834, the year 
of secularization, is less entitled to credence than the exact figure 
of 24,634 for 1830. 

That the tracts drawn upon for the missions covered only a fifth 
of the nondesert parts of the State is, however, an undervaluation, 
as can be seen by a glance at Figure 72. The outer, broken line on that 
map, indicating the limits of partial missionization, is the. one that 
must be considered in this connection, since we are allowing for terri- 
tory that still contained wild Indians as well as neophytes. It is 
evident that this line includes very nearly a third of the whole State, 
and certainly more than a third of the nondesert areas. 

A recomputation then might start with 25,000; add a third for 
gentiles, making 33,000; and possibly half to that as an allowance 
for decrease from 1769 to 1830; total for the mission area about 
1770, 50,000. Multiplying by 8 yields 150,000. An addition of 
10,000 for desert areas might be insisted on; but if so, at least an 
equal deduction would have to be made for the fertile portions of 
the State being less than three times the mission area; so that the 
result of 150,000 would stand. This cuts Dr. Merriam’s total nearly 
in half. 

It must be pointed out that the mission data are of such a charac- 
ter that they can not be used with any accuracy except after a far 
more painstaking analysis than they have yet been subjected to. 
We hear constantly of a jumble of tribes at most of the establish- 
ments, and sometimes they are designated so as to be recognizable, 
but their relative proportions remain obscure. A study of the bap- 
tismal registers, where these give birthplaces, may provide some 
notion of the strength of the various groups for certain periods at a 
few of the missions; and from such conclusions an estimate of the 
size of the tribes represented at all the establishments between 1769 
and 1834 might be derivable. Before this can be done, however, the 
location of the rancherias mentioned must be Sgn out ahh at 
least approximate precision. Another difficulty is that the ratios 
changed enormously. In 60, or even in 30 years, the unremitting 
mortality undoubtedly shrank the numbers of the first converts from 
the immediate vicinity very heavily; while neophytes from a distance 
began to come in only gradually, but then, until a certain point was 
reached, ever more rapidly. Thus, there were Yokuts at missions 
founded on Costanoan, Salinan, Chumash, and perhaps Shoshonean 
soil; but whether in 1810 and again in 1830 they constituted, at any 
one point, 5 or 20 or 60 per cent of the converted population, there 
is at present no means of deciding. 


882 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 
A RECONSIDERATION OF THE DATA, 


For many years the present writer had set the native population 
of the State at 150,000. This was avowedly a guess, based on numer- 
ous scattered impressions, which, however, seemed at least as re- 
liable as any computation can be at present. Later, he was inclined 
to shift the figure toward 100,000 rather than at 150,000. In the 
preparation of the present work the matter was once more gone 
into, and as exhaustively as possible. The method followed was 
to take up each group separately, giving consideration to all pos- 
sible elements of knowledge, and checking these against each other. 
The variety of sources of information, unsatisfactory as most of 
these are separately, is considerable. There are, for instance, early 
estimates of travelers and settlers; the conclusions of ethnologists 
familiar with the people at a later time; the number of known 
villages or village sites; the tribal count in the Federal census of 
1910, which was undertaken conscientiously and carried out very 
reasonably; the apparent rapidity of decrease in various areas; the 
availability of food supply in each habitat; and indications of the 
ratio of density of population in adjacent areas of differing surface 
and environment. The figures thus obtained more or less indepen- 
dently for each tribe, dialect group, or stock, were then brought to- 
gether, rounded to the nearest half thousand, in Table 11, and 
yielded a total of 133,000. 


iad 












































KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 883 
TABLE 11.—INDIAN POPULATION OF CALIFORNIA, 1770 AND 1910. 
Groups. 1770 1910 | Groups. 1770 1910 

WA ay SF PS Se spe 2, 500 700 || Northern Paiute in Cal- 
one rye: beds oh aa 1, 500 800 WOTI ee fs oe. 500 300 
Wivute ga ofan seals. 1, 000 100 | Eastern and _ western 
atime? taco rsh eye 4k 1, 000 ADU, hue Monbih it ya ee 4,000 1,500 
Lil yaid Mae tice Rees, 1, 000 500 || Tiibatulabal.........-. 1, 000 150 
Chilula, Whilkut........; 1,000 (*) || Koso, Chemehueyi, Ka- 
Riariee se  | A .784 500 | (*) WRIESU a ois vee cep. 1, 500 500 
Nongatl, Sinkyone, Serrano, Vanyume, 

HSARGH Ke tees $5 te at 2, 000 100 Kitanemuk, Alliklik.| 3,500 150 
VCD EES [a Se 1, 000 200 | Gabrielino, Fernan- 
MAT O” SERS Satya te pana 500 | (*) defio, San Nicolefio..| 5,000! (*) 
ee ee eis ose 221 etfs 2, 000 LOU th Loasisenio Sam trees. crepes 4, 000 500 
|S EYE Cer 16) 1 Ok ee BOO" As (F) VUSTENO. see. oe ares ee LUO, aml 
575] ee ed oe ae ee ee 500 (e) GiipehOss sh aks eo 500 150 
READ Ona > eoctndy. F, 4 st: 1 OUT) Walt tla oe gear on ee 2, 500 800 
PONY Sats t+ Ate hAe 2S. oe 8,000 | 1,200 || Dieguefio, Kamia...... 3, 000 800 
iiake Miwok. in. 3: jz =: 500 | (*) Mohave (total) ert ex.s, 000) >1, 050 
GaasteMIwOk: fu. 27 4... Le L000 4) Gy) Halchidhoma (emi- 
Ante wens ed abe. s. . eEe | 2,000 100 grated since 1800)-....| 1,000 |....... 
Chimariko, New River, petal ant COUAL) osceun ees ic 2, 500 750 

Konomihu, Okwanu- | 

sie eee el t,000'| C5) I 136, 000 | 15, 400 
Achomawi, Atsugewi. - | 3,000 | 1, 100 Total of groups marked | ia ieee 400 
Modoc in California. - - » 500 a) 15, 850 
Yana....-..----++++-+-- | 1, 500 (*) Less river Yumans in 
PEW REO ET SNe Seale ie , 12,000 | 1,000 Ae Wie nt wy 3, 000 850 
Rise Vive dete eee oe) Os OUU eat TLD 
Miwok (Plains and 15, 000 

SUAS Ni OE paris ai eS cata alia 9, 000 700 || Non-Californian Indians 
POR Ue et cee. re 18, 000 600 Ty Wel alloriia os sale oe. oo 350 
LStAMOAI se = estes ce 7,000) 1) Affiliation doubtful or 
PLOT ce sig aches eal g bce 500 | (*) MOUTEDOPLOG 42 tes cia eon d he 1, 000 
Persia aotes fe2 1 ee SLU UN EE Cod Gab er - 
ia Se ee eee 10,000 | (*) otal so 2 29.5) 433, 000. | 165350 
Washo in California... - 500 300 

















884 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


It must be admitted that as each individual figure is generally 
nothing but an estimate, or an average of possible conjectures, the 
total can make no claim to precision. It represents only an opinion; 
but at least this opinion is the formulation of years of attention to 
all possible aspects of the question. A different impression may be 
truer, and perhaps can some day be verified. 

Many of the figures for individual tribes in Table 11 may excite 
protest on the part of those specially familar with a group. But it 
is believed that if some have been put too low, others are excessively 
liberal. Thus, 9,000 for the Maidu may seem a small total, but the 
student who has most carefully investigated these people judges 
4,000 to be a conservative estimate. The numbers for the Mohave 
and Yuma are smaller than the prepioneer Garcés reported. Per- 
haps he was correct; but if so, the shortage is likely to be more than 
made up, in the State total, by the allowance of 9,000 for the Plains 
and Sierra Miwok, not to mention the high figure of 18,000 for the 
Yokuts. At any rate, the list represents the best that the writer 
conscientiously belheves himself capable of proffering. And he is 
confident, in his own conviction, that he has not erred by more than 
a fourth from reality. 

Of course there is no intention of offering the figure of 133,000 
with the least idea of its specific correctness. It is meant only to 
indicate with some exactness the point. near which the true value 
probably falls. A better expression might be to say that the popula- 
tion was from 120,000 to 150,000. But for broader computations, 
into which California might enter only as a small element, some pre- 
cise formulation is necessary, and the 133,000 arrived at is the figure 
of all those in its vicinity that seems to have a little the greatest 
verisimilitude. 

The plan of multiplicative calculation has been attempted on the 
basis of one people, the Yokuts. The computation can be followed 
in detail in chapter 32. The conclusion does not seem to have the 
same strength as that just arrived at, but it yields the interesting 
and perhaps significant corroboration of 130,000 maximum. 


COMPARISON WITH THE POPULATION OF THE CONTINENT. 


There is one other test that can be apphed: Comparison with the 
remainder of the continent. Mr. James Mooney, who has devoted 
assiduous years to the problem of native population, arrives at a 
judgment of 846,000 souls for the United States and 202,000 in Can- 
ada, Alaska, and Greenland, or about 1,050,000 for America north 
of Mexico, with an estimate of error of less than 10 per cent. 
California covers a twentieth of the area of the country, or about 
a fortieth of the larger tract. On the basis of the present estimate 


KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 8585 


of 133,000, this would allot to California nearly 16 per cent of the 
aboriginal population of the United States, as compared with 5 per 
cent of the area, or a relative density more than three times as great. 
This surely is liberal, no matter how highly we may rate the fertility 
of the Golden State and overlook its very considerable areas of min- 
imal productivity. 

In fact, the ratio is really higher, since Mr. Mooney’s estimate of 
846,000 seems to contain the figure of 260,000 for California. If for 
260,000 we substitute 133,000, the total for the United States sinks 
to 719,000, and the California proportion rises to between 18 and 19 
per cent. The density, similarly, is almost one person per square 
mile for California, as against one to every 4 plus miles over the 
remainder of the country. If we remember Death Valley, the Colo- 
rado and Mohave Deserts, the northern lava flows, and the high 
Sierra, this disproportion seems sufficient, 1f not excessive. 

Comparison with outside territories therefore produces nothing 
to compel an enlargement of the estimate arrived at, in fact rather 
indicates that the reckoning of 133.000 is already thoroughly liberal. 
On the same basis, the result of Dr. Merriam’s computation is in- 
credible: 260,000 Indians in California, only 586,000 in all the other 
States and not more than 788,000 in the whole continent north of 
the Rio Grande, is a proportion that shatters conceivability. 
It is true that Mr. Mooney has evidently been thoroughly con- 
servative in his estimates for the eastern and central United States 
with whose Indians he is most familiar from personal expert- 
ence. But if this has been the inclination, for the larger part of 
the continent, of the admitted authority on the subject, a similar 
restraint is not only permissible but almost requisite in approaching 
the present more limited inquiry. 


THE MISSION AREA. 


A calculation made from Table 11 and Figure 72, of the number of 
Indians in the region affected by the missions, yields the following 

















probabilities : 

Rite ee a A Sk, RD Ru OT ae eee ee ee ee 500 
Sa pL a ps 1 Gus eee ayens wrens eye oro NN) tala 22 eee 3, 000 
DT Oe tee 4,000 | Chumash a ee Se LOAN 
“AE, Ly aa ag a ee ea Le RON Ga ke io bee 1 OOD 
A UTI oe ep ROT th enn ha one eels ee Sa Sa ee 2, 500 
46 CUTE Tce han taco ala heh RR at 13, 000 —_—_— 
Meena Sete st eee 7, 000 POL Lae ot es 64, 000 


On the basis of the area involved being a third or not quite a 
third of the State, this figure of 64,000 would yield a total of very 
nearly 200,000, which is as near to Dr, Merriam’s final conclusion 


886 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


as to tne number advanced in the present work. Justice compels 
this admission; but the result thus attained seems not so much to 
compel an upward revision of the results already arrived at, as to 
indicate the unreliability of the multiplicative method. 


POPULATION BY SPEECH FAMILIES, 


The following compilation from Table 11 of the relative strength 
of the several native families in California may be of interest: 











Families. 1770 1910 
Penutian: 
Pen group: Maidu, Wintun, Yokuts. -. batho eaees 39, 000 
Uti group: Miwok; Costanoatieo.2: see) ee 18, 000 
Total.zsce. .axctaee et. eee ee cer ee ae ge? 57, 000 3, 500 
Hokan: 
Northern group: Shastan, Chimariko, Karok, 
Naina! ct tetreyasn, <n et ioe ee Rl Se Pe, pee 9, 000 
Pomos. ite. wr te aes xe eeges ed tes 8, 000 
Washo in Galiformia,” sii.ss2.\i50. 2 eta. tee ee 500 
Southwestern group: Esselen, Salinan, Chumash... 13, 500 
Yuman (9,500, less 3,000 in Arizona)............- 6, 500 
Total’. Mo! NCA Os At APE iy aeons aN, EE era) 6, 000 
Shoshonean: 
‘Plateat ‘branch 2ve22. sere eee Sener ba ae 6, 000 
Kern Rivet‘branchs sascha ee eee 1, 000 
Sotthern California brancht: <8) eee ee ee 16, 500 
Ota) 5 ses. was oe barr undo Fy steeneee ee ae ne 23, 500 4, 050 
Athabascan Tod. 2. ceca oa ieee, At sales eee Bey eRe 7, 000 1, 000 
YUKA. oes fae. Soe es Shee sec Bos ee ee re eee 4, 000 200 
Algonkin -CYurok, WiVOl) sog.ce os tet Ae eee ee ee eer 3, 500 800 
Tutuami intGalitommia.. e265 2 see ee a re : 500 300 
Total tases sens Vee a) as age te 133, 000 15, 850 








DECREASE OF POPULATION. 


There is one Indian in California to-day for every eight that lived 
in the same area before the white man came. To attain even this 
fractional proportion of one-eighth, half and mixed bloods, totaling 
nearly 30 per cent according to the census of 1910, must be in- 
cluded. It is true that a certain number of scattered individuals of 
much diluted blood, and individuals mainly of Indian blood but 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 887 


wholly Mexicanized in their mode of life, all of whom no longer 
habitually speak a native tongue, have probably succeeded in iden- 
tifying themselves so completely with the Caucasian population as 
to have escaped the Indian census takers. But the total of such 
persons is not likely to exceed a few hundreds; and it seems only 
reasonable to omit them from any count of Indians. 

















Decrease of Indian Population 





1770-1910 
Legend 
O-/ percent surviving jn 1910... - 4+... [os ] 
2—o ” 4 a” Ta 
6-9 od M4 le re 
10-19 ” ” ou 
20-29 ” oom 
30-60 « ” “£ 4 
Emigrated, replaced by Chemehueri____- A 
DOUOTS Gan Ee eee ain ee eS 8 
Limits of compléte missionization....--—__— 
u 4” partial a ——-< ) 1% 


Wie. 72.—Decrease of native population from 1770 to 1910. 


The causes of this decline of nearly 90 per cent within a period 
ranging, according to locality, from only 6 to 14 decades, are ob- 
scure. New diseases and alteration of diet, clothing, and dwellings 
have undoubtedly contributed largely. But civilized and semicivil- 
ized communities are often subject to similar influences, and thrive: 
whereas the native of low civilization, in many parts of the world, 
passes away. The ultimate explanation must therefore undoubtedly 


888 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


take into account, and perhaps in primary place, a set of cultural 
factors as well as the more obvious organic or physiological ones; 
and these cultural factors have never been determined, athough an 
untold quantity of conjecture and assertion has been formulated 
on the subject. But it may be of interest and service to set forth 
with some precision of detail those immediate conditions that appear 
in California to be associated with respectively greater tribal fatality 
or resistance. 


CONDITIONS FAVORING SURVIVAL AND DECLINE. 


The tribal figures have been already given in Table 11, and 
the ratio of decrease, or rather of survival, is graphically depicted 
in Figure 72. 

From these compilations it is clear that, in general, decrease of 
the native race is directly in proportion to immediacy and fullness 
of contact with superior civilization. This fact would have been 
driven home even more emphatically by the map if it had been pos- 
sible to present the tribal or dialectic areas in smaller subdivisions; 
but the data for the present time scarcely suffice for this, and those 
for the aboriginal period are unfortunately already too largely 
estimatory without being drawn fine and apportioned to minute dis- 
tricts. 

First of all, it is established that the tribes that were completely 
devoted to mission life are gone. Many are wholly extinct; the 
most fortunate may amount to one-hundredth of their original 
numbers. In the extreme south, among the Luiseno and Diegueno, 
there seems to be an exception. It is not real; but due to the difh- 
culty just mentioned: data are lacking to enable a separation of the 
wholly missionized from the partly missionized Luisefo and Die- 
gueho. Both groups have therefore been treated as units. And yet 
all indications are that if we could discriminate in this region, there 
would be less than 5 per cent of survivors for the thoroughly mission- 
ized Luisefio and Diegueii districts, in place of the 20 to 30 or 40 per 
cent that the rough blocks of the map show. 

The tracts from which part of the native population was drawn, 
or from which all of it was taken so short a time before secularization 
that a considerable proportion of the tribes was able to return to 
their old homes after 1834, tell the same story. 

It must have caused many of the fathers a severe pang to realize, 
as they could not but do daily, that they were saving souls only at 
the inevitable cost of lives. And yet such was the overwhelming fact. 
The brute upshot of missionization, in spite of its kindly flavor and 
humanitarian root, was only one thing: death. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA S89 


What the Franciscan commenced with his concentrations, the 
American finished by mere settlement, and extended to the hitherto 
unopened portions of the State. Where his cities sprang up, there 
was soon not an Indian within miles. In farming districts he lin- 
gered a little longer in scattered families. In the timbered hills, in 
the higher habitable Sierra, in the broken coast ranges, above all in 
the deserts and half deserts that skirt the eastern edge and make 
up a large part of the southern end of the State, the native main- 
tained himself in some measure. The occasional homesteader, the 
cattle ranger, the lumberman, even the miner if he did not stay too 
long, were not present in force enough to blast him more than in 
partial measure. Outside of the mission district the preservation of 
the Indian population of California is in inverse ratio to the density 
of the white population. The tints of a map of one of these two fac- 
tors need only to be reversed to serve as a substantially correct map 
of the other. 

There are some exceptions: A number of hill tribes that have 
vanished completely in 60 years, or are on the very brink of ex- 
tinction. Such are the Chimariko, New River Shasta, Konomihu, 
Okwanuchu, southern Yana, and Yahi in the north; and the Yokuts 
tribes of the Poso and Buena Vista foothill groups in the south; and, 
in only slightly less degree, all the Athabascan tribes between the 
Hupa and the Wailaki, the Shasta, the northern and central Yana, 
and the Vanyume. All these lived in remote places, where the 
white man never was abundant, and is still thinly sown; and yet they 
have perished. But they were small groups—all of them in num- 
bers and many of them in territory as well. And they were all rude 
even in native culture; which is equivalent to saying that they were 
poor; in short, that the margin which they had established between 
themselves and the minimum limit of existence was narrower than 
that of other tribes. Thus, the maladjustment caused by even a 
hght immigration of Americans was enough to push them over the 
precipice. 

That this coincidence is no idle one is clear from the circumstance 
that neighboring tribes—in valleys or on larger streams, more 
populous, richer, and of more elaborated customs—have usually 
maintained themselves proportionally better in spite of heavier or at 
least equal contact with the whites. Compare the Yurok, Hupa, and 
Karok, the richest and most civilized tribes in the State, of whom 
from a quarter to a half survive, with the half dozen just-cited 
groups of Athabascan and Shastan mountaineers who inclose them 
on three sides, of none of whom even one person in twenty remains. 
Match, too, the wild Yana with the adjacent populous and compara- 
tively peared Maidu and Wintun: at best a bare 5 per cent of main- 


890 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BurL. 78 


tenance in one case, 8 to 12 in the other. And so with the Yokuts 
Paleuyami, Chulamni, and Tuhohi, against their kinsmen the Yauel- 
mani and Yaudanchi. Even as between the Yuki and the Pomo a 
similar relation prevails. The latter are more accessible lowlanders, 
they held rich farming lands, and were invaded by a much heavier 
stream of colonization; yet they have maintained themselves three or 
four times as successfully, relatively. 

One further element is to be considered in this last class of cases. 
In the fifties and sixties the white settlers, however enterprising, 
were still sparse. Where a tribe numbered 2,000 or 3,000 closely 
concentrated people, it may sometimes have seemed venturesome to 
the whites to give way to passion and commence a warfare of ex- 
termination. Moreover, the natives furnished labor, services, perhaps 
even food, and soon acquired some means to make their trade worth 
while. Much, therefore, tended toward a preservation of amicable 
relations. <A little group of hill men, however, was of small potential 
use; they were too scattered to be available for work, and too poor 
to buy much; they were likely to be so hungry as to nll cattle or 
horses on opportunity, and thereby to sow the seeds of a conflict; 
and however brave and desperate, they were not strong enough to be 
seriously feared. 


RESERVATION INFLUENCE, 


The first reservations established by Federal officers in California 
were little else than bull pens. They were founded on the principle, 
not of attempting to do something for the native, but of getting him 
out of the white man’s way as cheaply and hurriedly as possible. 
The reason that the high death rate that must have prevailed among 
these makeshift assemblages was not reported on more emphatically 
is that the Indians kept running away even faster than they could die. 

The few reservations that were made permanent have on the whole 
had a conserving influence on the population after they once settled 
into a semblance of reasonable order. They did little enough for the 
Indian directly; but they gave him a place which he could call his 
own, and where he could exist in security and in contact with his own 
kind. In this way the many scattered tracts in southern California 
that came under the jurisdiction of the Mission-Tule Agency have 
helped to preserve the numbers of Luiseno, Diegueno, and Cahuilla, 
The Hoopa reserve has done the same for the Hupa. Round Valley 
Reservation did not check a heavy decrease of the native Yuki, nor 
Tule River of the Yaudanchi; but, on the other hand, the number of 
introduced Wailaki, Wintun, and Maidu surviving on the former, 
and of Yauelmani on the latter, is almost certainly greater than if 
these people had been allowed to shift for themselves. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 891 
PROGRESSION OF THE DECLINE. 


Doctor Merriam’s estimate of the population at different dates in 
the nineteenth century tells a graphic story, even though the initial 
figures seem, for reasons already discussed, too high. 
































TG pmecaGteS teil, yinlew. SOUROUONIE I SOU robes Wer 2 healt. ey: 35, 000 
Roe de stair eas! Tania) SH EM 210,000 | 1870________ if 30, 000 
1849 pani eyed Fi 100, 000 | 1880 é __ 20, 500 
1852____ th iets SOE R700 1800 ee 18 DOO 
1856. ne pene THF 850° 000711900 teak i 15, 500 


The decrease is saddening, however cautiously we may assume the 
absolute numbers. But excessive exaggerations need also be guarded 
against, such as the statement sometimes cited that 70,000 California 
Indians died of epidemic diseases in a few years following 1830. 


INHABITED AND UNINHABITED AREAS. 


The parts of native California which actually contained permanent 
settlements at one time or another formed a small fraction of the 
total area of the State. It is true that there were probably no regions 
which remained wholly unvisited, that most tracts were likely to be 
frequented seasonally for some food that they yielded, and that large 
areas came in this way to be wandered over and camped on. But 
there were no true nomadic tribes in California. Every group had 
some spot that it considered its home; here stood its most durable 
houses, and here the winters, or a considerable part of each year, were 
normally lived. It is these spots that were not distributed randomly 
over the whole extent of California, but clung to main water courses, 
valleys or their edges, and the more open canyons. The higher 
mountains, dense timber, rolling hills, the plains in the intervals be- 
tween streams, and, of course, the vast preponderance of the deserts 
never held permanent settlements. In short, the Indian did not 
think of territory in terms of plane area as we do. Every repre- 
sentation of group lands as filling areas on the map is therefore mis- 
leading and must be considered a makeshift tolerable only as long 
as our precise knowledge of the facts remains inadequate for most 
regions. 


CuHaApTer 58. 
PLACE NAMES. 


Types of place names, 892; north central California, 892; northwestern Cali- 
fornia, 893; south central California, 893; southern California, 894; mean- 
ingless place names, 894; source of some California place names of Indian 
origin, 895. 


TYPES OF PLACE NAMES. 


It is well known to all who are sufficiently interested in the Ameri- 
can Indian’s point of view to make any inquiry into such matters, 
that the names which he gives to his settlements and to localities 
are normally descriptive, or at most based on some trivial but un- 
usual happening. Romantic Indian names have been coined by ro- 
mantic Americans through a species of prevalent self-deception. 
Just as we actually have Smithville or Warner or Leadville or 
Salmon Creek or Bald Mountain and leave Bridal Veil and Lover’s 
Leap for occasional show places frequented by the idle and emotion- 
ally poor but hungry tourist, so the Indian will have his “ clover 
valley” or “red rock” or “snow mountain” or “ deer-watering 
place” or “bear fell down” and never dream of a “home of the 
mists” or “great Spirit’s abode.” His place names now and then 
are based on allusions to his mythology; but even in that case he is 
convinced that the event in question really happened, and that the 
formation of the ground or of a rock is evidence that it happened 
there. 

All this applies to the California Indian as to the American Indian 
in general. There are, however, certain points in which native place 
names differ from our own. They are never based on the names of 
persons. They are also rarely if ever taken over from another 
language. The California Indian translates into his own tongue the 
place names of his neighbors or of the aliens whom his ancestors may 
long ago have gradually dispossessed; or he makes up a descriptive 
name of his own. Names of the type of our Washington, Philadel- 
phia, Massachusetts, and Detroit are therefrore unrepresented among 
the Indians. 


NORTH CENTRAL CALIFORNIA. 


Some examples from tribes of the most diverse speech will illus- 


trate. 
The following are typical Yuki place names: Red rock, bent over, brush 
mouth, wide madrofia, woodpecker sits on rock, for crossing water (a ford), 


892 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 893 


salmon rock, snail rock, strong rock, peak, wormwood hole, water mouth, wide 
rock, dust flat, large dust, ground water, alder creek, flint hole, willow stream, 
deer eat pepperwood mouth, bear water, large water, sand, white rock ridge, 
white flower barrier, live-oak peak, good earth, tangled pines, wolf hole peak, 
pine-nut flat, wide water hole, skunk hole, hissing water drink (a hot spring), 
tan-oak hole, mountain-live-oak crotch, tree sifting-basket, rock, alder mouth, 
fir peak, large brush ridge, buckeye peak, large rocks together, sore canyon, 
large canyon, brush stands, cedars stand, windy rock. 

Pomo names of settlements and camp sites run along similar lines: Wind 
tree (i. e., wind-bent tree), pine hole, hollow trail, tobacco hole, obsidian creek, 
shady, madrofia flat, bear throws out, hand bog, grind pepperwood-nuts, hollow 
mussel, under the rock, east corner, milk-snake builds, dam mouth, willow valley, 
water-lily valley, string valley, rock mountain, scorched sweat-house, red-ant 
house, owl mountain, between the ground, clover corner, crow water, hand hangs, 
large, cold water valley, ground-squirrel water, valley end, between the rocks, 
north valley, old water place, rock house, large sand, mellow ashes, red moun- 
tain, river mouth, earth sweathouse, peeled tree, west point, south coyote gulch, 
bark fallen across, clover place, coyote house, west mountain, burned sweat 
house, pestle rock, west canyon, white-willow canyon, angelica mountain. 

Some of these names evidently refer to episodes and to mythical incidents, 
and a few must be taken metaphorically, but the majority are directly de- 
secriptive of natural or conspicuous features or of the abundance of an animal 
or plant. 


NORTHWESTERN CALIFORNIA. 


A few Karok and Yurok town names: In the basket, upper dam, lower dam, 
make a dam, lake, ghosts, pepperwoods, great large, trail descends, clay, watch 
for ducks, they dance. 

Athabascan place names frequently end in suffixes meaning ‘‘ place” or “in”; 
but the body of the word is similar in character to those in other lan- 
guages. Thus the towns shown on the Chilula map (Fig. 13), excepting the 
first, the eleventh, and the fifteenth, are named in order: Waterfall place, in 
the small glade, large timber point, near the large timber, down-hill ridge 
runs on, lying bones place, facing the water place, door upstream place, in 
the flat, flying dust place, among the willows place, projecting willows place, 
Yurok house place, in the slide, among the wild-syringa place, 


, 


SOUTH CENTRAL CALIFORNIA. 


Yokuts place names seem unusually simple, because this language is averse 
to compounded words, but their meanings are nevertheless of the usual char- 
acter. For instance, for villages: Cane, ground-squirrels’ holes, salt grass, 
arrow, drink, markings, gate, deer’s hole, clover, Jimson weed, bone, hole, 
sowing, wind, brush-shades. Most of these end in the locative —w in the orig- 
inal, but as this is only a case ending, it has not been translated. Yokuts 
place names are: Water’s fall, dog’s hole, rattlesnake’s holes, eye, hot-spring, 
supernatural. Being tribally organized, the Yokuts also possess a few towns 
named in accord with their political divisions, though it is possible that these 
villages once bore specific local names. Thus: Tulamniu, Tahayu, Kochoyu, 
Dalinau, Suksanau, Kiawitnau: Tulamni place, Tuhohi place, Kechayi place, 
Dalinchi place, Chukchansi place, Koyeti place. It is not certain whether 
the spot was named after the tribe or the tribe after the village. The lack 


894 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULT. 78 


of exact agreement between the corresponding place and group names may 
be due to prevailing employment of the latter in the mouths of aliens of 
somewhat divergent dialect. 


SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. 


Chumash names are also generally uncompounded: Bowstring, beach, moon, 
my eye, my ear, yucca, fish. These are all village names, 

A few southern California Shoshonean place names can be added: Poison- 
oak, willow, doves drink, Small woods, small roses, water, warm water, at the 
salt, river, pine water, alkali water, deer moon, cottonwood, pines, ears, road- 
runner’s mortar. 

With the Mohave elaborately compounded names are once more encountered. 
They are often of an unwieldly length. They are also more inclined to be 
colored by fancy than among the other Californians; that is, a fair proportion 
of the names are not directly descriptive of a visible feature, or of a prac- 
tice customary there. For instance: Mortar mountain, three mountains, blue 
mountain, sharp mountain, lizard mountain, willow water, faecal sand, owls 
regarding each other, duck water, pine land rattlesnake tooth, hawk nose, see 
deer, yellow waterhole, fear slough, covered with sand, no water, water tears 
through, thick akyasa plants, lie in the middle, beaver house, tule water, foot- 
ball surmounts, dove’s breast, whispering place, mosquito cannot, retches, cut 
earth, fat earth, gambling-ring place, four mortars, fight with club, yellow ocher 
washed open. 

Diegueno names are sometimes simple, sometimes of Mohave type: hollow 
over, far above, my water, large valley, red earth, white earth, middle of the 
sky, lie on rock, flows in opposite, wrap around neck, hot water, rain above, 
large mountain, Chaup’s house mountain, large, foam, pair of live oaks stands. 


MEANINGLESS NAMES. 


In all the native languages there are some place names that can 
not be translated by the Indians. The number of these, however, 
reduces rapidly in proportion to the degree to which the language 
has been studied and resolved into its elements. There is probably 
everywhere a residuum of unanalyzable names, which long usage has 
crystallized into a meaningless form. But there is also every indica- 
tion that this residuum is smaller than among ourselves, and that 
in general the California Indian is more conscious, at least poten- 
tially, of the denotation of his place names than we are. Where we 
are content with an age-old term without inquiring into what it may 
signify, or when called upon for a new name, apply the name of a 
settler or repeat a geographical designation familiar from another 
part of the world, the Indian draws upon his imaginative faculties 
and makes a word. Only, thic imagination is observant, practical, 
and directly descriptive, and not intended to be exercised poetically. 


KROEBER | 


HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF 


CALIFORNIA 


895 


TABLE 12.—SoOURCE OF SOME CALIFORNIA PLACE NaMes oF INDIAN ORIGIN. 


Acalanes... .. 
Aguanga..... 
Ahwahnee.... 


Algootoon.... 


Anacapa. ... - 
Anapamu. ... 
Ausaymas.... 


Bally 
Bohemotash. . 
Bolbones. ...- 
Bully Choop.. 
mir puri. 2)... 


Cahuenga. .-. 
Cahuilla...... 


Calleguas. ... . 
Calpella...... 
Camulos...... 


Carquinez.... 
Caslamayom1. 


Chagoopa. - -.. 
Chanchelulla. 
Chemehueyl. . 


Choenimne. .. 


Chowchilla. - . 
(leone i. = 
Collayomi. .-. 
Coloma....... 
Wolusalts: \2i6 


Cosumnes. ... 
Pntodiesaei 24 
Cucamonga. - . 


Cuyamaca. . - - 


3625°—25 


Costanoan (?) village (?). 

I-uisefo place name. 

Miwok village in Yosem- 
ite valley. 

Perhaps Luisefio 
ven.”’ 

Chumash. 

Chumash. 

Costanoan village. 

Gabrielino place name; 
perhaps ‘‘skunk place.”’ 

Wintun ‘‘peak.”’ 

Wintun “‘large —.”’ 

Costanoan village. 

Wintun “‘peak —.”’ 

Costanoan village. 

Pomo “‘lake” or ‘‘mush 
water.” 

Gabrielino place name. 

Given as ‘‘master,’’ but 
doubtful if Indian. 

Chumash ‘‘my head.’’ 

Pomo ‘‘mussel carrier.’’ 

Chumash ‘“‘my mulus,”’ 
a fruit. 

Wintun ‘‘stream.”’ 

Wintun village. 

Pomo or Coast Miwok ‘‘— 
place.”’ 

Chumash ‘‘my eye.”’ 

Wappo village. 

Probably Mono. 

Probably Wintun. 

Probably the Mohave 
name of a Shoshonean 
tribe. 

Yokuts tribe. 

Salinan village. 

Yokuts tribe. 

Pomo village. 

Coast Miwok ‘‘— place.’’ 

Maidu village. 

Wintun village. 

Maidu ‘“‘valley place.’’ 

Dieguefio place name. 

Probably Shoshonean. 


19 = 


. Miwok village. 


Coast Miwok village. 
Gabrielino village. 
Chumash place name. 
Dieguefio ‘‘rain above.’ 


58 


) 





Guajome..... 


Gualala....... 


Gaoataydd. 29% 
Guenoc......- 


Guesisosi..... 
Guihcost uu & 


Guyapipe..... 
Hanaupah. .. . 


Hetch Hetchy 


Hettenchow. - 


Horse Linto... 
Huasna.... 


Hueneme.... 
Huichica..... : 


Jamacha..... 


Kaiaiauwa... - 
Kekawaka. . . 


Kenoktal..... 


Kenshaw. . .- - 
Kibesillah. ... 
Kimshew... - 
Klamath )..23 


Luisefio place name. 
Pomo ‘‘stream mouth.’’ 
Dieguefio ‘‘large.”’ 
Indian, but unidentified. 
Probably Wintun. 
Coast Miwok name of a 
Wappo village. 
Dieguefio ‘‘rock lie on.’’ 
Shoshonean. 
Miwok name of a plant. 
Wintun ‘‘camass valley.” 
Serrano place name. 


..- Maidu village. 
. Yurok name of Athabas- 


can valley. 
Athabascan village. 


- Probably Chumash _ vil- 


lage. 


Chumash place name. 
Coast Miwok village. 


. Wintun ‘‘— place.”’ 


Athabascan, Yurok, Wi- 
yot, etc., salutation. 

Dieguefio ‘‘my water.” 

Possibly Shoshonean. 

Probably Southern Pai- 
ute. 

Chumash village. 

Dieguefio name of a wild 
squash-like plant. 

Dieguefio ‘‘foam.’’ 

Probably Salinan. 

Costanoan ‘‘— at.’’ 

Serrano place name. 

Yokuts tribe. 

Possibly Miwok. 

Probably Indian, but un- 
identified. 

Pomo ‘‘woman moun- 
tain.”’ 

Probably Wintun. 

Pomo ‘‘rock flat.’’ 

Maidu ‘‘— stream.”’ 

Probably either Lutuami 
“people” or Chinook 
name of the group. 


Probably Mono ‘‘moun- 
tain sheep.’’ 

Perhaps Mono ‘“‘fire- 
wood,”’ 


896 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 


[BULL. 78 


TABLE 12.—Source oF SOME CALIFORNIA PLACE NAMES OF INDIAN OrRIGIN—Con. 


Lasseck. ..2.4 


Locoallomi. . . 


Loconoma.... 





Mokelumne... 


Monache..... 


Mucu =. ata: 
Musalacon... . 


Muscupiabe... 
Najalayegua. - 


Nimshew.... - 
Nipomo......- 
Nojoguisy ey 


Olompali . Es Wed 


Matajual sees 
Dati ja eee 
Mattoleines ot 


ModoG@ee eee. 
Mohave. ..... 


Name of an Athabascan 
chief. 

Coast Miwok name of a 
Wappo village. 

Wappo ‘‘goose-town.”’ 

Chumash village. 

Possibly Chumash. 

Chumash village. 


. Wappo village. 


Probably Spanish name of 
a Coast Miwok Indian 
headman. 

Dieguefio ‘‘white earth.” 

Chumash place name. 

Probably Wiyot or Atha- 
bascan. 

Yurok village. 

Lutuami ‘‘south.”’ 

Mohave name of them- 
selves. 

Miwok “‘people of Mokel,’’ 
a village. 

Yokuts name of a Shosho- 
nean division. 

Same as Monache. 


. Yurok village. 


Wappo ‘‘north valley.”’ 


. Serrano local group. 


Probably Mono. 

Chumash ‘‘beach.”’ 

Pomo, perhaps a chief’s 
name. 

Serrano place name. 

Chumash village. 

Probably Pomo ‘‘harpoon 
point.”’ 

Maidu ‘‘north place” or 
‘‘upstream people.”’ 

Maidu ‘‘large stream.”’ 

Chumash village. 

Probably a Chumash 
village. 

Wintun ‘‘west people.”’ 

Perhaps Shoshonean. 

Pomo village. 

Chumash ‘‘moon.”’ 

Perhaps a form of Yau- 
danchi, a Yokuts tribe. 


Coast Miwok ‘‘coyote val-. 


ley.” 
Perhaps Miwok. 
Coast Miwok ‘‘south —,”’ 


OmyumEy, 4a. Perhaps Maidu ‘‘rock —.” 

Umorenceae Miwok village. 

Omochumnes. Miwok ‘‘people of Umu- 
cha.”’ 

Ono! ieee Possibly Wintun ‘‘head.”’ 
Orestimba ... Perhaps Costanoan ‘‘bear 
” 

Oricke ee. Yurok village. 

Osagon........ Yurok place name. 

Otay...-.+.. Diesueno “brushy: 

Pacoima. ..... Perhaps a Gabrielino 
place name. 

Palace eames Luisefio ‘‘ water.” 

Pamoy ae Probably a Dieguefio 
place name. 

Panamin£. #4 Name of a Shoshonean 
division. 

Paskenta.... - Wintun “under the 
bank.”’ 

Paubawog.- oe Perhaps a Luisefio place 
name. 

Paujase Dieguefio place name. 

Paumaz .usil- Luisefio village. 

Pecwan...... Yurok village. 

Petaluma..... Coast Miwok ‘‘flat 
back.”’ 

Pirivesl 2 fee Shoshonean name of a 
Chumash village: a 
plant. 

Pismo.=. .vean Perhaps a Chumash place 
name. 


Piute, Pahute. A Shoshonean division. 
Pohon6:..2d2- Probably Miwok. 

Pomo ‘‘people.”’ 
Poonkiny.... Yuki ‘“‘wormwood.”’ 


Poway...) -23 Dieguefio or Luisefio. 
Requa; 74.2 Probably a Yurok village. 
Na bob oto Luisefio place name. 
Sanelsis sae Pomo village: ‘‘dance 
house.”’ 
Naticoy 2. ssa. Chumash village. 
Sequan......- Dieguefio name of a bush. 
Sequit......-. Chumash or Gabrielino. 
Sespesia/eaat Chumash village; per- 
haps ‘‘fish.’’ 
Shasta....... Uncertain; most likely 
name of a Shasta head- 
man. 
Simic se oa Chumash place name. 
Siskiyou. .... Uncertain; perhaps Ore- 
gon Indian, 


KROEBER | 


HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 


897 


TABLE 12.—SouRCE OF SOME CALIFORNIA PLACE NAMES OF INDIAN ORIGIN—Con. 


Sisquoc.....- 


Tahquitz... - 
Taijiguas.. . - 


Tecuya.....- 
Tehachapi. - - 


Tehama..... 
Tehipite. .... 


Tepusquet. -.. 


Probably a Chumash 


place name. 


? 


Chinook jargon ‘‘strong. 

Chumash village. 

Probably a Wappo suffix, 
meaning ‘‘village of.”’ 

Probably a Costanoan vil- 
lage. 


. Pomo “‘place of Soto,” a 


chief. 


Perhaps a 
place name. 


Chumash 


Wintun village or tribe. 

Yurok village. 

Wintun village. 

Perhaps a Mono _ Sho- 
shonean word. 

Yokuts tribe. 

Washo “‘ lake.’’ 

Luisefio divinity. 

Chumash village. 

Probably Gabrielino 
place name. 


.. Coast Miwok ‘‘bay moun- 


tain.’’ 
Chumash ‘‘yucca.”’ 
Pomo name for the Huch- 
nom. 
Yokuts name of the Chu- 
mash. 
Yokuts, perhaps also Sho- 
shonean, place name. 
Wintun village. 
Perhaps a Mono 
shonean word. 
Gabrielino place name. 
Luisefio village; possibly 


ce sun ee rs) “ 
Miwok chief. 
Perhaps a Chumash 


place name. 


Sho- |. 


Tequepis. ... Chumash village. 
Tinaquaic.... Perhaps a Chumash 
place name. 
Tinemaha..... Perhaps Shoshonean. 
Tishtangatang Hupa village. 
‘Gasaack ...:. 2 Miwok place name of 
mythological origin. 
Tocaloma..... Probably a Coast Miwok 
place name. 
Tolenas....... Wintun village. 
Tomales... .-. Coast Miwok ‘‘bay.’’ 
Toowa....-.. Probably a Mono word. 
Topanga...... Gabrielino place name. 
Topa Topa... Chumash place name. 
Lruckee. .. 2. Name of a Northern 
Paiute chief. 
Tulucay...-.. Wintun village, ‘‘red.”’ 
Tuolumne. ... Probably a Yokuts tribe. 
Ugalde Pomo ‘‘south valley.” 
UMS Satan Ss Wintun village or divi- 
sion. 
WHOBtAGS S. n> Costanoan ‘‘at ulis.’’ 
Un Bully...-. Wintun ‘‘— peak.”’ 
Waals iia ... Pomo ‘‘south —.”’ 
Wahtoke. .... Yokuts ‘‘pine nut.”’ 
Weeyot....-- Yurok name of the Wiyot. 
Weitchpec.... Yurok village: ‘‘at the 
forks.’’ 


Winum Bully. Wintun ‘‘— peak.”’ 
Yallo Bally... Wintun ‘‘snow peak.’’ 


Ydalpom.... Wintun ‘‘north — place.”’ 

SV OROM Le 1 pak Yokuts tribe. 

Aaa Cowra: . Wintun village. 

Yosemite... .- Miwok: usually said to 
mean ‘‘grizzly bear;’’ 
perhaps ‘‘ killers.’’ 

Wy PekAL Gasset s, Probably Shasta name for 
Mount Shasta. 

fT) OF Racca wigan Sp Maidu village. 

Yireatpa’*. 2% Serrano place name. 

Yurmnaer 291 es Probably Indian, but un- 
identified. 


CHAPTER 59. 
CULTURE PROVINCES. 


Areas of distinctive civilization in California, 898; centers of civilization, 899; 
northwestern, 899; central, 899; southern, 899; Colorado River, 900; an 
irregularity, 900; nature of the centers, 901; relation to population and 
physiography, 902; northwestern California and the North Pacific Coast 
culture, 903; northwestern California and Oregon, 910; cause of the pre- 
dominance of northwestern California, 910; cause of southward abridg- 
ment, 911; the Lutuami, subculture, 912; drainage, culture, and speech, 912; 
southern California and the southwestern province, 9138; central Cali- 
fornia and the Great Basin, 915; the idea of a Californian culture area, 918. 


AREAS OF DISTINCTIVE CIVILIZATION IN CALIFORNIA. 


Constant outright and implied reference has been made through 
this book to the three or four areas of culture, or ethnic provinees. 
distinguishable in native California. Roughly, the Tehachapi Range 
and the vicinity of Point Concepcion mark off the southern from the 
central type of civilization, while the northwestern extends south to 
a line running from Mount Shasta to Cape Mendocino or a little be- 
yond. East of the crest of the Sierra Nevada the culture of central 
California changes into that of Nevada, or more properly of the 
Great Basin. In the south, the Colorado River, with some of the 
adjoining desert, must be set apart from the mountain and coast 
tracts. 

Yet any map creates an erroneous impression of internal uni- 
formity and coherence. Thus, all in all, the Yokuts are probably more 
similar to the Wintun in the totality of their life than to the 
Gabrielino. But innumerable cultural elements have reached the 
Yokuts from the south, and they themselves have very hkely de- 
veloped local peculiarities of which some have filtered across the 
mountains to the Gabrielino. Consequently any presentation which 
tended to create the impression that the Yokuts and Wintun belonged 
to a block of nations in which certain traits were standard and ex- 
clusive would mislead. 

Just so in the northwest. The moment the Yurok and Hupa are 
left behind, central Californian traits begin to appear even among 
their most immediate neighbors. These increase in number and 
intensity among the peoples to the south and east. After a time 


898 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 899 


we find ourselves among tribes such as the Coast Yuki, who un- 
doubtedly appertain to the central province. Yet these still make 
string or bury the dead or do various other things in the most 
distinctive northwestern manner. 


CENTERS OF CIVILIZATION. 


On the other hand, certain centers or hearths of the several types 
of culture become apparent rather readily and the increase of in- 
formation, instead of distracting and confusing the impressions 
first formed, strengthens them: each focus becomes narrower and 
more distinct. 

NORTHWESTERN, 


Thus there seems no possible ground to doubt that the center of 
gravity and principal point of influence of the northwestern cul- 
ture was the limited area occupied by the Yurok, Karok, and Hupa. 
Its precise point of gathering has been discussed in the first chapter 
of this book. 


CENTRAL. 


The heart of the central province is not quite so, definite, but un- 
questionably lay between the Pomo, the more southerly Wintun or 
Patwin, and the Valley Maidu; with the Wintun, as the middle one 
of the three, the most likely leaders. 


SOUTHERN. 


In the south, one center is recognizable on or near the coast. The 
most developed peoples about this were the Chumash, Gabrielino, 
and Luiseno. As regards religion and institutions, we happen to 
know by far the most about the Luiseno; but there is direct evidence 
that a considerable part of Luiseno customs was imported from the 
Gabrielino, and precedence must therefore be given to this people. 
As to the choice between them and the Chumash, the Gabrielino 
must again be favored. Our knowledge of Chumash practices is 
scant, but there is so complete an absence of indications of their 
having seriously influenced the institutions of their neighbors that 
their civilization, at least on this side, can hardly have had the 
potency of that of the Gabrielino. A complication is indeed caused 
by material culture, which so far as it can be reconstructed from 
early descriptions, and particularly through the evidence of arch- 
aeology, was most developed among the Chumash and among a 
special branch of the Gabrielino who through their island habitat 
were in closest communication with the Chumash. Again, however, 
Chumash example did not reach far; and it is therefore likely that 


900 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


it is a localized development of technology which confronts us among 
the Chumash, as against a much more penetrating and influential 
growth of social and religious institutions among the Gabrielino. 


COLORADO RIVER. 


The hearth of the type of culture which radiated from the 
Colorado River must beyond doubt be sought either among the 
Mohave or the Yuma. As between the two, the Mohave are probably 
entitled to precedence, both because they were the more populous 
tribe, and because it appears to be solely their influence which has 
reached to northern groups like the Chemehuevi, whereas southern 
tribes like the Diegueno give unmistakable evidence of having been 
affected by the Mohave as well as by the nearer Yuma. 

Geographical position, on the other hand, would point to the 
Yuma, who are not only more centrally situated than the Mohave 
with reference to tribes of the same lineage, but have their seats 
at the mouth of the chief affluent of the Colorado, the Gila, up and 
down which there must have gone on considerable communication 
with the Pima, the non- Yuman tribe of the Southwest which on the 
whole seems to be culturally most nearly related to the Yumans 
of the Colorado Valley. The Yuma had the Cocopa and _ other 
groups below them toward the mouth of the river; but above the 
Mohave as well as to their west there lved only Shoshoneans. - 
Further, the Dieguefio and the various Yuman groups of the north- 
ern half of Baja California are much more nearly in contact with 
the Yuma. General probability would therefore lead to an expecta- 
tion of the focus of the Yuman culture of the Colorado being below 
the Mohave, among or near the Yuma. It seems not unlikely that 
if we could trace the history of this area sufficiently far back such 
would prove to have been the case, but that in recent centuries the 
Mohave, owing to an increase in numbers or for some other reason, 
have taken the lead in cultural productivity. 

These four centers are indicated by crosses on the map in Fig- | 
ure 74. 

AN IRREGULARITY. 


Several peculiar traits, some of them positive and some of them 
negative, are found in a region which forms a sort of tongue separat- 
ing the San Joaquin Valley from southern California. This region 
lacks pottery, which occurs on both sides of it; practices burial in-— 
stead of cremation; is without exogamic institutions, which are also 
known both to the north and south; and is the area in which the 
so-called “ bottle-neck” basket is dominant. The distribution of 
these several cultural elements is not identical, but in general they 


KROBBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 901 


characterize the peoples from the southern Yokuts and Tiibatulabal 
to the Chumash. A radiation from the latter people can scarcely 
be thought of because specifically Chumash features do not occur 
among the peoples inhabiting the more northerly part of the tongue. 
A possible Shoshonean influence from the Great Basin must be dis- 
allowed on parallel grounds. In fact, the traits in question are so 
few and diverse that it is doubtful whether they have any historical 
connection. If they are intrinsically associated it is perhaps chiefly 
through the fact that this middle and upland region failed to be 
reached in certain respects by both central and southern influences. 


NATURE OF THE CENTERS. 


It would, of course, be a grave mistake to assume that the whole 
of each type of culture had emanated from the group or small array 
of groups situated at its focus. Every tribe must be viewed as con- 
tributing to the civilization or civilizations of which it partakes. It 
is only that the most intensive development or greatest specialization 
of culture has occurred at the hearth. This renders it probable that 
more influences have flowed out from the center to the peripheries 
than in the opposite direction. But the movement must necessarily 
always have been reciprocal in considerable degree. What has prob- 
ably happened in many cases is that the tribe which carried a certain 
set of practices and institutions farthest came thereby to attain a 
status in which it reacted more powerfully upon its neighbors in 
other respects, so that the civilizational streams which gathered into 
it were made over and caused to stream out again. In this sense 
the central or focal groups may have been influential in coloring to 
some degree the culture of their entire areas, while contributing in 
each case probably only a very small proportion of the substance 

thereof. 

It will be seen that the cultural centers as here described are those 
indicated on the religious map (PI. 74). In part this coincidence may 
be due to a rather heavy weighting of religious factors in the estima- 
tion of culture wholes—a procedure that seems necessary, since a 
definitely organized set of cults is like the flower to the plant—un 
questionably one of the highest products of civilization. But the 
constitution of society, the use of wealth and attitude toward it, the 
material arts and industries, the type of mythology, music, and what 
may be called literature, correspond almost without exception, in 
the degrees of their complexity or specialization, to the elaborate- 
ness of religion. This cult map, then, although not an accurate geo- 
_ graphical representation of the distribution of native civilizations 
in California, probably indicates their history about as well as would 
“any averaged outline, and serves to balance or even correct the neces- 


902 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 78 


sarily arbitrary delimitations which a culture province map like 
Figure 74 attempts. 


RELATION TO POPULATION AND PHYSIOGRAPHY. 


It need hardly be added that a considerable concentration of popu- 
lation would be expectable at the focus of each province, together 
with a perceptible thinning out of numbers toward the margins. This, 
so far as can be judged, was the case. It is, however, of interest that 
diverse topographies are represented by the centers. In the north- 
west, the distinctive physiographic feature of the focal area is streams 
of sufficient size to be navigable and rich in salmon; in the central 
province it is the heart of a great valley; in the south a group of 
islands and a mainland shore washed by still ocean reaches; and at the 
southeast the vast Colorado with its annually overflowed bottom lands 
in the midst of a great desert. No single type of physical environ- 
ment can therefore be said to have been permanently stimulative 
to concentration of numbers and the furtherance of civilization in 
California; except that there is a clear tendency for cultural focus — 
to be situated on important drainage. 

The annual run-off of the Klamath at Keno, before it has received 
notable afiluents, is over 14 million acre-feet, which may be estimated 
to be perhaps doubled in its lower course. The Colorado at Yuma 
carries 16 millions; the Sacramento at Red Bluff over 10 millions, to 
‘which the Feather, Yuba, and American add nearly 13 millions. The 
total flow through Carquinez Straits, after considerable diversion 
for irrigation, is about 26 million acre-feet, derived probably more | 
than three-fourths from the Sacramento and less than one-fourth 
from the San Joaquin half of the interior valley. It is evident that 
the Yurok, southern Wintun, and Yuma-Mohave centers of culture 
are closely correlated with the points of maximal flow of the three 
greatest drainage systems of California; although as between these 
three centers the degree of cultural advancement does not correlate 
with the relative amount of drainage. That is, on comparison of 
one area with another, inference that the one situated on the larger 
stream will be the more advanced in type of civilization does not 
hold for this part of the continent; but within one drainage or series 
of parallel and related drainages the advancement is greatest at the 
point of largest flow. 

That the cultural importance of an ocean frontage must not be 
overestimated for California is clear from the relation of the Coast 
Yurok to the River Yurok, of the Wiyot to the Hupa, of the Pomo 
of the coast to those of Russian River and Clear Lake, of the Costa- 
noans and Esselen to Yokuts, where, as discussed in previous 
chapters, the interior people seem in each case to have been the more - 
prosperous. 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 9038 
NORTHWESTERN CALIFORNIA AND THE NORTH PACIFIC ‘COAST CULTURE. 


All of the cultures of California are without question at least 
partly related in origin to more widely spread civilizations outside 
the State. 

The northwestern culture is obviously part of that generally known 
as the culture of the North Pacific coast. The center of this larger 
civilization is clearly in Brit- 
ish Columbia, but this center 
is so remote that any specific 
comparison of the Yurok and 
Hupa with the Kwakiutl or 
Haida would be unprofitable. 

In Washington and Oregon, 
however, three subtypes of y 
this culture are recognizable, 
after exclusion of three in- 
land cultures: that of the 
Plateau east of the Cascades; 
the curiously simple culture 
of the Kalapuya in the Wil- 
lamette Valley; and of the 
Lutuamian Klamath and Mo- 
doc in the Klamath Lake 
basin. The three coastal 
provinces, which chiefly come 
into question in a comparison 
with north California, are, in 
order from the north, and as 
sketched in Figure 73: 

(1) Puget Sound, with all 
or part of the Olympic Penin- 
sula, and probably the south- 
eastern portion of Vancouver 5 Y 
Island and the opposite coast 
of British Columbia. The !!6. 78.—Subculture areas on the Pacific coast 

a j of the United States. 
groups in this area are clearly 
dependent for much of their culture on the Kwakiutl and other 
tribes to the north. Coast Salish groups are the principal ones in 
this province. 

(2) The Lower Columbia, up to The Dalles, with the coast from 
about Shoalwater Bay on the north to lower Umpqua River on the 
south. The Chinook were nearly central and perhaps dominant. 
Other members were the Yakonan Alsea and Siuslaw, the most south- 
erly of the coast Salish, and a few Athabascans, 





;(L0 


e 





R HWES ERN 





ot 
Bee 


Cea) - 


= 





904 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


(3) Southwestern Oregon, probably from the Umpqua and the 
Calapooya Mountains and inland to the Cascade Range. The prin- 
cipal stream is Rogue River, but the Coquille and upper Umpqua 
seem to have formed part. The abutment is on four ethnic sub- 
provinces: the Lower Columbian just outlined, the Kalapuyan of the 
Willamette, the Lutuamian of the Klamath Lake drainage, and the 
northwest Californian of the Klamath River. The majority of the 
inhabitants were Athabascans; the other groups were the Kus and 
Takelma and a branch of the Shasta. The Takelma, except for be- 
ing wholly off the coast, may be taken as typical. 

Table 13 summarizes the principal comparable ethnic traits of 
these three regions and of northwestern California. It appears at 
once that northwestern California and southwestern Oregon are 
very closely related, so much so, in fact, as to constitute but a single | 
area. They agree about three times out of four in the cases in 
which either of them differs from the Lower Columbia. The latter 
in turn seems rather more closely connected with Puget Sound 
than with southwestern Oregon, whether chiefly as a marginal de-— 
pendent or, as seems more likely, as a separate center of some dis- 
tinctness, can scarcely yet be decided, and need not be in the present 
connection. The important fact is that the general culture of the 
coast is decisively altered somewhere in the region of the Umpqua 
Mountains, and that thence south, as far as it prevails at all, that is, 
to Cape Mendocino, it is substantially uniform. In other words, we 
need not recognize three provinces of the coast culture in Oregon 
and Washington and a fourth in California: there were only three 
south of the forty-ninth parallel. The first lay in Washington with 
some extension into British Columbia; the second was mainly Ore- 
gonian with some overlap into Washington; the third centered in 
northern California but ran well into Oregon. 


HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 905 


KROEBER ] 


19118] 94] JO WOMdrIOSep posnyjuod B IO ‘4v00T}}0d Yon X pus 
umoz jo priqAy ev sdeysod -wnpphydoua xX Jo sosuLI] ITM UMOS € Jo Heods VurpoyV], ONL go 
*SUBTUOSIIO 9} YJIM 9013B VYISCUS 9 + 


"99 093 dq 
*[BLWOZTIOFT 


"‘IVpay 


Toqty 
“ITVYy 
Sop 10 yreq repsd WaAO\ 


“au0N 
“euOD pose} ey 10 ‘ourBg 


‘auou ATqeqorg 


‘90B] UO eUOU faTIVT 


*[B.1dU94) 


*punos josng 





vo ecececcceeee OF 10 9g 01 dQ 
weet eee eee eee LDLERCIN 


---+----- yareq pueyuUr :IBVpay 


"TOOM 1805 UTR} 
-unou! 10 sdis In} pouta J, 


wo eee eee e eee e ee puvyut AjuO 


weet eee eee eee eee uintyeyUeq 
woes eeeee SuLMoy ynq ‘peed 


*BIQUIN[OD IdMOT 


viet cere eee ee eee [Bolq10 A 


“yavq :otd 
-oad 100d fiepeo ‘outd avsng 


*, AIBUIOJSND JL sv pouoT Usp 


eT Sie at dig aka Nj 1909p JO 
weet eee eee eee eee poysodeyy 








eee oe eae 
settee eee eeee ¢ dBo ssopwtIg 


io ah ies “eee 1Sqn]o Z 
-" * -TIB UO SOUT, SULINSROT 








Bic) saotane ulyo uo sods vol, 


*U0S01Q UloJsoMYy NOS 


"RIMIOJI[BO Urol Sdeo pozIOdUIT VUITOHCL e 
“pap oy} Jo asou oy} o1oq edny pue yoInX {eMojoy, ‘youey 
"SUBTUBYS UU :BUITHBL 1 





atecece tee scecnnccs snes 05 [7 S22 2S Gee Gi pesrg 
AE LON A igh [eondeA [77° 7-7 -syueyd Jo uonwseg 
“O[QBITBAG BIOYM POOMpoyY |--- 77-7 T Te oe 1 
"SasooH 
eeccehie tact 6 srr rserccs, QUON [7° ""UMOS ULYSIeep S,UBUIO A 
“Iaqy Jo 
g,UvUreYys /UTYSIoop posuLly |-- "777-7 yeoorjod 8, WRUIOM 
ee eee ee IN} Lap JQ | -reqor 8S Ue 
<< SR RW Re wi , A[WO Mous UT }""""---- ">" “SsSULSSOT 8, URTY 
SrepEney ness oreeese* QUON --§->---qTqs ULjSsIOOp § UBT 
vaveeri ey aS seo sv east OTTO NLS 8 * = ee aS TY 
msec escene **--deo ssopumlig |" """ "°° 7°77" "yey 8, UeUION, 
woe rears es eece= aumipeiued (= JUIUIVUIO BSON 
GEA soteoe qUOdJ UL SQNO g [°° °° 77777 * TATey 8 WOTIO MA, 
7+ UL BOUL SULUMEA ATO! ob ceak seo ee Be, 
“pareAoo ATpT[os youre UTYD | aN 
:3UTL00}}8T, 
Mo tae Ore eo oUON [7777177 WOTVULIOJOp proyy 


“SSHuUd AGNV AGO 


*BIUIOJT[VO UI9JSOMT}IO N 


‘NOLDNIHSVAA GNV ‘NODGUQ ‘VINUOMIIVDO NUTHLYON dO SAUALIAD LSVOO—'S[ ATAVY, 


[BULL 78 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 


906 


‘moid dieyg |-- puevput yunyq ‘moad dieyg j----° ,, ABI 8, LOYOING ONrT,, PAS Meee PRO MOLE TUT a |) es ee ee eeu 

















LDA pee Ee OR OU aa i RR EES CE Fe ards # LEE ah ie estima 8 jo777 777 Geey) GSUET 
PLBDO Oe ees etre: fia aie BINGE We Bae wert tee vedo eacdla alan Soe Tea oo eens POOML DOT Sie rea tte eee | EL 
“HONVO 
Sie kg ee ee eto [TYCO Coa tees BOUTS 1OU. WOM WiRate tie ee ere OIE Ate 2 on teen ee “4voy] 
NM OER dn win SRE: Ch a RR le aah ae a FUL deo[s:Ueul.9 1-s- 2°" "UT dools Usur 2-9 | 75-* 2 * > 2 eouednolG) 
TIS a 
Tnyiqnod: | ‘pusluL “yseOo —U0” SUON |7>- oa. ATULO UOUlOMa1Ouh ) oo < sect-s Sat  aeeOTIO NGG, 2 a naa eee a *, O[QVAoyy 
"polaA0o YyIRe "‘BULIOAOD 
‘TTL OUOU. tac, ant syjyAul UT 04 pottojoy | ‘syuvtd Jo ‘r1epnsueyey | YRIve ou ‘syuvtd Jo ‘suOTGG |"--"*--- > * yuns ‘yueuvulleg 
‘ASQOH LVAMS 
*BOT[IUIV] [BIOAGG | 277777 BOLLE] [BISA po age ga cee Fete (it boa eee wee ee es er ea bea ea Tatas So} VUUy 
deg gay “ag ees ISpOT YSNy Fire e ee essere angy RTL pase ee ee ee ONT -2§ 22-2) 6enoq roumume 
BOUTIOS ther ecae hoe ome a nro DUNNO Hecke eee 0 as eo eee mie res DUONT IPum hikes et ea SUON is esas sutured 10 SUTAIB) 
POOIeHOUG, O10 Nip hee sr. Pra uae ee ae CUE se ie ae Ge ee SOU): eee See ee os an aks OMT) ole acres ake cae aaa sospry 
pe a ee eat etre gece oe! oy Se AUT ing eee oe ee Sura Tis ag: 2 aaa 
TESO MODULO sine oa. os cea [ex OLIOSDUNOTTS |G aa te gas ee TVPUSUCPOOM oie ee ee PURO: 1s tite Se wae eee oouRIyUy 
Joo] G-E ‘Bore OFOYM |° °° ~*~” “qooj c-g “eore ofOUAA |--° 77” -qoo} G-T ‘vores afoyuA, |Je0FG-zZ‘ ATWO esnoYy JoIEyUaD |----- 7777 oe WOT VABIX GY 
‘mIO}We[d poster ug |°---"--*- w10J} vd postel UG |-~uL0}e{d UO STATS {100 UD |--- 777777 vette tess LOOP UA 222 ea ee spoq 18] 
OPO Ia etme kat ae Mag” ee RUIOSOL Ty thee cauie «Sots MYR EET OULO NG | iret eke parce eea =e OUO Nis es cee eee SUOISTAIPQng 
DOG OR eg ca eee QOROT CG aie is. ee nee Qepalelsiy i8< cows Naotmey es oom Gad cach So8 eae (1003) YASUE] 
*ponuljuoo—sasnou 
‘punog josng *VIQUIN[O,) JOMO'T ‘H0801Q UloJSOMYINOS "BIUIOJI[VD U10{SOMY4.10 N 











| 





‘PONUIJUOD—NOLONIHSVA, GNV ‘NODAYQ ‘VINXOATIVO NYAHIYON AO SaunTTADQ LSVOO—'eT ATAVI, 


HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 907 


KROEBER |] 


*SMOTIIEM JOAO UMOIYY S}CUL JO ‘Teurs pus MoT :0d4y suTeT ONY » 


*pasn ai] 


“ON 
‘atdeig 


"TapooM 


“ope 
“AIOPTOI 
“Mo os] Ry}! sututM} podder yy 


rpua) wnpjfiydos ¥ 
*sjo0o1 41Tdg 


"BOX 
‘sO 











vote ects eter eee posn apy 


Ee seer 1 TORI 


lear ee ee ek DOD AK 


po} Bolg UIT 
:BIQUINTOR JO YWON ‘ puvyuy 
*Aloptoiq 
-ure osyey ‘Sututamy poddery 


“7722 -> -gpua? wnpphydoia Xx 


it al Ge ak Me aad trod |: 








poieVaAT}NyO 
ee eg Ie he Woe] 
NAS SC ad el ra “sqqnq eul0g 
--* “guIjeyey, suoure v[deyg 
Ges pone Naiahig Shiginn 2c “queiodury 


Wt eeeeee rete ete gag 
pide eta eg Sine cals pouotjueUl JON 


“"""QJoM pIepioro ATqeqoig 
RAE ee ea “podp 1oply 
ke an ia: 9 -peAp pnur 
---- wnpphydoay K{qeqoud 
Pet a tee er pe oy “sqyoor yydg 
Saha s eat oss * MOTITM 10 [OZBFT 








*POOM JO 08B10}S 9} JOJ UI00I9}UB 9T}IIT B MOOK g 


Pete cect niga Ps o * poyVaty[ny 
eee ere oe me CeN LLG | 
Soe pees “sq[nq ourog 


eg en TCT 


Pree pero ar ceed ola 


be = ale ain > oie) ia = ea “pouta [, 


lig dee ee iad, See die Bini w, @ 
De ee en ee a 


aa }JOM (Poovy) PLB[LOAO 


Fa Par an ae -poAp JOplV 
"ress > * -Uey ITVYUOpreypy 


Tr 7 -anuag wngphiydos xX 
ei “$}001 doytuo9 4ITdg 
Seas Sa hE ee A yay 


Sarl) ete —iglle  bepd aie ee” SNS 


wee c ee eee cere ee eee od9Vq OI, 
one eee eee eee - erry dsv 
Re Aare sq[nqd puv ssvured 


eer re LOL, 


Hemet Se <2 aa OUTER 


“dood 


nee OTpeIy 
weet eee ee eee -yoddoy 1e.107q 


"-"* “goyseq Wepind [BoTUo*D 
“4 = EAE AS Si ssvq PUB SJOT[VAL 


wee eee eee eee e eee SUT[IOR 
aistenate YAIOM TTA pue LOYIVIUY) 


--onbruyoe} Ssutye1000q 
FER eS sur0qyed poy 
A eS sur9}yed youd 
se re suro}jed o1TU A, 


“AULAUSVA 


all beck oh 2 Fa So5BA0A SUTISBOD 





ee lee pesarwo IO poJ,UTeT 


[BULL 78 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 


908 


*paivroyja 
weqjo ‘sexoq IO se0uBo UT 


‘yuewodwuy | 
‘[eUuIO,Vg 


"[BUOTSBIIGO 





“TEM 


“sosnoy UT ‘puv[UT :seouvo UT 


teed tg wWoYyey OF toqunu Aq 
peerta es 3 Aire ZOCUIIU (} 
7 RAR Re ase NNR [euse4yeg 


iesinucimar Hers bebetars BOR TEO Ne 


each ae ees Oe AS Paw ee [BUOTSBIIG) 


5 EP perenne aie ee ee rod Sal ONE 


“Uyeem snid yIg |7*-°-*"-UQTVeA\ Jo UOTssessog 


eREN 


| 


*SUTAIBO [BUITUB 


:j803 IO doeeys utTeUNOT]W 


---- payodtut ATuo ATqeqorg 
"* - pequeureuo ‘apeUut [JO 
*BUTAIBO JLIJOULOGS 


"3803 10 deays uTeyuNo, 


Cas o's pS mF Suty}Is ‘punois UT 


PA RCE rear Se San suey Ag 
Brine Se ees MOE IOOOL ON 
Spa tare apes earl ti ea [Vus10yeg 
niet OM See tate LEB INTO Ni 


tess -on 


Raha tre it one eas s—PUS V 
>> -pesuoid-om, ATQuereddy 








*punog je3ng 


“RI(UIN]JO) JaMO'T 


“U0301Q UlIe}SeMYANOS 





“= -""quequinoeds ‘punols UT 


ep Poiecs) | 
ULIB 01 Jequinu 10 seay Ag 





cee poquowmeusoun ‘apny 
“SUL 


| 


-AIBO OTIJOUIODS {1TJUB YW 


Be ea op ee tee a ee *“pos/) 


Racy Pe eee SAT ONSCG aC) 
SiS aes DOSUOId-OM Tr 


*BIUIOJT[VO W19JSOMYIION 














fee ig a ee eerie 


"-"- eITeyUop Jo JUSULEINSvOT 
cotter ett e seer eee Yor epy0d 
Neg at JUN SOT 
ins balncu sRASRE MD UIE “SUuBIO 
we nie Sine eerie AUIBSOXO OSBTITA, 
Pee so ee 3 eer eee BOYLIO’S BARTS 
"7+ 7 *ATOARTS JO UOTJBpuNO,T 
"777 *""""MUBI TVTOOS JO esnVD 
*ALHIOOS 


9 P23 5)o5 ee eee BO XO POLIO (* 
naan S[TMOq 10 SYSNO1} UDPOO AA 


vcle teeter ecies “eTpped ysnyy 
ot RP icae Sap eee PLO UL TS 


sities Swit oie Sis canis 19}89q poeg 
sete eee een moodisy UoWEg 
‘STISNALA 





‘PONUIJUOD—NOLONIHSVM ONV ‘NODAYO ‘VINYOITIVO NYAHLYON 40 SAANLIAD LSvVOO—'eT ATAVY, 


HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 909 


KROEBER | 





‘roddoy 1ej10ur @ UT peoy Joy qITM sdaaqs ‘sroqyeey Avfantq Jo JOstA B sIvem “noqe Yoo] jou Avur [113 oa, 











Ge She Bie ae ATTSIOUOE) oa ae se >a - “SOUITJOUIOG 

ok — ie le “ue AYetyD |-->---°*-----weuIOM JO Ud] 

SIS ee" Ses a 2) EST ele nig ae syiids 
* *[NOs Jo 4Joy} 10 yoolqo uteg |-------- “Apoq uryoalqo ured 

2 gat Nae a a SI I i ee b= herrea Rea BS ay G 

Sed Thi mee a coke 8 SP Sg oes <a cae SEED ag Bisel Ee os “00 
alte ges tan SS ee Sas ane oie haat Res stoAeid jo addy ‘Jorg 

POs ois 06 Meee = Meek = Po <i Sin OND foc ernie hacks See Ae Lee ouON 
ee ate Fae OIE Re Sookns= ta pete n> ae - -ATjueredde ‘JUSUIO} TOUT JC) 


| 


- ee ese we oe 


“ATWO puvyut Ayqeqorid : Moy "777 "> peqroder yon 


“sOUITOT 
Opry ,, ‘Spol 1000 opty AIT,, 


"-"""-@pTy Ya 10 spol JO 





‘d[1}O B UTOOULP UOMIOM PUB UU SAep aA IO 
‘e4seys Pus FoIVyy Jo 4vY} OF AvpTurrs AOA st AUOUTOIOD BUTTOYBY, OUI, 6 


“YONA OY} SUOUIV JSOYBVIAA g 





ie Me ae eee - AToIeyy 
ee RS 2 ae SLOUIOM: ALOT) 
‘sqtitds 
UlOIJ PoeATadeI syoo[qo uTeg 
ay ys Apoq ut qoofqo ureg 


‘gouep dyRos jou “yueur 





-9]}}08 IO yUOUeyOUT JO 


ee eS “Opty Y[P 10 spor jo 








~*--sytitds UMO suBUTeYs-tO Ny 
es ine ey ale suvUBYs JO xog 


"> -gemod s,ueureys fo ao1nog 
"7777 = ="""""-98RaSIpP JO OSNe) 
Sap oer sh 522° 700 URL TURIN 
-AUOUIA.LO9 BOUDBISETOPB ,S[ALH 
settee ee eee ee eee SB[NULLO Sy 
wes ceeees SOTJOLOOS IO SYSVIY 


“NOIDITAY 


910 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 
NORTHWESTERN CALIFORNIA AND OREGON. 


The cultural predominance of the California over the Oregon 
tract within this last area can scarcely be proved outright, because 
the life of the tribes of southwestern Oregon broke and decayed very 
quickly on contact with the Americans and has been but sadly por- 
trayed. Yet this very yielding perhaps indicates a looseness of 
civilizational fiber. There may have been highly developed rituals 
held in southwestern Oregon comparable to the Yurok Deerskin 
dance, which have not only perished but been forgotten; but it is 
far more likely that the reason the ceremonies of this region van- 
ished without a trace is that they never amounted to much nor had 
a deep hold on native life. The Gabrielino have been longer subject 
to Caucasian demoralization and are as substantially extinct as any 
Oregon group; but there is no doubt as to their religious and gen- 
eral cultural preeminence over their neighbors. The southern Win- 
tun have been cuffed about for a century and are nearly gone, but 
it is reasonably clear that the Kuksu cult and culture centered among 
them. If the Rogue River tribes had cultivated a religion surpass- 
ing or even rivaling that of the groups on the Klamath, it is scarcely 
conceivable that its very memory should have dissolved in two 
generations. 

Where direct evidence is available, it uniformly points the same 
way. The Yurok house is larger as well as more elaborate than that 
of the Takelma; the sweat house more specialized; the shamanism ~ 
appreciably more peculiar; the formulas and myths show a much 
more distinct characterization. The Takelma give the impression 
of being not only on a level similar to that of the Shasta, but specifi- 
cally like them in many features; and the Shasta have been seen to 
be culturally subsidiary to the Yurok and Karok. What holds for 
the Takelma there is no reason to doubt held for the Athabascans 
who nearly surrounded them. The lower Klamath thus is the civili- 
zational focus of the drainage of the Rogue and probably of most 
of the Umpqua. 


CAUSE OF THE PREDOMINANCE OF NORTHWESTERN CALIFORNIA. 


This predominance could be laid theoretically to two causes: Ex- 
posure to external ethnic influences, or physiographic environment. 
Extraneous cultural influence can be dismissed in this case. The 
center of the coast. civilization as a whole lay north; the Oregonians 
were the nearer to it. Central California has given too little to the 
Klamath region to be of moment—or at least gave only underlying 
elements, not those specializations that mark the cultural preemi- 
nence which is being considered. The latter quality it did not 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 911 


possess, aS against northwestern California. Natural environment, 
therefore, must be the cause ; and sufficient explanation is found in 
the fact that the Klamath is the largest stream entering the Pacific 
between the Sacramento-San Joaquin on the south and the Colum- 
bia on the north—the third largest, in fact, that debouches from 
this face of the United States. The large stream held the largest 
number of inhabitants; and, particularly on its lower reaches, al- 
lowed them to atcumulate densely. This concentration provided 
the opportunity, or was the cause, however we may wish to put it, 
of a more active prosecution of social life. 


CAUSE OF SOUTHWARD ABRIDGMENT. 


It may seem strange that the peak or focus of this culture should 
be eccentric, that Yurok influence, to call it such, should have ex- 
tended several times as far to the north as to the south, particularly 
that it should penetrate to remote parallel streams and not to the 
headwaters of its own drainage system. Such an objection may 
seem theoretically valid, but there is precedent to the contrary. The 
culmination of the North Pacific coast culture as a whole is probably 
found among the Haida, near the northern end of its long belt. In 
the Southwest the Pueblos of the Rio Grande have for centuries 
been culturally predominant, and yet they lie on the eastern edge of 
the province. 

There is accordingly no reason for hesitating to accept as a fact 
the much more rapid southward than northward fading out of the 
northwestern culture. 

There does not seem to be a satisfactory physiographic explana- 
tion for this unequal distribution. That the Trinity and the Eel soon 
become small streams in a rugged country as their course is followed 
should not have been Alteran to prevent unchecked spread up them 
of northwestern influences, since the northwestern culture is well 
established in a similar environment on the upper Rogue and Ump- 
qua. It would seem, accordingly, that the cause has been a social 
one. Such a cause can only be sought in the presence of another 
civilization, in this case that of central California, as represented 
by the Kuksu dancing nations, and particularly the Pomo. The 
Pomo subtype of the central culture may therefore be considered as 
having been established about as long as that of the Yurok. This 
inference is corroborated by the fact that about the head of the 
Sacramento Valley, to which the Kuksu cult and basketry of Pomo 
type have not made their way and where most specific central Cali- 
fornian influences are weak, numerous elements of northwestern 
civilization have penetrated almost across the breadth of the State. 


; 3625 °—25——59 


912 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 78 


Physiography can, however, be called in to explain why the 
culture of the Yurok did not flow more freely east and northeast 
up its main stream, the Klamath, to the Lutuami. The elevated lake 
habitat of these people is very different from the region of coastal 
streams. Moreover, it is nearly shut off from them by the southern 
end of the great Cascade Range, but is rather open toward the 
Great Basin and the more northerly Plateau. 


THE LUTUAMI SUBCULTURE. 


The Lutuamian or Klamath Lakes culture or subculture, as rep- 
resented in this work by the Modoc, corresponds well with this set- 
ting. It reveals some specializations, such as its wokas and tule in- 
dustries, that are obviously founded on peculiar environment. There 
are some northwestern influences, but rather vague ones. The basis 
of the culture is perhaps central California, with some Great 
Basin or Plateau admixture. Since the introduction of the horse, 
the Lutuami mode of life has evidently been modified analogously 
to that of the Plateau peoples of the Columbia, although less pro- 
foundly; and with the horse came a number of cultural elements 
from the Plateau, if not from the Plains; of which some went on 
to the Shasta and Achomawi. This recent modification appears to 
have given Lutuami culture a more un-Californian aspect than it 
originally possessed. Neither the Kalapuya nor the Klamath-Modoc 
were a numerous enough people nor a sufficiently advanced one to 
have possessed a truly distinctive civilization. The Kalapuya are 
gone, but nearly a thousand Lutuami remain, and as soon as their 
society and religion are seriously inquired into, their cultural affili- 
ations will no doubt become clearer. 


DRAINAGE, CULTURE, AND SPEECH. 


As regards the part of environment in general, it is clear that 
the culture provinces of the Pacific frontage of the United States 
are essentially based on natural areas, particularly of drainage. 
Thus the central Californian province consists of the great interior 
valley of that State with the adjacent coast. The Plateau is the 
drainage of the Columbia above the Cascade Range; the Great Basin, 
the area which finds no outlet to the sea. The one exception is north- 
western California, whose ethnic boundary on the north cuts across 
the Umpqua, and on the south across the Klamath, the Trinity, and 
the Kel. The streams in this district have a northward trend, and 
it appears that both the Lower Columbia and the northwestern 
culture retained enough of the seaboard character of the British 
Columbia civilization to enable them better to cling along the 


KROEBER | - HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 913 


coast than to push up the long narrow valleys that nearly par- 
allel it. 

At the same time there is not a single distinctly maritime culture 
in the entire stretch from Cape Flattery to Baja California, except 
in a measure that of Puget Sound. Lower Columbia and north- 
western California clearly are river civilizations; that of central Cali- 
fornia evinces an almost complete negation of understanding or use 
of the sea. In southern California the acme of culture is indeed 
attained in and opposite the little Santa Barbara Archipelago; but 
the great bulk of the province is a canoeless, arid tract. 

In nearly every case, too, the province is either composed mainly 
of people of one stock or family, or one such group dominates civili- 
zationally. 

Puget Sound: Salish preponderant, Wakash perhaps most characteristic. 

Lower Columbia: Chinook most numerous and distinctive. 

Willamette (distinctness doubtful) : wholly Kalapuyan. 

Klamath Lakes (distinctness doubtful) : wholly Lutuami. 

Northwestern California: Athabascans in the majority, Algonkins culturally 
dominant. 

Central California: distinctly a Penutian province with Hokan fringes. 

Southern California: Shoshonean, although the Chumash are not without 
consequence. 

Lower Colorado: Yuman, with perhaps some Shoshonean margin. 

Great Basin: Almost solidly Shoshonean. 

Plateau: about balanced between Sahaptin and Salish. 

It is also notable that in spite of this massing no province is pop- 
ulated wholly by people of one origin. The two apparent exceptions 
are areas so weak culturally that their proper independence is 
doubtful. 


SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AND THE SOUTHWESTERN PROVINCE. 


Both the Southern California and Lower Colorado cultures present 
nunierous relations to the great Southwestern province, and it is not 
open to doubt that many of their constituent elements can be traced 
back to an origin among the Pueblos or the ancestors or cultural 
kinsmen of the Pueblos. At the same time it would be a very sum- 
mary and misleading procedure to consider these provinces an out- 
right part of the Southwest. New foci have formed on the spot. If 
these are to be canceled out merely because they are secondary to an 
older, more active hearth of influences among the Pueblos, it would be 
equally justifiable to dismiss the culture of the latter as superficial 
and unimportant on the ground that its basic constituents have 
largely radiated out of Mexico. Understanding of the ultimate 
sources is, of course, indispensable to interpretation, but ramifications 
and new starts are of no less consequence to an understanding of the 


914 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


history of cultural growths. A direct merging of all the collat- 
eral branches into a single type merely on the ground of their rela- 
tionship would lead to a prevention of the recognition of cultural in- 
dividuality, as it might be termed, and thereby defeat the very end 
of truly historical inquiry. In the preceding pages it has been the 
constant endeavor to point out those elements in the native life of the 
southern end of California that can be considered as derived from the 
culture of the Southwest, and at the same time to determine how far 
the groupings of these elements and the social attitudes thereby estab- 
lished have remained specifically Southwestern or have become re- 
gionally peculiar. 

The considerable distinctiveness that obtains in the south is per- 
haps most pregnantly illustrated by the fact that of the two sub- 
types there, the one geographically nearer to the Southwest proper, 
that of the Lower Colorado River, is on the whole not appreciably 
more similar to that of the Pueblos than is the one which has its 
center on the coast among the Gabrielino and their neighbors. 
Many things link the Mohave with the Pueblos and with the so- 
‘alled nomadic tribes of Arizona. Other elements, such as the sand 
painting, have, however, been pointed out which are common to the 
Gabrielino and the Southwesterners proper and in which the Mohave 
and the Yuma do not participate. These elements may be somewhat 
the less numerous; but. so far as can be judged in the present state 
of knowledge, as reviewed in the chapter on the Yuma, the balance 
between the two classes is nearly even. From this condition the 
only conclusion possible is that southwesern influences have infil- 
trated southern California slowly, irregularly, and disjointedly, 
with the result that these influences have been worked over into 
new combinations and even into new products faster than they 
arrived.. : 

A searching examination of the relation of the southern Cali- 
fornia and Lower Colorado subcultures to the Southwest will prove 
of great interest because it will presumably unravel much of the 
history of civilization in all of these regions. Such an examination 
can not yet be conducted with satisfaction because the mother cul- 
ture of Arizona and New Mexico, probably at once the greatest. and 
the most compact native civilization of the continent north of 
Mexico, and the one which documents and archeology combine to 
illuminate most fully, has not yet. been adequately conceptualized. 
Agriculture, pottery, stone architecture, clans, masked fraternities, 
dramatizing rituals are the ethnic activities that rise before the 
mind; but not one is universal in the Southwest. If the Apache 
and Havasupai are not southwestern, they are nothing at. all; and 
yet one or both of them fail on every one of these supposed touch- 
stones, 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 915 


In fact, while ethnologists speak constantly of the Southwest 
as if it were a well-defined ethnic unit, what they generally have 
in mind is the Pueblos with perhaps the addition of their town- 
dwelling ancestors or of the interspersed and Pueblo-influenced 
Navaho. No satisfying picture that gives proper weight to the un- 
settled as well as the agricultural tribes has yet been drawn; at 
least not so as to serve for detailed comparative analysis. The 
Pima are closely linked with the Pueblos, and in other respects with 
the Lower Colorado tribes, but to unite them nonchalantly with 
either would be inadmissible. But so far as they are southwestern, 
the Papago are; and if the Papago, then, in some measure at least, 
the Yaqui and Seri also. 

The truth is that the Southwest is too insistently complex to be 
condensed into a formula or surrounded with a line on the map. 
Essentially this is true of every culture. The Haida no more repre- 
sent the Chinook and the Yurok than the Hopi can be made to stand 
for the Pima, nor will an average struck in either case do justice to 
the essence of the Haida and Hopi ethnos. Such condensing efforts 
can be condoned only as preliminary steps to historical inquiry, as 
narrowly ethnological classifications which clear the way to an under- 
standing of civilizational events. Elsewhere in America cultures are 
often relatively simple and the time element not present to disturb 
a purely geographical view; hence the inadequacy of such reductions 
is less impressed on the student. But in the Southwest the factor of 
temporal order obtrudes instead of eluding us blankly. Two diverse 
strains, the life of the town dwellers and of the country dwellers, 
remain distinct yet are interminably interwoven. Regional differ- 
ences are striking in short distances and without notable environ- 
mental basis. And it is clear that the foundation of everything 
southwestern is Mexican, and yet that everything in the Southwest 
has taken its peculiar shape and color on the spot. In short, a history 
of southwestern civilization lies within measurable sight, but the 
antecedent analysis, which must include southern California, has not 
yet been made. 


CENTRAL CALIFORNIA AND THE GREAT BASIN. 


While the north and south of aboriginal California are to be con- 
strued as marginal regions of greater extraneous cultures, central 
California remains isolated. It can not be viewed as a subsidiary 
because the potent civilization on which it might depend does not 
exist. Its north and the south being accounted for, and the ocean 
lying on the west, the only direction remaining open for any set of 
influences is the east, and this is the area of the barren Great Basin, 
populated by tribes of no greater advancement than the central Cali- 


916 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


fornians—perhaps even less developed. These tribes could not, there- 
fore, well serve as carriers of culture into central California, if we 
may judge by analogy with the spread of civilization in other parts 
of the world. As a matter of fact, they did not. Specific culture 
elements characteristic of the Plains have not penetrated into Cali- 
fornia. A few such traits that are discernible in northeastern Cali- 





| 


| 


~~ 
ring 
3 
CALIF:ORNIA — GREAT BASI\N ea 
\ : : 


‘N 


“x 


Ilia. 74.—Major culture areas and centers of development within California. 


fornia have evidently come in not across the Great Basin but down 
the Columbia River and through the interior peoples of Oregon. 
Moreover, it is questionable whether these elements have chiefly 
entered California anciently or rather as an adjunct of the white 
man and the horse. Nor have Southwestern influences penetrated 
central California to any appreciable extent by way of the Great 
Basin. Where Southwestern elements are traceable in central Cali- 
fornia, as in the San Joaquin Valley, it is usually probable that 
they represent an immediate outflow from southern California. 


" KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 917 


Yet it is certain that central California and the Great Basin are 
regions of close cultural kinship. It is true that the food supply 
and material resources of the interior semidesert have enforced a 
mode of life which makes a quite different impression. Analogies 
have therefore been little dwelt upon. Absence of definite records 
concerning the Shoshoneans of the Great Basin render exact 
comparisons somewhat difficult even now. Both regions, however, 
lack in common most of the characteristic traits of the culture adja- 
cent to them; and it is only necessary to set side by side their basketry, 
their houses, their technical processes or the schemes of their societies, 
to be convinced that the bonds between the two areas are numerous 
and significant. This kinship may be expected to be revealed con- 
vincingly as soon as a single intensive study of any Great Basin tribe 
is made from other than a Plains point of view. 

It has been the custom among ethnologists to recognize a “ Plateau 
area” as possessing a common although largely negative culture. Our 
exact information to date regarding the peoples of this “ Plateau” is 
almost wholly from the northern part of the area inhabited by the 
Salish. It is manifestly hasty to assume for the Shoshoneans of the 
Great Basin, which constitutes the southern half of this greater 
“ Plateau,” substantial cultural identity with the Sahaptin and in- 
terior Salish of the north. The latter have been subjected to powerful 
although incomplete influences from the North Pacific coast proper as 
well as from the Plains. Plains influences have penetrated also to 
the Shoshoneans, but the North Pacific coast could hardly have had 
much effect, and certainly not a direct one, in the Great Basin. The 
coastward tract here is central California; and we could therefore 
anticipate, on theoretical grounds, that it had affected the Great Basin 
Shoshoneans much as the North Pacific coast has influenced the Salish 
of the Plateau proper, that is, of the upper Columbia and Fraser. 

This is exactly the condition to which the available facts point. 
The civilization of central California is less sharply characterized 
and less vigorous than that of the coast of British Columbia. Its 
influences could therefore hardly have been as penetrating. There 
must have been more give and take between Nevada and central Cali- 
fornia than between the interior and the coastal districts of British 
Columbia. But the kinship is clearly of the same kind, and the pre- 
ponderance of cultural energy is as positively (though less strikingly) 
on the coast in one tract as in the other. The Kuksu cult and the 
institutions associated with it have not flowed directly into Utah and 
Idaho, nor even in any measure into Nevada, but they indicate a 
dominance of cultural effectiveness. which, merely in a somewhat 
lower degree, relates central California to the Great Basin substan- 
tially as the North Pacific coast is related to the northern Plateau. 


1See Lowie in bibliography. 


918 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 
THE IDEA OF A CALIFORNIAN CULTURE AREA. 


The “California culture area” of the older American ethnology 
therefore fades away. The north of the State, on broader view, is 
part of a great non-Californian culture; the south likewise. The 
middle region, on the other hand, is dominant, not dominated, within 
the larger area of which it forms part; but its distinctiveness is only 
a superstructure on a basic type of civilization that extends inland 
far beyond the limits of the California of to-day. Analogously, 
local cultural patterns have been woven on the fabric, respectively, 
of the far-stretched civilization of the north; and, twice, on that of 
the south. Thus, in a close aspect, not one but four centers of diffu- 
sion, or, in the customary phraseology, four types and provinces of 
culture, must be recognized im California. Figure 74 summarizes 
these conclusions. _ 


CHAPTER 60. 
PREHISTORY. 


Data, 919; ancient sites, 920; antiquity, 921; composition of shell mounds, 923; 
ancient culture provinces, 925; purely prehistoric implements, 926; de- 
velopment of civilization on San Francisco Bay, 927; parallel conditions 
elsewhere, 930; local uniformity of the San Francisco Bay. district, 931; 
the Lower San Joaquin Valley, 988; the Upper San Joaquin Valley, 934; 
the Santa Barbara region, 985; pictured rocks, 936. 


DATA. 


California is a fairly rich field for prehistoric antiquities. There 
have probably been discovered since the American occupation at 
least a million specimens, about one in a hundred of which has found 
a resting place in a public museum or become available as a perma- 
nent record for science to draw on. But the ancient objects are 
widely scattered in the ground, and the absence of ruins and earth- 
works has made the discovery of inhabited sites largely a matter of 
accident. Systematic exploration is therefore comparatively unre- 
munerative, unless undertaken on an intensive scale. Only in two 
regions are artifacts and burials found in some concentration. 

The more profitable and best exploited of these areas consists of 
the Santa Barbara Islands and the coast of the Santa Barbara Chan- 
nel. The other takes in the winding shores of San Francisco Bay. 
In both instances the former inhabited sites are readily revealed by 
the presence of shell and sometimes of ashes. The channel district 
was the more heavily populated and the art of the natives distinctly 
more advanced. This region has therefore been extensively dug 
over by enthusiasts, and a number of really valuable collections have 
been amassed and deposited in public institutions. The San Fran- 
cisco Bay shell mounds yield a smaller quantity of less interesting 
material. Now and then a nest of burials proves a fairly rich 
pocket, but in general not more than two or three implements can 
be secured for each cubic yard of soil turned over, and the majority 
of these are simple bone awls, broken pestle ends, arrow points, 
and the like. On the other hand, some of the diggings in these 
northern mounds have been conducted in a scientific manner; with 





* Artifacts secured per cubic yard of excavation: Emeryville shell mound, 2; Ellis 
Landing, 0.5; Castro, 0.2; Gunther Island (Humboldt Bay), 3. 


919 


920 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


the result that some attempt can be made to interpret the period, 
manner of life, and development of culture of the ancient inhabitants. 
It is likely that the southern area will allow of much more ample 
conclusions once it is investigated with definite problems in view. 


ANCIENT SITES. 


The number of prehistoric sites is known to have been very con- 
siderable wherever topography and climate and food supply encour- 
aged settlement. Figures 75 to 77 
suggest the density and continuity 
of occupation on San Diego Bay, 
as well as on two of the islands of 
the Santa Barbara group. For 

° San Francisco and Humboldt 
Bays in the north, larger maps 
have been published. These dis- 
tricts comprise the principal 
shore lines in California that face 
on sheltered waters. The surf- 
beaten cliffs which constitute the 
remainder of the coast undoubt- 
edly held a smaller population. 
Their numerous short transverse 
streams, most of them with half- 
filled mouths, offered the natives 
many sheltered sites, but the re- 
mains indicate that these were 
frequently occupied only as tem- 
porary or intermittent camps. 

Away from the coast, the an- 
cient sites are much more difficult 
to detect, and data are so scatter- 
ing that any present endeavor to 
Fig. 75.—Prehistoric sites about San Diego map the sites, even for restricted 

Bay. (Data by Nelson and Welty.) A - ‘ a 

districts, 1s out of the question, 
although painstaking investigation usually reveals abundant evi- 
dences of occupation. 

On San Francisco Bay something over half of the bulk of 
the deposits left by the prehistoric occupants is shell. This, with 
the soil and rock and ash that have become mixed in, has usually 
accumulated to some height, forming a distinct and sometimes a 
conspicuous rounded elevation. The sites in this region are there- 
fore well described by their common designation of “shell mounds.” 

Elsewhere, even on the coast, shell usually forms a smaller pro- 
portion of the soil or refuse left by ancient villages, except perhaps 





KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 921 


for certain localities in the Santa Barbara district. In consequence 
the mound formation is generally also less visible. Table 14 com- 
bines the available data on this point. 


ANTIQUITY. 


The shores of San Francisco Bay have been subsiding in recent 
periods, as the geologist reckons time. These shores are mostly 
low and frequently bordered by an extensive tidal marsh. Some 
of the mounds appear to have been established at the water’s edge 
and have been affected by this subsidence. They grew up faster 
than the land sank, and thus remained convenient for occupation, 
but their bases have become submerged or covered with inorganic 
deposits. The exact depth to which this subsidence has taken place 





Fig. 76.—Prehistoric sites on Santa Rosa Island. (Data of P. M. Jones. ) 


is somewhat laborious to ascertain, and has been determined for 
only a few of the ten or more mounds known to be partly drowned. 
The bases of these range from 3 to 18 feet below the ocean level of 
to-day. This fact makes a respectable antiquity for the beginning of 
their occupation certain. 

Some of the mounds on San Francisco Bay remained inhabited — 
until the historic period. Early Spanish travelers, it is true, do 
not refer definitely to shell mounds, but it is only natural that as 
between a site and a group of houses filled with people, the latter 
would be the first to attract attention. A number of objects of Euro- 
pean source have been found in the upper layers of these mounds, 
sometimes in association with burials: adobe bricks, a crucifix, 
medals, three-legged metates of Mexican type, and the like. 

The Emeryville and Ellis Landing mounds, two of the largest 
and best explored on San Francisco Bay, have been estimated by 
their excavators to possess an age, respectively, of from one to sev- 


922 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


eral thousand and from three to four thousand years. The latter 
figure is arrived at by an ingenious computation. The Ellis Landing 
mound contains a million and a quarter cubic feet of material. About 
15 house pits were recently still visible on it. If contemporaneously 
occupied, these would indicate a population of about a hundred. 
The Indians ate fish, game, acorns, seeds, and roots. A per capita 
allowance of fifty mussels a day, or an equivalent in other molluskan 
species, for adults and children, therefore seems liberal. Five thou- 
sand mussel shells crush down, per experiment, to a quarter as many 
cubic inches. Ash, rock, and other débris would bring the daily 
accumulation to about a cubic foot for the entire settlement. At a 
rate of deposition amounting to 300 to 400 cubic feet annually, 3,500 
years would be required to build up 1,260,000 feet. There are too 
many indeterminate factors in such a calculation to allow its results 


< 
= 


Wh 
=a 
Mn 
Pu. 
Se 
oe 





MILES 


¥Kic. %7.—Prehistoric sites on Santa Cruz Island. The largest middens are 
crossed. (Data of L. Outhwaite.) 


to be pressed rigidly; but it seems reasonable. The bottom of the 
mound now being 18 feet below sea level, a subsidence of half a foot 
per century is indicated. The population may have averaged more 
than 100; but this would be rather a high figure for a native Cali- 
fornian village.. It may have been augmented seasonally by visitors 
from the interior, but to compensate, its own inhabitants are likely 
to have spent five or six months of each year in the hills away from 
their mussels. However the question is approached, 3,500 years seems 
a conservative deduction. 

A check has been attempted by another investigator. Fourteen 
per cent of Ellis Landing mound, according to a number of ana- 
lyzed samples, is ash—a weight of over 7,000 tons. Assuming 3,500 
years, we have a production of 11 pounds daily. The woods avail- 
able in the vicinity yield less than 1 per cent of ash. Hence more 
than 1,200 pounds of wood were burned daily, or, on the previous 
estimate of population, about 80 pounds per family of 7 persons, 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 923 


As a woman can carry this bulk in one load, the figure appears con- 
servative. In other words, a test of the factors assumed in the first: 
calculation yields a credible result. 

Of course, many mounds are smaller, less or not at all depressed 
below sea level, and evidently more recent and shorter lived. But 
again, Ellis Landing may be by no means the most ancient. It seems 
extremely probable, therefore, that a minimum duration of 3,000 
years must be allowed for the shell mound period on San Fran- 
cisco Bay. 


COMPOSITION OF SHELL MOUNDS. 


The constituents that go to make up the coast mounds are classi- 
fied in Table 14. Charcoal never amounts to more than a fraction 
of 1 per cent of the weight of the total bulk and has been counted 
as ash. Fish, bird, and mammal bones compose from 1 part in 
400 down to mere traces. Soil includes rock, sand and gravel. The 
proportion of this varies noticeably, but is usually explained by 
topographical considerations. Gunther Island is sand and _ peat, 
Sausalito a rocky site, Castro several miles from the shore, Half 
Moon Bay on a slide from a hillside, Point Loma on a narrow shelf 
along the side of the headland. In the other mounds the inorganic 
material is less abundant, and does not fall below a sixth or rise 
above a third in weight of the whole mass. 


TABLE 14.—PERCENTAGE COMPOSITION OF CALIFORNIA SHELL Mounpns. 

















Shell. Ash. Soil. 
Humboldt Bay—Gunther Island...--.--.---------- 16 2 82 
San Francisco Bay: 
eT VAG Se Poets taecy cide} Pe Bilan = o/> 60 14 26 
Mog DOPKOlei 1. i sce ar ie Petre a te s- 53 24 23 
Tee A 0 oa ee ei 2 Bese 92° 70 14 16 
PATA UAMO Zee nin Sint ip wie ein mise = SP ss ee pi sts 55 21 18 
SE UELTECA (YS De = ink ae a gn ee 54 25 21 
eared tre: ee eee ee Oe Se ee ee re 65 13 22 
PORTAL UO fertagats ee ee Se Bo ee PaO oe Cee 59 4 41 
San Francisco (Presidio).....:---------------- 57 16 27 
SEN UP re 09 Bere eae ys Pe tl Ss Rane 59 6 35 
Pasmehiatod css oer e ac tek = beet eat nis 3 ete 59 1] 30 
Piatra te elds - teig red seen: Sets cing (sed 26 10 64 
Coast south of San Francisco—Half Moon Bay...--- 57 4 39 
San Diego Bay—Point Loma..-....-.--------------- 29 5 66 








924 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 


[BULL. 78 


_ The ratio of shell to ash varies more, but its fluctuations are also 
partly intelligible. 
exposed spot more suited for occasional camping than continuous 
residence, and at Sausalito, where shelter, wood, and water are avail- 
able but where abundance of clams may seasonally have drawn 


people from some distance about. 


It is highest, about 14:1, at Half Moon Bay, an 


The average proportion, 4 or 5:1, 


is found at Emeryville, Ellis Landing, Greenbrae, and San Mateo 
(on three sides of San Francisco Bay), and is only shghtly exceeded 
on San Diego and Humboldt Bays. 
and 3:1, at Carquinez, which is well up on brackish water; at San 
Rafael, an essentially inland site; Castro, also away from tidewater ; 
and West Berkeley, where wealth of net sinkers indicates a fishing 
village rather than a mollusk-gathering station. 

On San Francisco Bay the commonest shell in the mounds is the 


mussel, A/ytilus edulis. 


The ratio is low, between 2:1 


This is regularly the prevailing mollusk. 


Next common, but far more irregularly distributed, is the common 
soft-shell clam, J/acoma nasuta. 
lurida, is abundant at San Mateo, where the modern cultivated beds 
of introduced oysters are located, at West Berkeley, and at Emery- 


ville, but scarce elsewhere. 


larly on the American market. 


The small local oyster, Ostrea 


All three of these species are still regu- 


The large ocean mussel, M/ytilus 


californianus, is of importance, in examined mounds, only in those 
on the outlet to the bay, namely San Francisco and Sausalito. 
Barnacles constitute from 1 to 6 per cent of the total weight of shell. 
Their occurrence is such as to indicate that they were collected with 
the other mollusks or with driftwood to which they adhered. 


Haliotis is everywhere sparsely represented. 
y 


TABLE 15.—MOLLUSKAN PROPORTIONS (BY WEIGHT) IN SHELL Mounps. 


























Dust and 
Mussel. Clam. Oyster. Aes Barnacles. brent 
fragments. 
Bmeryvilles seeecras 30 18 8 (7) 2 34 
West Berkeley..-....-..-- 4] 4 19 (*) 2 32 
Filts Landingers-ee- sae 35 36 (Oh Bae eee 1 25 
Garguinez..¢ 22522 acne 68 (*) (2), Nicer? aims 1 29° 
San-Rataelsc4cen eos ee 44 G3 (*) ‘3 5 48 
Greenbraci 22 Sete a 47 1 1 i} 3 46 
Sausalttoyeus: te una ae 24 23 ge Z 3 41 
San Branciscdcs:. «sap 19 12 (7) 18 6 39 
San Mateo Point.....-..- 5 fa ie aed eae Zot eae cea 5 37 
SaniMateo. ssc ieee scene 33 (*) 31 () 3 af 














1 Less than I per cent. 


wba a 


eS ee 


_———. 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 925 


Castro, whose location makes it abnormal in other ways, con- 
tains only traces of mussel and clam, and a small proportion of 
oyster. The dominant species is the horn shell, Cerithidea califor- 
nica, » variety available at other mound sites, but usually neglected 
there in favor of more palatable foods. Next in abundance at Castro 
is Pholas pacificus, which is rare elsewhere. Crab carapaces are 
also far more conspicuous at Castro than at any other explored site 
of the region. 

It is quite apparent that the molluskan fauna of San Francisco 
Bay has not changed appreciably even in its local distribution since 
the shell mounds were inhabited; and the topography and hydrog- 
raphy of the district are also likely to have remained substantially 
constant during the elapsed period of occupation. 

On the open ocean at Half Moon Bay the native sea foods pos- 
sessed a quite different range. Zegula funebralis was secured in 
greatest quantity, the californianus mussel came next, and Paphia 
staminea was obtained occasionally. The bay species are scarcely 
represented. 

In the north, along the steep coast beyond Trinidad, the large 
ocean mussel seems to be the chief shell constituent of the refuse 
left by villages. The only quantitative determinations are from 
the sandy and marshy shores of Humboldt Bay, where the Gun- 
ther Island mound yielded Schizothaerus nuttallii, 28 per cent; Ma- 
coma nasuta (clam), 17; Cardium corbis (scallop), 14; Paphia 
staminea, 12; Paphia tenerrima, 1; Saxidomus gigantea, 1; Mytilus 
edulis and barnacles, trace; unidentifiable, 28. These are probably 
fairly representative proportions for the district. Yet a camp site 
on Freshwater slough, near Eureka, had about 58 per cent of its 
shell edulis mussel, with 34 per cent unidentifiable. On the other 
hand a coast site near Cape Mendocino showed the large mussel, 
californianus, predominant; “clam” and “cockle” next; and a 
sea snail, a conical shell, and haliotis frequent. The species re- 
covered at the spot are Mytilus californianus,; Purpura crispata and 
saxicola; Aemaea pelta, spectrum, and mitra; Tapes staminea; Pholas 
californica; Fissurella aspera; Chrysodomus dirus; Haliotis ruf- 
escens; Chlorostoma funebrale and brunneum; and Helix Town- 
sendiana. 


ANCIENT CULTURE PROVINCES. 


Exploration of prehistoric sites anywhere in the State rarely 
reveals anything of moment that is not apparent in the life of the 
recent natives of the same locality. This rule applies even to limited 
districts. The consequence is that until now the archaeology of 


926 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [ BULL. 78 


California has but rarely added anything to the determinations of 
ethnology beyond a dim vista of time, and some vague hints toward 
a recognition of the development of culture. But as regards en- 
deavor in this direction, practically nothing has yet been achieved. 

Nor do the local varieties of culture seem to have advanced or 
receded or replaced one another to any extent. Objects of Santa 
Barbara type are found only in the Santa Barbara district and prac- 
tically never about San Francisco Bay. Humboldt Bay yields some 
variant types, but these are again peculiar to the locality. How an- 
cient these may be, can not yet be stated, but they are certainly not 
mere recent types. Moreover, there is no indication whatever that 
the San Francisco Bay culture ever prevailed at Humboldt Bay, 
and it is certain that the characteristics of the culture of the latter 
district never penetrated far enough south to be even partly repre- 
sented in the former region. 

In other words, the upshot of the correlation of the findings of 
archaeology and ethnology is that not only the general Californian 
culture area, but even its subdivisions or provinces, were determined 
a long time ago and have ever since maintained themselves with 
relatively little change. 


PURELY PREHISTORIC IMPLEMENTS. 


In regard to a few utensils, we do know that customs have changed. 
Prominent among these are the mortar and metate. The mortar 
is found practically everywhere in California, and in most locali- 
ties is rather frequent underground. But over a considerable part 
of the State, comprising roughly its northern half, it was not used 
by the historic tribes, at least not in portable form or for the pur- 
pose of grinding acorns. In this area it either consists of an exca- 
vation in bedrock, or is a small instrument used for crushing to- 
bacco or meat, or is made of a basketry hopper set on a slab. It 
is therefore probable that at some time in the past, more or less 
remote, a change came over northern California which led to the 
abandonment of the large movable acorn mortar of stone in favor 
of these other devices. Even in the southern half of the State this 
mortar was not so extensively used in recent times as the frequency 
of the type among prehistoric remains has led to being generally 
believed. 

The metate or grinding slab seems to have come in about as 
the mortar went out of use. The evidence is less complete, but it is 
significant that there are no metates in the San Francisco shell 
mounds, although a slab mortar is now and then to be found. It is 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 997 


possible that the historic but little known Costanoans and Coast 
Miwok of San Francisco Bay followed their ancestors or predeces- 
sors on the spot in going without the metate; but it would be rather 
surprising if they had done so, in view of the fact that modern in- 
terior tribes in the same latitude, such as the Miwok and Maidu, 
and even those farther north, grind on the metate, and that all the 
coast tribes from San Francisco Bay north uniformly employ the 
pounding slab. The latter may be a modification of the mortar 
under the influence of the metate in regions influenced by the metate 
culture but into which the metate proper did not penetrate. This 
rather intricate point has been discussed more fully in the chapters 
on the Maidu, Chumash, Luiseno, and Cahuilla. 

In prehistoric deposits on Humboldt Bay, and at several interior 
points in extreme northern California, have been found examples 
of an ornamental stone object which can hardly have been any- 
thing but a club. It is of animal shape, the head fairly defined, the 
tail serving as handle, and the legs projecting somewhat as if they 
were spikes. This is a type with affihations in Oregon and on the 
Columbia River, and was not used by any historic tribe in Cali- 
fornia. ‘These animal-shaped clubs are almost certainly to be con- 
nected with the simpler edged fighting club of stone used by the 
recent Indians of northwestern California. 


DEVELOPMENT OF CIVILIZATION ON SAN FRANCISCO BAY. 


Enough mounds have been systematically excavated in the San 
Francisco Bay region to make possible a fairly accurate comparison 
of the culture represented by the deep, early strata with that 
partially preserved in the upper, late layers. 

A number of difficulties must be mentioned. The mounds are 
highest at the center and slope toward the edges. The periphery is 
generally later than the middle of the base. A reckoning from the 
ground level upward would therefore be misleading. On the other 
hand, measurements of depth from the surface are not quite accurate 
because the mounds usually built up fastest in their central portions. 
A foot of mound material near the periphery may therefore stand 
for a period considerably longer—or sometimes less—than that re- 
quired for a like thickness to accumulate in the middle. Theoreti- 
cally, the correct procedure would accordingly be to follow lines of 
deposition in instituting comparisons; but this is not practical, 
stratification being confined to limited areas and often wholly im- 
perceptible. In spite of some variation of age for the several parts 


O20 °—-25-——_ 60 


928 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


of each mound, depths have therefore had to be calculated by ab- 
solute measurement from the modern surfaces. 

In most cases, much more material was removed from the upper 
than from the lower levels of mounds. But the proportion varies 
according to the circumstances of excavation at each site. Absolute 
frequency of the various classes of implements, therefore, proves 
nothing. The number of objects of the several types has accordingly 
been expressed in percentage of the total number of artifacts dis- 
covered in each level. 

Still other factors disturb. The mounds are very unequal in bulk 
and in height, and the excavations have removed quite different 
volumes. Collectors also preserve and classify their finds in some- 
what divergent manners. 

All these circumstances render any exactly reliable comparisons im- 
possible at present. It is, however, fortunate that enough data are 
on record to allow of any inferences at all; and, with due heed to 
the considerations mentioned, the evidence may therefore be’ pro- 
ceeded with. 

Table 16 shows the relative frequency, as compared with all re- 
covered articles of manufacture, of tools of obsidian, a material found 
only at some distance—some 25 to 50 miles—from the bay shores, 
and therefore a valuable index of tribal intercommunication; of 
mortars, pestles, and awls, three implements that are basic in the in- 
dustrial life of all aboriginal Californians; and of a special class of 
well-finished objects of plummet-like shape, the so-called “charm 
stones,” which presumably bore associations of magic and religion. 
In the mounds of medium height, which go down to a depth of 8 
to 12 feet, all three of these classes of objects, except charm stones, 
are found quite generally down to the lowest levels. They occur 
in the same ratio in the higher and in general presumably more 
ancient mounds whose thickness extends to 20 and 30 feet. In fact 
in both of those from which data are available, at Emeryville and 
Kllis Landing, even charm stones are still relatively abundant at a 
greater depth than is attained by the six other mounds. This fact 
renders it hkely that the absence of charm stones in the lowest 2 to 
4 feet of the moderate deposits is due either to accident or to the 
low probability that objects of such comparative rarity as charm 
stones would normally occur in the small total number of artifacts 
that is characteristic of the bottom-most levels of all the bay shell 
heaps. 


KROEBER | 


HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 


929 


TABLE 16.—PERCENTAGES OF TOTAL ARTIFACTS CONSTITUTED RY CERTAIN IMPLE- 
MENTS ACCORDING TO DEPTH IN SHELL Mounps. 


CHIPPED IMPLEMENTS OF OBSIDIAN. 








Depth in 2-foot and 4-foot intervals. 








































































































Mounds. a508 
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 tay) 82 oe 
SITS SO) ae ee ae eee 0 Oey: fh LOO iss a eit et Latah oars ihe haf beth tee 
istoen mrete y ver Sick Lene 37 Due 2g Dee Lo) te ont oe £. Pragers seat ere 
OTSA Hy een Peet Sar Ook Dal UAT Oren 8 ee ed 
ltie Landing 4322202... 0 0 1 0'| 42 0 0 29 8 
Mimery Ville 2. esac. se D2 Oc! ar cir DO wre Ole. ( Ooi On 
Visitacion (Bay Shore)..../ 0 0 3 0 De sabes SAP Shs Sh aes i oes 
BRIMALOON we oo sul ocla Pept 2 0 1 BeOS oa OE Ban Pee ded Beles le, (6 Ape 
EO Tas Ame See ne 2 6 0 0 Cee eb! at. cai aa ae 
MORTARS AND PESTLES. 3 
ESTEE oP) aie eS MR eRe? oe 25 G+ 18 US Fee SAS ny Re ee ene me ae es 
STETUINILS Fo eh Sadie Gre ain oe of +526 iyiea oo eo ey Se eee Peon pe 
LS I Cie a Da Se TU 9 ENTE ee a ES Pi OO Id eed ee a Pe RP ae 
COUNTESS 5 rhe # ny Tc ined Zt aleeieoa | a LS Ue Sotellet Oui 22 7 oF 
PARECV ELLOS o.c8 5 ot asi © cia ae 56 LO" 33 0 0| 45]; 18 40 
Visitacion......... fea Tam amen Ce (ast Unteun Oboe ale ng of cctv) fates oe 
val En Bs ret a ea Mep RS Siam ie aed PPAR ON ES BS eT ee |e ee Shee Te eee eg Le 
Og al a i AWB RPE Ot OE Se ieee cs Pia Slate sat eee nearer Re aes Pee oe 2 
BONE AWLS 
Smnsaivel reer Set TO. DareenZ 0 A se eye Oe ow ta anc dad eink han Fade nt 5 
Career bree... 0. 8 PSS. PAST | eee Ee ide em ta es Solera octet aicine ds 
SUE ADL ty elm ae a a ie See O71 30) ) 14 0 PER cere ae cba sc te ors oe 
Bias dLanding. 7.727 o4 = S0 oma By: 0 0 0 0 7 0 
Limon ville ter el Pay. 2 0 Ut aQer aac OO tt a Zor aS 0 0 
Wieatacion 002.1447 5 oe: 14| 36; 14 it OR he A bai © oe tear 6 bag derail a 
SEN Oy UE och ee 2 cares 8 11 0 Oi ee ee earn es erie tte el rere 
Ons BO a) see CE ba, 0 tee 23 Sf gal BeByatied a oe ad aghnde eed tee eagle hbo al clad ne 
CHARM STONES. 

feariehalaghs< barrens codon ois 8 0 6 CO Rerere ee a ee tik has ot ops eed 
RSROOTIDIAR pies o iscah cute <2 0 0 7 0 0 ee Cert este aaes BASF, 33 
SLAs 2 ee 0 0 0} 20 0 ES oe cls Oe ree aed Pere 
Hs Landi Nes ges be. <njdzand yoy ert ge ees £9 fs 8 Out 17 0 0 
Emeryville...... 0 0| 26 0 0 0; 26 6 0 0 
BISETACI ONS dk 2, bass sta o) 0 9 9 0 isteste etets corset cc: atid 4 od x 
RU UO ie ais pha Scar wats on Ole 22 DPT Re ihr ge Pee ee pe en Ae 
5 at ET Rey Saar | 0 3 6 Ohi noeipaeeer eli yies | oo all ete fee 

















1 Excavation of 1907-1908. 


2 Excavation of 1906. 


930 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


In, short, then, all the classes of objects in question occur at the 
bottom, middle, and top of the mounds, and the table shows that they 
occur with substantially the same frequency. In other words, the 
natives of the San Francisco Bay region traded the same materials 
from the same localities one or two or three thousand years ago as 
when they were discovered at the end of the eighteenth century. 
They ate the same food, in nearly the same proportions (only mam- 
malian bones became more abundant in higher levels), prepared it in 
substantially the same manner, and sewed skins, rush mats, and 
coiled baskets similarly to their recent descendants. Even their re- 
ligion was conservative, since the identical charms seem to have been 
regarded potent. In a word, the basis of culture remained identical 
during the whole of the shell-mound period. 

When it is remembered that the best authority—estimating, indeed, 
but using as exact data as possible and proceeding with scientific 
care—puts the beginning of this period at more than 3,000 years 
ago, it is clear that we are here confronted by a historical fact of 
extraordinary importance. It means that at the time when Troy was 
besieged and Solomon was building the temple, at a period when 
even Greek civilization had not yet taken on the traits that we regard 
as characteristic, when only a few scattering foundations of specific 
modern culture were being laid and our own northern ancestors 
dwelled in unmitigated barbarism, the native Californian already 
lived in all essentials like his descendant of to-day. In Europe and 
Asia, change succeeded change of the profoundest type. On this far 
shore of the Pacific, civilization, such as it was, remained immutable 
in all fundamentals. Even as some measure of progress shall be 
determined by continued investigation, it is probable that this will 
prove to have been unusually slow and slight. There are few parts of 
the world, even those inhabited by dark-skinned savages, where such 
a condition can be regarded as established. The permanence of Cali- 
fornian culture, therefore, is of far more than local interest. It is a 
fact of significance in the history of civilization. 

If it be objected that the period dealt with is after all conjectural 
rather than established, the import of our inference may be di- 
minished; but it is not destroyed. Cut the estimate of 3,500 years 
in half, or even to one-third: we are still carried back to the time 
of Charlemagne. The elapsed millennium has witnessed momentous 
alterations in Europe, in India, in Japan; even the Mohammedan 
countries, China, Central Asia, and Malaysia, have changed deeply 
in civilization, while our part of America has stood still. 


PARALLEL CONDITIONS ELSEWHERE. 


No similar computations can yet be made for ancient remains in 
other parts of California, because the débris deposits elsewhere have 


KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 931 


indeed been ransacked for finds, but no accurate record of the pre- 
cise depth of each specimen has been preserved. Yet the fact that no 
site shows objects appearing to belong to two types of culture, except 
for some potsherds close to the surface about San Diego; that the 
finds at various sites over whole districts are uniform, and even the 
districts usually merge into each other—all these circumstances indi- 
cate that relatively little transformation and but slight succession of 
civilizations occurred in prehistoric California. 

It may be added that in a review of the archaeology of the continent 
Doctor Dixon has found the Californian conditions to be typical of 
the entire Pacific coast, whereas in the Atlantic region and Missis- 
sipp1 Valley exact inquiry has often brought to light decisive evi- 
dence of two or several types of culture in each region. Types must, 
of course, be interpreted as periods; and Doctor Dixon connects the 
comparatively rapid succession of these in the East with a much 
greater tendency toward movements of population, as known in the 
historic period and supported by tradition for earlier times. In- 
stability of population may not have been the only, perhaps not even 
the principal, cause of eastern instability of culture; but it is a fact 
that there is scarcely any record or even legend of migrations in 
California. 

In the Southwest changes in the types of prehistoric remains are 
striking, and a definite sequence of ceramic wares, and behind these 
of civilizations, is being determined. Southwestern influences are 
so numerous in southern California that something of the tendency 
toward change may be expected to be discovered there as soon as 
sufficiently painstaking search is undertaken at ancient sites. This 
is the more likely because southern California differs from the re- 
mainder of the State in revealing some evidence of shifts of popula- 
tion. 


LOCAL UNIFORMITY OF THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY DISTRICT, 


The averaging constancy of the figures in Table 16 rests upon a 
very conspicuous irregularity in detail. But this wavering is indica- 
tive only of the limitation of data. Not over a couple of dozen 
charm stones or obsidian pieces of provenience of known depth are 
available from any one mound, and the total number of artifacts re- 
covered from the largest excavations at single sites is only a few 
hundred. By the time these are distributed among several layers 
the numbers are so small that chance must vary their distribution 
considerably. With successive levels, particularly at the lower and 
comparatively barren depths, yielding, say, one, two, and no objects 
of a given class, the corresponding percentages can easily be 5, 33, and 
zero. Burials, which occur scatteringly, contain pockets of speci- 


932 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


mens and add further to the irregularity of distribution over small 
sections of mounds. The variation in frequencies from layer to layer, 
therefore, allows of no inferences; it is the absence of drift in cultural 
direction, from bottom to top of any mound as a whole, that is sig- 
nificant. 

The tendency toward uniformity is almost as great for locality as 
for time. Table 17 gathers the data on this point. It is notable 
that the variations in frequency of many classes of objects is about 
as great between successive excavations in the same mound as be- 
tween distinct sites. Thus Emeryville in 1902 yielded 9 per cent of 
mortars and pestles and about 30 per cent of awls; in 1906 the re- 
spective results were 26 and 12. In short, variations must again be 
ascribed largely to chance. 


TABLE 17.—PERCENTAGES OF CLASSES OF ARTIFACTS ACCORDING TO LOCALITY OF 
SHELL MowunNDSsS. 











Percentages. 
Total | Speck 
Mound. Aer mens Mor- : ae era Pi 
oper raed one ae = xpouge. oibeeds Awis. | Wedges others. 
pestles. or shell. 
Feet. 

pan Rafael! 7. ..sd i 42 19 14 0 5 2 4 2 51 
Greenbrae.......... 12 60 17 22 0 1 8 22 2 28 
Sansalitoieee teks 12 84 5 15 12 5 19 13 0 31 
Ellis Landing, 1906.. 13 92 9 11 1 11 5 10 0 53 
Ellis Landing, 1907-8 25 260 4 24 10 13 11 12 if 25 
West Berkeley, 1902.|........ 314 4 5 44 3 2 4 0 38 
Emeryville, 1902. ... 125 | 2340 17 9 1 3 17 130 4 39 
Emeryville, 1906.... 24 65 8 26 0 5 3 12 0 46 

Visitacion (Bay 
Shore) eters eee sees 9 75 1 12 1 7 19 19 0 41 
San: Mateossui. sseee 8 41 4 24 0 10 10 dy 5 40 
CASLrO See: eis Noe 8 87 2 2a 0 5 21 8 1 26 





! Approximate. 

2’ The total number is about 600, but this includes waste chips, broken bones, and similar pieces which 
have not been counted from the other mounds. That the correction to 340 makes the totalcomparable to 
the other totals isindicated by the figure 39in thelast column, which is also the average of the 10 other 
figures in that column. 


There are a few exceptions. The two highest frequencies for 
charm stones are both furnished by Ellis Landing. The probable 
inference is that the settlement here was a center of some particular 
shamanistic or ceremonial activity. Such a development would be 
most likely in a large town, and this the size of the mound indicates 
the place to have been. It is illustrative of the lack of flow pervad- 
ing Californian culture that the flowering of this religious manifesta- 
tion was not a transient phase, but something that endured for 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 9338 


many centuries, as evidenced by the comparative regularity of the 
high proportion of charm stones at this site. 

West Berkeley, on the other hand, was mainly a fishing settle- 
ment. Nearly half of its discovered artifacts are sinkers—flattish 
pebbles nicked on two sides for the string that bound them to the 
lower edge of the seine net. That it was more than a camp is clear 
from the extent and depth of the deposits, as well as the burials 
and ceremonial and ornamental pieces which they contain. The 
spot may have been unusually favorable for taking fish. Yet Ellis 
Landing and West Berkeley, but a few miles on either side, contain 
only the usual low percentage of sinkers; and however much the 
aboriginal West Berkeleyans fished, the little mountain of shells 
they left behind proves them not to have neglected mollusks as a 
food supply. 

Obsidian comes from Clear Lake and the head of Napa Valley, 
occasionally also in small lumps from upper Sonoma Valley. One 
should expect it to follow two routes in its distribution around San 
Francisco Bay—along the north and west border of San Pablo Bay 
to the Golden Gate, or across Carquinez Straits and southward along 
the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay proper. By either route the 
peninsular district of San Mateo and San Francisco would be the 
last to be reached. Analysis of the finds exactly tallies with these 
inferences from geography. San Rafael and Greenbrae, most north- 
erly and nearest the source of supply, actually show much the heav- 
iest proportion of obsidian implements; Visitacion, San Mateo, and 
Castro, the most. southerly mounds and on the peninsula, the smallest 
frequency. 


THE LOWER SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY. 


In the delta region of the great interior valley, particularly in the 
vicinity of Stockton, several special objects have been found in sufli- 
cient numbers to insure their being characteristic of the region. 
These include narrow cylindrical jars or vases of steatite; clay balls, 
either plain or incised, perhaps slung shots for water fowl or sub- 
stitutes for cooking stones in the alluvial region; neatly worked 
obsidian blades of about a finger’s length and crescentically shaped; 
and thin ornaments of either haliotis or mussel shell cut into forms 
ranging from that of a human outline to more conventionalized 
figures, which, if they were of civilized origin, would suggest the form 
of a stringed musical instrument. The distribution of these types 
is so well localized as to give a first impression of a specific ancient 
subculture. But the area is one from which the historic tribes were 
early drained into the missions, so that historic data which would 
enable a comparison on the basis of ethnology are practically nil. 


934 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


It is therefore quite possible that we are confronted by the usual 
phenomenon of a culture proceeding undisturbed from prehistoric 
times until its elimination by the Caucasian; with merely the pecu- 
harity that its modern phase disappeared before being observed. 
This solution is indicated by the fact that. investigations among the 
Miwok have developed that the so-called “ Stockton curves ” of obsid- 
ian were known to these Indians, the blades being attached to the 


fingers in imitation of bear claws by dancers who impersonated the — 


animal. It seems rather likely that if the northern valley Yokuts 
survived in condition to depict the culture of their great-grandfathers, 
they would be able to explain most of the other types, which now 
appear isolated or peculiar, as something familiar in the region when 
the Spaniards came. 


THE UPPER SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY. 


A rather remarkable discovery of burials near the shores of Buena 
Vista Lake at the head of the San Joaquin Valley, in a territory that 
was historically Yokuts, seems at first sight to reveal a stronger in- 
fluence of southern California, and even of the Southwest, than is 
discernible among the modern Indians of this region. (Pls. 41, 63, 
72, 81.) A carefully preserved eagle skull with eyes of haliotis, 
for instance, suggested a definite connection with the Luiseho and 
Diegueno eagle-killing ceremony, until it became known that the 
modern Yokuts also practiced a mourning rite over eagles. But a 
specimen of a wooden club of the “ potato-masher” type standard 
in southern California and the Southwest—unfortunately not pre- 
served, but of definite description—does point to the conclusion 
indicated. 

The same may be said of a number of bags twined in basketry 
technique but of soft string materials. (Pl. 63.) These are similar 
to the bags or wallets made by the Dieguefo and Mohave, and bear 
an especial likeness, at any rate superficially, to utensils of the so- 
called “ basket makers” who once lived at Grand Gulch, in south- 
ern Utah. 

Another point is of interest. The hair preserved with some of the 
Buena Vista Lake skulls is wound or contained in typical central 
Californian head nets, but the hair itself is plastered in the long 
pencil-shaped masses which in the historic period the Colorado River 
tribes, and so far as known no others, followed as their fashion. 
(Pl. 72.) Yet the remains are those of natives of the region. So 
many of the objects preserved with them are articles of household 
use, and the interment of the dead is so precise, that there can be no 
suspicion of a party of raiding warriors having been slain and 
buried far from home. 


SO a eS a a 


ea” ee 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN) PLATE SI 





SKULL FROM NEAR BUENA VISTA LAKE, EDGE OF TULARE 
VALLEY 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BUELE RIN (Cee RizAt Emo2 





PETROGLYPHS FROM THE SIERRA NEVADA 


From above, down: Rock Creek near Bishop; Upper Stanislaus River; 
Tehipite, Middle Fork of Kings River 


KROERER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 935 


Perhaps of greatest interest in this collection is an unornamented 
cotton blanket unquestionably made among one of the settled tribes 
of New Mexico or Arizona. This is one of the few authentic in- 
stances of long distance trade of any manufactured article either 
into or out of California. It is, however, suggestive that the last 
wearer of this blanket was certainly not following the style cus- 
tomary among the people who wove it. He had roughly cut into it 
two ragged holes for his arms, so that he could put it about himself 
somewhat as a coat. (PI. 72.) Had the maker intended the blanket 
to be worn in this fashion, he might have woven it in one piece, but 
would have trimmed and seamed the holes. 

Unfortunately there is no indication whatever of the age of this 
very unusual find. It represents a series of burials uncovered by 
natural causes and detached from the village to which they belonged. 
At any rate, if the latter stood in the vicinity, it left no evidences of 
refuse or other accumulation. The state of preservation of many 
of the articles is such as to suggest comparative recency. But as 
against this is to be set the high aridity of the district. The inter- 
ments may not be more than a few centuries old; but they are cer- 
tainly pre-Spanish. 


THE SANTA BARBARA REGION. 


The Santa Barbara Islands and mainland contain in their ancient 
graves the greatest number of unique forms and specialized types 
to be found in California. Unfortunately the historical culture of 
the Chumash and island Shoshoneans has been so completely wiped 
out that in the majority of instances it is quite impossible to say 
whether the peculiar objects dug out of graves were or were not 
in use by the Indians of 150 years ago. So far as seems safe, they 
have been tentatively connected with the technological and religious 
practices of these Indians, in the chapter on the Chumash. It does 
not seem possible to interpret them more decisively, or worth while 
to speculate upon them at greater length, until either additional his- 
torical information becomes accessible upon this group, or systematic 
excavations enable the characterization of the several periods and 
types of culture that may be represented in the prehistoric deposits 
of the region. 

A word may be added about two types of implements in regard to 
which there has been some controversy: a stone ring or perforated 
disk, and a pear or plummet shaped object. It has been affirmed 
that the former was a club head, or again a net sinker. But the 
holed disk is most common in the Chumash region, and the surviving 
Chumash unanimously declare that it was slipped as a weight over 
the root-digging sticks of their women. The size and shape and all 


936 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


evidences of wear on the pieces confirm this interpretation. That 
now and then such a stone may have been used for a hammer or for 
cracking acorns is entirely natural, but marks indicative of such 
occasional secondary utilization can not be stretched into a basis for 
theories. The net sinker of California was a beach pebble, nicked or 
notched on opposite edges, or sometimes grooved. Anything more 
finished or ornate would have been a sheer waste of labor, which 
would not have appealed to so practical minded a people as the Cali- 
fornians; at any rate not in an occupation in which religion did not | 
directly enter. The only exception that must be made to the inter- 
pretation of the round perforated stone as a digging stone weight is 
provided by a few specimens found slenderly hafted and feathered 
in a cave that contained several hundred other clearly ceremonial 
objects. 7 
The plummet-shaped stone, which is often very symmetrically 
ground and well polished, and sometimes made of attractively 
colored or banded rock, is without doubt a ceremonial object. At 
least, every interpretation obtained from recent Indians is to the 
effect that stones of this type were.amulets or fetishes for luck in 
hunting and fishing. They may possibly also have been used by rain- 
making shamans. The fact that traces of asphalt show some of 
these pieces to have been suspended is, of course, no proof of their 
having been used as sinkers, true plummets, or weaving weights. In 
fact, one such charm stone was actually found, only a few years 
ago, suspended from a string over a fishing place near an Indian 
settlement in the San Joaquin Valley. Whether these stones, which 
are most common in central California but are also known from Chu- 
mash territory, were originally made as charms, or whether they 
served some other purpose and were only put to magical use when 
they were discovered by later generations of natives, it is impossible 
to decide with certainty ; but the positive knowledge as to their recent 
employment should weigh more heavily in the student’s mind than 
any conjecture, no matter how appealing, as to what thei still 
earlier use may have been. 


PICTURED ROCKS. 


About 50 sites with carved or painted rocks have become known in 
California. These range from bowlders bearing a few scratches to 
walls of caves or overhanging cliffs covered with a long assemblage 
of figures in red, yellow, black, and white. Their distribution (Tig. . 
78) is by no means uniform. About half occur in territory occupied 
in the historic period by Shoshoneans. Nearly all the remainder are 
in areas immediately adjacent to Shoshonean tracts. Other parts of 
California are practically devoid of such monuments of the past. 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 937 


This distribution can not be accounted for by environment. It is 
true that the open plains of the great valley and the heavy redwood 
belt would furnish few exposed stones suitable for inscribing. But 
the half-forested broken country north and south of San Francisco 
and the foothills of the Sierra offer abundant opportunities which 
the inhabitants of these regions availed themselves of most sparsely. 





x : 
x | 
Bat 
~ 
x Xe 
Lm a 
xo a pk 
ae 
> 4 mel 
No 
x S 
ne 
8 aN 
= x oe x 
'. 0 ~ 
oO as 
0 Og Oo NM 
Oo 
a 
a) x 
3 : 
xX pg O 
oe oP QO 
Oo 
5 0 
ge’ 
— ; 
\ “o 


_: 
es an 
—_—_-* 


-- 


Fig. 78.—Distribution of petrographs. Squares, carved; crosses, painted ; 
crossed squares, carved and painted. The lines are the limits of recent Sho- 
shonean territory. 


On the other hand, petrographs are common throughout the Great 
Basin, which was solidly tenanted by Shoshoneans. The inference 
is therefore strong that these people are mainly responsible for the 
painted and carved rocks of California, in part through the work of 
their ancestors’ hands and partly by their influence on their 
neighbors. (Pl. 82.) 

The most remarkable pictographs are those in the Chumash 
country, beginning with the famous Corral Rock in the Carrizo 


938 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Plains, the largest and most notable group in the State (PI. 83) ; 
stretching to the vicinity of Santa Barbara; and extending thence 
easterly into Gabrielino land in the Sierra Madre and northeasterly 
among the Yokuts in the southern Sierra Nevada. These pictographs 
are almost all painted in several colors, protected from the weather 
and well preserved except. for defacings by civilized vandals, and in- 
clined to the representation of recognizable figures—men, animals, 
suns, and the like. Outside of this area carvings preponderate. 
Although sometimes extensive, these are simpler, circles, spirals, 
zigzags, rows of triangles, and other geometric designs prevailing, 
usually in quite irregular arrangement. 

It is true that the distinction between paintings and incised stones 
must be made with caution. Stone is so much slower to work than 
pigment that an equal effort would lead to much less elaborate re-. 
sults; and many of the carvings may originally have been over- 
painted, the color quickly washing out in exposed locations, such as 
granite outcrops. Yet caves and smooth overhangs occur in many 
regions outside the district of the Chumash, Gabrielino, and south- 
ern Yokuts, and there can be little doubt that had the inhabitants 
of the remoter regions felt impelled to produce complicated or life- 
like pictures, they would have found the opportunity to make them, 
and that their handiwork would have been more frequently pre- 
served than is the case. The cave paintings of the south, therefore, 
represent a particular art, a localized style or cult. This can be 
connected, in all probability, with the technological art of the 
Chumash and island Shoshoneans, as manifest in the occasional 
carvings of whales, quadrupeds, and the like in steatite. Since these 
paintings farther fall well within the region of the toalache religion, 
in fact their distribution coincides fairly closely with the area in 
which this religion was strongest, and since its cult was in certain 
tracts worked out in visible symbols such as the sand painting, an 
association with this religion is also to be considered, although 
nothing positive is known in the matter. 

Two questions are always asked about pictographs: What do 
they mean? and How old are they? Neither can be answered. 
The modern Indians are always familiar with them as landmarks, 
but can give as little information as the visitor, except to say that 
they have always been there. No connected story can be deciphered 
from any of the groups of symbols, and many are so obviously 
nonrepresentative as to leave even a speculative imagination bafiled 
for a clew. Many of the pictures may have been made by shamans; 
but again there is no specific evidence pointing in this direction, 
and it is quite possible that medicine men were not connected with 
the making of any. Luiseno girls paint granite bowlders at the 


BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 78 PLATE 83 





FIGURES FROM THE PAINTED ROCK OF CARRIZO PLAINS 





KROEBER | HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 939 


conclusion of their adolescence rites. But this seems a local custom. 
and the paintings made in accordance with it are of different char- 
acter from those found in caves farther north. They would in 
-any case wash off in a generation or two. It has sometimes been 
conjectured that the symbols served as boundary marks, direction 
signs, or for some analogous practical purpose. Yet this interpre- 
tation fits neither their character, their location, nor the habits of 
native life. The Indian knew the limits of his territory and his 
way around in it; and as for strangers, his impulse would have been 
to obscure their path rather than blazon it. 

The uncertainty is equal as regards age. Many of the pictures 
need not be more than two or three hundred years old, since all 
evidence goes to show that nothing survived in California tradi- 
tion for even half a dozen lifetimes, except possibly in a garb wholly 
altered into myth. On the other hand, the sheltered paintings, and 
some of the deeper cut rocks, may well be several times as ancient. 
The only hope of a partial solution of this question seems to lie in 
an examination by mineralogists and geologists entitled to an opin- 
ion as to the resistance of stones, severity of exposure, and the rate 
of surface disintegration under given climatic conditions, 


APPENDIX. 


PRONUNCIATION OF NATIVE WORDS. 


Many an Indian language contains more different sounds than the Roman 
alphabet has letters. If, according to a basic rule of philology, a distinct 
character were to be employed for each distinct sound, an alphabet of several 
hundred characters would have had to be devised for this book, since there 
are nearly a hundred native dialects in California of which some record has 
been made, and the vast majority of these contain sounds that are not identi- 
cal. Such a scheme of orthography is both impracticable and unnecessary 
for anything but purely linguistic studies. On the other hand, the writing of 
Indian words with the current English values of the letters—sometimes 
falsely called ‘ phonetic ”’—was out of the question, because words written in 
this way can often be read in two or three ways. If anyone can correctly 
pronounce a foreign word written by the English method, it is not because he 
can read it, but because his tongue remembers the pronunciation. It is im- 
possible to convey to others a fixed pronunciation of alien terms rendered in 
English orthography. 

The system of spelling followed in this work employs only letters of the 
Roman alphabet and three or four diacritical marks. In general, the vowel 
signs have the sound of the letters in the languages of the continent of Europe, 
the consonant signs the sound of the English letters. This system does not 
permit of any one of the Indian languages referred to being pronounced with 
absolute correctness. On the other hand, if the description of the sound or 
sounds denoted by each letter is carefully observed, this spelling will permit 
of the pronunciation of the native terms in this book with sufficient accuracy 
for an Indian to recognize all the words quoted from his dialect. 


a as in father, sometimes as in what; in Yurok only, sometimes as in bad. 
b usually a little more difficult to distinguish from p than in English. 
c not employed;s or k has been written instead. 
ch asin English, or nearly so. 
d somewhat asin English; but its quality is like that of b, its tongue position like t. 
dh in Mohave and Luisefio only, lke th in English the. 
dj asin English, but with some approach to ch quality (compare b, d, g). 
as in met, there; sometimes like a in mate. 
rare; the upper lip touches the lower lip, not the teetn. 
as in go, but harder to distinguish from k than in English; in Yurok, like a 

‘‘fricative,’’ that is, ike g in Spanish gente or colloquial German wagen; in 

Pomo, and occasionally in other languages, both values of g occur, bud are 

designated by the one letter. 

h sometimes as in English; occasionally fainter; sometimes more harahae made 
with constriction ay the Baek of the mouth, red cnie a sound equal, or nearly 
so, to Spanish j or German ch. H must always be sounded, even at the end 
of words. 

hl a ‘“‘surd” 1, made without vibration of the vocal cords. 
hw a ‘“‘surd” w, much like wh in English which. 

i asin pin, long or short, or as in machine, long or short. 

j not used, except in dj. 


940 


SQ ee Os: 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 941 


k in languages which possess g, is as in English; in those which do not, it is usually 


th 
tl 


zh 


somewhat nearer g than is English k, at least at the beginning and in the middle 
of words. Indian k is often pronounced much farther back in the mouth than 
English k. 

never quite the same asin English, but near enough in sound to be unmistakable. 

substantially as in English. 

substantially as in English. 

as in English singing, not as in finger. 

as in come, ore; when long, sometimes like 0 in note, more frequently like aw in 
law. . 

as in English, but with a tendency of approach toward b like that of k toward g. 

not used; kw has been written instead. 

much as in German, French, Spanish, or Irish brogue; only in Yurok it is ‘“‘soft” 
as in American English. Yurok er is a vowel. 

is a sound of the same type as English s, though rarely quite identical. In 
languages like Yana and Mohave, in which sh has not been written, s is usually 
as similar in effect to English sh as to English s. 

much as in English, but probably never quite the same. 

tends to approach d as k does g. Pomo, Yuki, Costanoan, Yokuts, Luiseno, 
Dieguefio, Mohave, and perhaps other languages, possess one t made with the 
tip of the tongue against the teeth, and another against the front palate, the 
latter sounding almost like English tr; but the two sounds have been represented 
by one letter. 

in Mohave only, like English th in thin. 

an ‘‘affricative surd” 1, much like tl in English (ttle. 

asin rule, long or short; or asin full, long or short; never as in wnié. 

in Shoshonean, Chumash, Yokuts, Miwok, Maidu, is spoken with the tongue in 
position for u, the lips formed as if for i or e. It isalmost the “opposite” in 
articulation from German ti or French u. 

in Shoshonean, Mohave, and Karok; the lower lip touches the upper, not the 
teeth. 

as in English, or nearly so. 

not used. The sound of English x is represented by ks; the ‘“‘fricative palatal” 
sound usually denoted by x in works on American Indian languages is here 
represented by h. 

as in English. 

as in English zebra. 

rare; like sin pleasure or z in azure. 

the so-called glottal stop; a contraction of the larynx or Adam’s apple, closing the 
breath passage; a cessation of sound, or pause, and therefore inaudible except 
sometimes as a faint click or catch. When written after p, t, k, ch, ts, tl, the 
closing of the larynx is usually simultaneous with the first part of the consonant, 
while the last portion of the sound is reenforced and has to the ear something 
of the quality of a smack or crack. 

denotes the accented or most loudly spoken vowel of the word. Accent is gener- 
ally less marked,in the Californian Indian languages than in English, and its 
designation has been omitted in all but a few instances. 

when used, denotes a long vowel; but as a rule, length and shortness of vowels 
have not been distinguished. Lengthened consonants are represented by being 
written twice. This device does not indicate shortness of the preceding vowel 
as in English. 




































= Sect a : 


z oe" Te eerie Ae? 





Va 


hae WF Meebo Heath, ier lt st es = fet’ nak a 


' sit WS sfoantay irae dal 1 Tsar Pay 4 4 Fits “i bos ae 
: Licdd Mi nigk 0h Bem UeRtD art -seags hon, Pescruy tds ite WE fable ef ay ae 


if "aa a 4 : . < 


. oe ft , : “4d ie 3 peeehaaer ea . Tpctiven wt Lanny Yih: (Hips “a: die ay 
: " A oe ee eee Ogu aUlE aletgA PR 


4 


Sa, baht nee, ad gee | ee? Ree es te 


Y, > 
ap ; / rere or : , iN, (iL iets pens 
se iz ; BLE Roe ? BA 4 i Tet 4 ‘ ¢ wt 


, af irr oF beulonsaigaa't ent as tt oi, ’ chat past 42), Sikes ope Wines 
; i; ie SD ace ns * oyu 1 ase hye i 
4. } Lisette Seay WALES ans mvs pe tay Bei Jit beet Neti 
iw ) i yd 3 ve bre eA.  cigfeatcene figads hate 
; re, 4 cP eas a ¢ ¢ ne ier ; ey ilae fiat pike Ps: tory teay 15x Heegal “agieens Ag res, 
“ag oe oy ; orm rat 4 % <f if hie sate Bares 
‘2 TAG ie ay 7344 Ta o Wind: 7 eas titichs tate as (is GR Pass 
ri erie doy ae See Rey E Od gyri eet pal th , Y tale Vii! waht ei § 
i 4 ; : Pet ‘¥ c a; (¢t-ah rel Sit: 4! = 4 ited ae 
: . 5 : bes wey gh Labatt ‘smal te iad meg. So ee 
ea T f BOAT Op y Fed tt 5 CE ge u % 
ik h tra A a SM ehk OPA is ea RL et ant wy Oat , ie: +t ne tae * 
. Sy nlivy jey, pr, tere aes ee Vcaars Die) eet br Fr CRRA 
; cea suse oatistt af): a/R OES gudiss. ate fetis arae: oe 
| eit ies jag te i ig nl Aube Be a 
x r a an a Ns PSG N Hie + a “4 iat mt 
i 28 etter hace aa oa Lar oil Py Wate Bl 
: at ip Tote t iP ee sia tere LANE TANCES oR le dana Ree oe 
Are ) r ate i aes F4.,) 36 . i te ne hed i rth pap whi ; 
, ' ; ee fi ti desayen) ie 
St the pt: me ates i is, BOGE é Re a a Ae Psa, Ph PER at 
; iy ae ; : 
- $ raha At . ay eS gale 4 ee i te at Pi 
ease Otis Lo al ad See aes th, er 
nih ease seu hd f STE TL Peet st 8 sak Te jar ST “hfe ' 
: ; came GAR bhi ¥ » if eae a wis . yp smBialer itd yea ‘ 3 etl, _ is ery. : 
i ‘ ie $a iY ee ate is 4 
| tea, oot oe) ae eae ia 
, | Sa a ye ee eae ht enews ae : 
: La te (Al eraiay Ay TeRuiee hd ph eresl ode tat Boe. pee HAG bediotsh me 


- ; oe ap ws 


. hay rooterar vila ape fenedss inae P, eienpeae (or elie 
; ; ey 
dP °APCO? GE) eh ee Rae oe eae cs VME NE: uy etanl nit nag 


‘ : asdiat hs Ud belie ag 08 Ades By, yea pied) Asa wen el ahead fadide: ee Or pieret ‘oad Ne rs 
= vers oly te ey! hare eRe eee a abe bei 4 4 BAY ‘hi ey 

A i re i Sena ust 

etd ol eaREss eho Pt wlaveg’) Sik ‘tibe oi dteora Arba caf pe 
; : in doy? he -d-gate it ae av u i igen gl z rf ‘pat sal bes hehe be 
“ae . ‘aw ae? py Lugnpd Dias tates aren are oa eit bee 7. bese deyie i aot 


pan ed i de Ak, Narada ein Wie. jatar ists: Soluce yy tis, SL Th ote is LyahIee P 
Sad Badarnerrang ‘nek! iP RaEy eT UE: © An ‘sey send 
, RS tee) Novem ny bate HO MHA? aye Pst fh <b tote tenets Bes 


f ; 14 i re ers aw ie “oe y 7 5 ee, hyn Ld Ay A J he SAE 
4 . , ' 


7 a 

x 
3 * 4 

ay : 

o | i § 
i; ; 
au 
: y! ‘ 

\ 
° ' 
! | 
J Ss 





BIBLIOGRAPHY. 


A classification by numbers aceording to subject will be found at the end of the 

alphabetic bibliography. 

1. Assort, C. C. Chipped stone implements. Mortars and pestles. Steatite 
cooking pots. Articles made of wood. Smoking pipes of stone. Miscel- 
laneous objects made of stone. Musical instruments. In [Putnam, 
I’. W.] Rept. U. S. Geog. Surv. west of the 100th Meridian [Wheeler 
Surv. Rept.], vol. vir, Archaeology, pp. 49-69, 70-92, 93-116, 122-124, 
125-134, 190-217, 234-238, Washington, 1879. 

2. ALARCON, FERNANDO. Relation, 1540. Hakluyt, Voyages, vol. m1, London, 
1600; repr. 1810: Ternaux-Compans, Voyages, vol. 1x, Paris, 1838. 

3. ANDERSON, R. A. Fighting the Mill Creeks. Chico, 1909. 

[The title indicates the nature of this booklet. The Mill Creeks are the 
yee ae 

4, ANGEL, Myron. La piedra pintada. The painted rock of California. A 
Legend. Los Angeles, 1910. 


5. ARROYO DE LA CUESTA, FELIPE. Grammar of the Mutsun language. Shea’s 
Library of American Linguistics, vol. tv, New York, 1861. 
6. ———. Vocabulary of the Mutsun language. Ibid., vol. v111, 1862. 
{A valuable collection by a competent Franciscan missionary. See Mason, J. 
Alden. ] 


7. BArcert, JAcosB. Nachrichten von der Amerikanischen Halbinse] Califor- 
nien. Mannheim, 1772. Partly translated by Charles Rau, Smithsonian 
Reports for 1863 and 1864, Washington, 1864, 1865. 

[Very valuable for Baja California, especially the extinct tribes of the 
southern half of the peninsula. The little book is probably the most spiritedly 
abusive description of a primitive people ever written by a priest, and certainly 
one of the most picturesque. ] 

8. Barr, K. BE. von, and HELMERSEN, G. von. Beitrage zur Kentniss des 
Russischen Reiches. St. Petersburg, 1839. 


9. BAncrort, H. H. The native races of the Pacific states. The works of 


H. H. Bancroft, vols. 1-v, San Francisco, 1883. 

[These five volumes on the aborigines are a fair sample of the thirty-nine 
that comprise the entire remarkable collection. They contain much that is 
based on manuscript material, or, if in print, is otherwise accessible with 
difficulty. Nothing that bears on the subject is omitted. Most of the volumes 
are excellently written. All the material is externally organized. Yet the 
series remains an immense drifting miscellany, without real plan, inner unity, 
or definite point of view but extremely valuable for the numerous important 
items that it embodies.] 


10. Barrert, S. A. Basket designs of the Pomo Indians. Amer. Anthrop., 
n. Ss. vol. vu, pp. 648-653, 1905. 


141. ———.._ Ceremonies of the Pomo Indians. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. 
Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. xm, pp. 397-441, 1917. 
12, ————-. A composite myth of the Pomo Indians. Jour, Amer. Folk-lore, vol. 


xIx, pp. 37-51, 1906. 
3625 °—25—_61 943 


G44 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


13. Barrerr, 8S. A. The ethno-geography of the Pomo and neighboring Indians. 
Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. vi, pp. 1-832, 1908. 
[A mine of data. Pages 28-36 reprint the account of Drake’s landing in 
California. ] 


14. ————. The geography and dialects of the Miwok Indians. Ibid.,; vol. V1, 
pp. 333-368, 1908. 

15. ————. Indian opinions of the earthquake of 1906. Jour. Amer. Folk-lore, 
vol. xIx, p. 824, 1906. 

16. ————. The material culture of the Klamath Lake and Modoc Indians. 
Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. v, pp. 239-292, 1910. 

17. ———. Myths of the Southern Sierra Miwok. Ibid., vol. xvi, pp. 1-28, 
1919. 

18. ———. A new Moquelumnan territory in California. Amer. Anthrop., n. s. 
vol; v; p..730,- 1908. 

19. ————. Pomo Bear doctors. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and 
Ethnol., vol. xu, pp. 448-465, 1917. 

20. ———~. Pomo buildings. Holmes Anniversary Volume, pp. 1-17, Wash- 
ington, 1916. 

21. ————. Pomo Indian basketry. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and 


Ethnol., vol. vu, pp. 183-306, 1908. 
[Perhaps the fullest description ever written of the basket art of any one 
native people. ] 


22. ———. The Pomo in the Sacramento valley of California. Amer. An- 
throp., n. s. vol. v1, 189-190, 1904. 

23. ———. Totemism among the Miwok Indians. Journ. Amer. Folk-lore, vol. 
XL Darcdgntous. 

24. ———. The Washo Indians. Bull. Public Mus. of Milwaukee, vol. 1, no. 


1, pp. 1-52, 1917. 
[Mainly a description of implements, but about all there is on the Washo. ] 
—. The Wintun Hesi ceremony. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. 
and Ethnol., vol. xtv, pp. 487-488, 1919. 
[A Kuksu ritual influenced by the ghost-dance. ] 
26. BARRINGTON, DAINES. Journal of a Spanish voyage in 1775 by Don Antonio 
Maurelle. Miscellanies, pp. 471-534, London, 1781. 


27. Barrows, DAvip Prescorr. The ethno-botany of the Coahuilla Indians of 
southern California. Univ. of Chicago, 1900. 

[A spirited little book. Perhaps the best introduction to a study of the south- 
ern California Indians. The ethno-botany is excellent, and the author manages 
to present much of the culture along with it. One of the most human doctor’s 
dissertations ever written. ] 





25. 


28. BarTLeTT, J. R. Personal Narrative of explorations and incidents... 
connected with the United States and Mexican Boundary Commission, 
1850-53. Vols. 1-11. New York, 1854. 


[An excellent book, with some valuable data on the tribes of southern Cali- 
fornia. ] 


29. BEAcH, WM. W. The Indian miscellany. Albany, 1877. 


30. BEECHEY, FREDERIC W. Narrative of a voyage to the Pacific and Berings 
strait, to cooperate with the Polar expeditions. Vols. 1-11, London, 
1831. 


31. Buepsor, A. J. Indian wars of the Northwest. San Francisco, 1885. 
[ Written from the settler’s point of view and without interest in the Indian 
as such, but contains some glimpses of ethnology. ] 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 945 


32. Boas, Franz. Anthropometrical observations on the Mission Indians of 
Southern California. Proc. Amer. Asso. Ady. Sci., vol. xuiv, pp. 261-269, 
1895. 
[All that there is on the racial] type of this group. ] 
33. Anthropometry of Central California. Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. 
Hist., vol. xvu, pt. 4, pp. 347-880, 1905. 
[Maidu, Wintun, Achomawi, Pomo, Yuki, Wailaki.] 
34. Notes on the Tillamook. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and 
Ethnol., vol. xx, no. 1 (in press, 1923). 
[Of comparative value for northwestern California. ] 
oa. Traditions of the Tillamook Indians. Journ. Amer. Folk-lore, vol. 
XI, pp. 23-38, 183-150, 1898. 
[Some California allusions. ] 
36. ———. Zur Anthropologie der Nordamerikanischen Indianer. Verhand- 
lungen der Berliner Anthropologischen Gesellschaft, pp. 867-411, May, 
1895. 
[Among the mass of summarized data are bodily measurements of several 
Californian groups. ] 
37. BoDEGA y QUADRA. Primero viage, 1775. Anuario de la Direccion de 
Hidrografia, Alo 111, 1864, Madrid, 1865. 
38. Botton, H. E., ed. Expedition to San Francisco Bay in 1770. Diary of 


45. 


44. 


45, 
46. 


Pedro Fagés. Univ. Cal., Acad. Pac. Coast Hist., Publs., vol. 1, no. 3, 
pp. [141]-[159], 1911. 


. ——. Father Escobar’s relation of the Onate expedition to California. 


Catholic Historical Review, vol. v, pp. 19-41, 1919. 
Kino’s Historical Memoir of Pimeria Alta. Cleveland, 1919. 
Spanish exploration in the Southwest, 1542-1706. New York, 
1916. 


[Contains authoritative translations of the Relation of Cabrillo, the Diary of 
Vizcaino, and the Journey of Onate. ] 

Boscana, GERONIMO. Chinigchinich. English translation in Robinson, 
Alfred, Life in California, New York, 1846. (The Spanish original is 
probably lost. Alexander Taylor reprinted the English version in the 
California Farmer, vol. x1m. The Robinson book has also been re- 


printed, but without the Chinigchinich. ) 

[This account of the religion and social customs of the Juaneno is by far the 
most valuable document on the California Indians preserved from the pen of 
any of the Franciscan missionaries. It is written in a spirited style, is based 
on unusually full knowledge, and is done with understanding. The ethnologist 
with local interest is at times puzzled how much of it to assign to Juaneno 
and how much to Gabrielino sources. ] 

BourkE, J. G. Notes on the cosmogony and theogony of the Mojave Indians. 
Journ. Amer. Folk-lore, vol. 0, pp. 169-189, 1889. 

[Excellent material somewhat confused. ] 

Bowers, STEPHEN. Santa Rosa Island. Rept. Smithson. Inst. for 1877, 
pp. 316-3820, Washington, 1878. 
Brinton, DANIEL G. The American Race. New York, 1891. 


Browne, J. Ross. The Indian reservations of California. Harper’s Maga- 
zine, August, 1861. Reprinted in Beach, Indian Miscellany, pp. 303— 


322, Albany, 1877. 
[Vigorous and to the point, but overdrawn.] 


946 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 78 


47. BUCHANAN, R. C. Number, characteristics, etc., of the Indians of Cali- 
fornia, Oregon, and Washington. H. R. Ex. Doc. No. 76 (Serial no. 
906), 34th Cong., 3d sess., Washington, 1857. 

48. Burns, L. M. Digger Indian legends. Land of Sunshine, vol. x1v, pp. 180—- 
134, 2238-226, 310-314, 397-402, 1901. 

[Shasta coyote tales. ] 

49. BUSCHMANN, J. Die Sprachen Kizh und Netela von Neu Californien. 
Abhandlungen der Ko6niglichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Ber- 
lin, 1855, pp. 499-531, 1856. 


[Gabrielino and Juanefno. ] 





50. Die Spuren der Aztekischen Sprache im nérdlichen Mexico und 
hdheren amerikanischen Norden. Ibid., 1854, 2d suppl. vol., pp. 1-819, 


1859. 


[A monumentally painstaking analysis of the linguistic materials available 
at the time from northern Mexico, the Southwest, and California.] 


51. CABALLERIA [Y COLLELL, JUAN]. History of the city of Santa Barbara. 
Santa Barbara, 1892. 
[Contains a chapter on a Chumash dialect. ] 
52. CABALLERIA, JUAN. History of San Bernardino valley. San Bernardino, 
1902. 
CABRILLO, JUAN RopriguEz. See Ferrel, B. 
53. Carr, Lucien. Measurements of crania from California. Twelfth Ann. 
Rept. Peabody Museum, pp. 497-505, 1880. 
[Skulls from the Santa Barbara region. ] 


54. Observations on the crania from the Santa Barbara Islands. 


Rept. U. S. Geog. Sury. west of the 100th Meridian [Wheeler Sury. 
Rept.], vol. vir, Archaeology, pp. 277-292, Washington, 1879. 

5). CHAMISSO, ADELBERT VON. Reise um die Welt, 1815-1818. Hildburg- © 
hausen, 1869. 

56. CHAPMAN, C. E., ed. Expedition on the Sacramento and San Joaquin 





rivers in 1817. Diary of Fray Narciso..Duran. Univ. Cal., Acad. 
Pacific Coast History, Publs., vol. 1, no. 5, pp. [829]—[349], 1911. 

57. Cuesnut, V. K. Plants used by the Indians of Mendocino county, Cali- 
fornia. Cont. U. S. National Herbarium, vol. vir, no. 3, Washing- 
ton, 1902. 

58. CHEvER, EH. HE. The Indians of California. Amer. Naturalist, vol. Iv, pp. 
129-148, 1870. 

[A pioneer’s notes on the Maidu.] 

59. CHoris, L. Voyage pittoresque autour du Monde. Paris, 1822. (1In- 
cludes sections by Cuvier, Chamisso, Gall.) 

60. CLaRK, GALEN. Indians of the Yosemite Valley and vicinity, their his- 
tory, customs, and traditions. Yosemite, 1904. 

61. CLAVIGERO, F. X. Storia della California. Vols. 1-11. Venice, 1789. Span- 


s 


ish translation, Historia de la Antigua 6 Baja California. Mexico, 
1852. 
CostTansé Micurt. See Hemert-Engert, Adolph van, and Teggart, Fred- 
erick J. 
62. Cougs, Exttiort, ed. On the trail of a Spanish pioneer. The diary and 
itinerary of Francisco Garcés, 1775-76. Vols. 1-11. New York, 1900. 
[A well translated and splendidly annotated version of the diary of an in- 
trepid explorer and priest, rich in data of the greatest value. The ethnological 
comments are by F. W. Hodge.] 


KROEBER | 


63. 


ot, —— 


65. 


66. 


67. 


HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 947 


CoviLLE, FrepertcK V. Notes on the plants used by the Klamath Indians 


of Oregon. Cont. U. S. Nat. Herbarium, vol. v, no. 2, Washington, 1897. 


The Panamint Indians of California. Amer. Anthrop., vol. V, 


pp. 351-861, 1892. 
[Brief but good, and there is little else on these people. ] 


———. _Wokas, a primitive food of the Klamath Indians. Rept. U. S. 


Nat. Mus. for 1902, pp. 727-739, Washington, 1904. 
[Model scientific report—c lear, concise, exhaustive, and interesting. It shows 
the possibilities that lie in intelligent ethno-botanical studies. ] 


Cunin, Stewart. Games of the North American Indians. Twenty-fourth 


Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., Washington, 1907. 
[California is well represented in this exhaustive monograph. ] 


CurTIN, JEREMIAH. Achomawi myths. Edited by Roland B, Dixon. 


Journ. Amer. Folk-lere, vol. xxl, pp. 283-287, 1909. 


Creation myths of primitive America. Boston, 1898. 
[9 Wintun and 13 Yana myths, told at length with the stylistic peculiarities 
and comments characteristic of the author. ] 


Myths of the Modocs. Boston, 1912. 


. Datton, O. M. Notes on an ethnographical collection. Intern. Achiv fiir 


Ethnog., B. x, pp. 225-245, 1897. 


Davis, Epwarp H. The Diegueho ceremony of the death images. Contr. 


Mus. Am. Indian Heye Found., vol. v, no. 2, pp. 7-33, 1919. 


Early cremation ceremonies of the Luiseno and Diegueno Tadinge 
of Southern California. Indian Notes and Monographs, vol. vil, no. 
3, pp. 87-110, 1921. 


Dixon, Roranp B. Achomawi and Atsugewi tales. Journ. Amer. Folk- 


lore, vol. xxI, pp. 159-177, 1908. 


74. Basketry designs of the Maidu Indians of California. Amer. An- 
throp., n. s. vol. 11, pp. 266-2 276, 1900. 
75, —_——. Basketry designs of the Indians of Northern California. Bull. 
Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. xviI, pp. 1-32, 1902. 
7. ———. The Chimariko Indians and language. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. 
Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. v, pp. 2938-380, 1910. 
[The results of a study under taken just prior to the extinction of this tribe. ] 
PF Vee NS TIStIC relationships within | the Shasta-Achomawi stock. 
International Congress of Americanists, X Vth sess., vol. 1, pp. 255-263, 
Quebec, 1907. 
78, ———. Maidu: an illustrative sketch. Bull. 40, Bur. Amer. Ethn. 
(Handbook of American Indian Languages), pt. 1, pp. 683-734, Wash- 
ington, 1911. 
[A rather complete account of Maidu grammar. ] 
79, ———-. Maidu myths. Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. xvi, pp. 33-118, 
1902. 
[Perhaps the most generally interesting collection of native traditions ever 
made in California. ] 
30. ————.. . Maidu texts. Publs. Amer. Ethnol. Soc., vol. Iv, 1912, 
[The only considerable body of texts published in any Californian language 
except Athabasean, Yana, and Klamath-Modoc. ] 
S1.-——_——... The nythology of the Shasta- Eales Amer. Anthrop., n. S. 


vol. vu, pp. 607-612, 1905. 


948 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL. 78 


82. Dixon, Rotanp B. The Northern Maidu. Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. 
XVII, pp. 119-3846, 1905. 
[Easily the most comprehensive and valuable ethnological study of any one 
group of California Indians. } 
83. ———. Notes on the Achomawi and Atsugewi of northern California. 
Amer. Anthrop., n. Ss. vol. x, pp. 208—220, 1908. 
[Brief, but the best there is on these people.] 
84. ————. Outlines of Wintun grammar. Putnam Anniversary Volume, pp. 
461-476, New York, 1909. 
[All that is known of the structure of this important tongue. ] 


85. ————. The pronominal dual in the languages of California. Boas Anni- 
versary Volume, pp. 80-84, New York, 1906. 

86. ————. The Shasta. Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. xv, pp. 381-498, 
1907. 

[Second only to the author’s ‘‘ Northern Maidu ” in value.] 

87. ———. The Shasta-Achomawi: a new linguistic stock with four new 
dialects. Amer, Anthrop., n. s. vol. vit, pp. 213-217, 1905. 

88. ———. Shasta myths. Journ. Amer. Folk-lore, vol. xx11, pp. 8-37, 364- 
370, 1910. 

89. ————. Some coyote stories from the Maidu Indians of California. TIbid., 
vol. x1l1, pp. 267-270, 1900. 

90. ————. Some shamans of northern California. Ibid., vol. xv1, pp. 23-27, 
1904. 

91. ————. System and sequence in Maidu mythology. Ibid., vol. xvi, pp. 


32-36, 1903. 
92. Dixon, RoLtanp B., and Krorper, A. L. Linguistic families in California. 
Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol xvi, pp. 47-118, 1919. 


938. ———. The native languages of California. Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. v, 
pp. 1-26, 1903. 


[A classification, of stocks according to types. } 


94. ———_. New linguistic families in California. Ibid., n. s. vol. xv, pp. 
647-655, 1913. 

95. ————. Numerical systems of the languages of California. Ibid., n. s. vol. 
Ix, 663-690, 1907. 

96. ———. Relationship of the Indian languages of California. Science, n. s. 


vol. ‘xxxvil, p. 225,.1913; 


97. DorsEy, GEORGE A. Certain gambling games of the Klamath Indians. 
Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. 111, pp. 14-27, 1901. 


98. ———. Indians of the Southwest. 1903. 
[This exceedingly useful handbook, issued by tne Atchison, Topeka, and 
Santa Fe Railway System, contains notes on Mohave, Chemehuevi, Yuma, 
Yokuts, Mono, and Miwok on pp. 193-216. ] 
99. DorsEy, J. OWEN. The Gentile system of the Siletz tribes. Journ. Amer. 
Folk-lore, vol. 111, pp, 227-237, 1890. 
[The ‘‘ gentes’”’ are villages. The Californian Tolowa. are included. ] 
DRAKE, Str Francis. See Early English Voyages; and Barrett, S. A., the 
ethno-geography of the Pomo and neighboring Indians. 


100, DuBots, Constance Gopparp. Dieguefio mortuary ollas. Amer. Anthrop., 
n. Ss. vol. Ix, pp. 484486, 1907. 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 949 


101. DuBots, CoNSTANCE GODDARD. Dieguefo myths and their connections with 
the Mohave. International Congress of Americanists, X Vth sess., 1906, 
vol. 0, pp. 129-134, Quebec, 1907. 


102. —_—-. The mythology of the Dieguenos. Jour. Amer. Folk-lore, 
vol. xiv, pp. 181-185, 1901. 


103. ————. The mythology of the Dieguenos. International Congress of 
Americanists, XI1Ith sess., New York, 1902, pp. 101-106, 1905. 


104. ————._ Mythology of the Mission Indians. Journ. Amer. Folk-lore, vol. 
XVII, pp. 185-188, 1904. 


105, ————. The religion of the Luiseno and Dieguefio Indians of Southern 
California. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. viti, 
pp. 69-186, 1908. 


fAn unusually sympathetic portrayal of a remarkable native religion. ] 
106. ————. Religious ceremonies and myths of the Mission Indians. Amer. 
Anthrop., n. s. vol. vil, pp. 620-629, 1905. 


107. ————. The story of the Chaup: a myth of the Dieguefios. Journ. Amer. 
Folk-lore, vol. xvi, pp. 217-242, 1904. 
[ Valuable. | 


108. —_———. Two types or styles of Diegueno religious dancing. International 
Congress of Americanists, X Vth sess., 1906, vol. 11, pp. 185-1388, Quebec, 
1907. 


109. Durtor pE Morras, Eucinr. Exploration du Territoire de Oregon, des 
Californies, et de la Mer Vermeille. Vols. I-11. Paris, 1844. 


Duran, Narciso. See Chapman, C. EK. 


110. Durcuer, B. H. Pifion gathering among the Panamint Indians. Amer. 
Anthrop., vol. v1, pp. 877-880, 1893. 


111. Barty ENGLISH VOYAGES TO THE PACIFIC COAST OF AMERICA. (From their 
own, and contemporary English, accounts. ) Sir Francis Drake.—III. 
Out West, vol. xvu1, no. 1, pp. 73-80, Jan. 1903. See also Barrett, S. A. 
[Perhaps the most readily accessible republication of the passages descriptive 
of native life in the principal account of Drake’s landing in Nova Albion. | 
112. Earty WestTerN HISTORY. From documents never before published in 
English. Diary of Junipero Serra ; Loreto to San Diego, March 28— 
June 30. 1769. .Out West, vol. xv1, pp. 293-296, 399-406, 513-518, 635- 
642, 1902; vol. xvi1, pp. 69-76, 1902. 
[Mostly Baja California, but there is some mention of the people later called 
Diegueno. | 
118. Ersen, Gustav. An Account of the Indians of the Santa Barbara Islands 
in California. Sitzungsberichte der K6niglichen 30ehmischen Gesell- 
schaft der Wissenschaften, 11 Klasse, Prag, 1904. 
[A compilation done with intelligence. | 
114. Exziorr, W. W., anp Company, publishers, History of Humboldt County, 
California. San Francisco, 1881. 
115. Exory, W. H. Notes of a military reconnaissance from Fort Leavenworth 
in Missouri to San Diego in California, made in 1846-47. Washington, 
1848. 
116. ————. United States and Mexican Boundary Survey. Report. Vol. 1. 
Washington, 1857. (H. R. Ex. Doc. 135, 34th Cong., 1st sess. ) 


950 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [RULDL. 78 


117. ENGELHARDT, ZepuHRyIN. Franciscans in California. Harbor Springs, 
Michigan, 1897. 
[A considerable number of facts about the Indians, mostly from sources 
otherwise accessible with difficulty, are included in this story of the missions 
and missionaries. } 
418. ———-. The missions and missionaries of California. Vols. I-1tv. San 
Francisco, 1908-1914. 
[An important history, containing many passages of ethnological moment. ] 
Ewsank, THomas. See Whipple, A. W., Ewbank and Turner. 
Facts, Pepro. See Bolton, H. H.; Priestley, H. IL.; Ternaux-Compans, 
Henri. 
119. Farranp, Livrincston. Notes on the Alsea Indians of Oregon, Amer. 
Anthrop., n. s. vol. 11, pp. 239-247, 1901. 





[Of service for comparisons with the tribes of northwestern California. ] « 
120. ————. Shasta and Athapascan myths from Oregon. Edited by L. J. 


Frachtenberg. Journ. Amer. Folk-lore, vol. xxvim, pp. 207-242, 1915. 
Fassin, A. G. See Tassin. 


121. Fayr, Paur-Lovuis. Notes on the Southern Maidu. Univ. Cal. Publs. 
Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. xx, no. 3 (in press, 1923). 


122. Ferret, B. Relation or diary of the voyage which Rodriguez Cabrillo 
made. Translation with notes by H. W. Henshaw. Rept. U. S. Geog. 
Surv. west of the 100th Meridian [Wheeler Surv. Rept.], vol. vm, 
Archaeology, pp. 293-314, Washington, 1879. Transl. in Bolton, 
Spanish exploration in the Southwest, pp. 18-39, New York, 1916. 
Font, Pepro. See Teggert, Frederick J., ed. 


123. Forspes, ALEXANDER. A history of lower and upper California. London, 
: 1839. 


124. FREDERICK, M. C. Some Indian paintings. Land of Sunshine, vol. xv, 
no. 4, pp. 223-227, 1901. 
[Pictographs near Santa Barbara. ] 
125. FREELAND, L. S. Pomo doctors and poisoners. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. 
Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. xx, no 4 (in press, 1923). 


126. Fremont, J. ©. The exploring expedition to the Rocky Mountains, 
Oregon and California. Auburn and Buffalo, 1854. 


127. ————. Geographical memoir upon Upper California. Washington, 1848. 


128. ————. Report of an exploring expedition to Oregon and northern Cali- 
fornia. Washington, 1845. 


129. FrIeDERIcI, GEorG. Die Schiffahrt der Indianer. Stuttgart, 1907. 


130. Fry, WINIFRED S. Humboldt Indians. Out West, vol. xxi, pp. 503-514, 
1904. 


131. GALIANO, D. A. Relacion del viage hecho por las goletas Sutil y Mexicana. 
Madrid, 1802. 


1382. GALLATIN, ALBERT. Hale’s Indians of Northwest America. Trans. Amer. 
Ethn. Soc., vol. 11, pp. xxiii-clxxxviii, 1-180, New York, 1848. 
[Includes Californian groups.] 
1388. ————. A synopsis of the Indian tribes in North America. Trans. Amer, 
Antiq. Soc. (Archaeologia Americana), vol. 11, 1836. 
Garcks, FRancisco. See Coues, Elliott, ed. 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 951 


1384. GarscHet, Aubert S. Analytical report upon Indian dialects spoken in 


southern California. U. S. Geog. Surv. west of the 100th Meridian, Ann. 
Rept. [of the Chief of Engineers] for 1876, Appendix JJ, pp. 550-563, 
Washington, 1876. 


uy Classification into seven linguistic stocks of western Indian 
dialects contained in forty vocabularies. Rept. U. S. Geog. Surv. 
west of the 100th Meridian [Wheeler Sury. Rept.], vol. vu, Archae- 
ology, pp. 408-485, 1879. 

126. Indian languages of the Pacific states and territories. Magazine 
of Amer. Hist., March, 1877. 

137 The Klamath Indians of southwestern Oregon. Cont. N. Amer. 
Ethnol., vol. u, pts. 1 and 2, Washington, 1890. 

[An enormous and carefully done monograph, mainly texts, grammar, and 
dictionary, also an ethnographic sketch. The Modoc are included with the 
Klamath. ] 

138. Songs of the Modoe Indians. Amer. Anthrop., vol. vil, pp. 26-31, 
1894. 

139. Specimen of the Chfiiméto language. American Antiquarian, vol. 
Vv, pp. 71-738, 178-180, 1883. 

[Sketch of the Southern Miwok dialect. ] 

140. Der Yuma-Sprachstamm. Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie, B. Lx, pp. 
341-350, 366-418, 1877; B. xv, pp: 123-147, 18838; B. xvi, pp. 97-122, 
1886. 

[Scholarly work on crude materials. The contribution should by now be 
long out of date, but investigations of this stock have been neglected, and the 
work remains of value.] 

141. . Zwoblf Sprachen aus dem: Siidwesten Nord-Amerikas. Weimar, 
1876. 

142. Gisps, Grorce. Journal of the Expedition of Colonel Redick M’Kee ... 
through Northwestern California ... in 1851. In Schoolcraft, Indian 
Tribes, vol. 1, pp. 99-177, Phila., 1853. 

[A valuable report.] 

143. Observations on some of the Indian dialects of Northern Cali- 
fornia. Ibid., pp. 420-423. Continued under the title “ Vocabularies of 
Indian languages in Northwest California.” Ibid., pp. 428-445. 

144. Tribes of western Washington and northwestern Oregon. Cont. 
N. Amer. Ethnol., vol. 1, pp. 157-241, Washington, 1877. 

[Contains some allusions to California and is important for comparisons 
of the Indians of California with those farther north.] 

145. Girvorp, Epwarp WINsLow. California kinship terminologies. Univ. Cal. 


a 


Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. xv1tl, pp. 1-285, 1922. 
[The fullest study of the kind attempted for any area. } 
Clans and moieties in Southern California. Ibid., vol. xtIv, pp. 
155-219, 1918. 
Composition of California shellmounds.  Ibid., vol. xu, pp. 1-29, 
1916. 
[Bears on questions of fauna, topographic change, age, etc. ] 
Dichotomous social organization in south central California. 
Ibid., vol. x1, pp. 291-296, 1916. ; 
Miwok moieties. Ibid., vol. x11, pp. 189-194, 1916. 


[A thorough account of the organization of society. ] 


Miwok myths. Ibid., vol. XI, pp. 283-338, 1917, 


952 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


151. Girrorp, Epwarp Winstow. Pomo lands on Clear Lake. Ibid., vol. xx, 
no. 5 (in press, 1923). 

152. ————. Tiibatulabal and Kawaiisu kinship terms. Ibid., vol.. x11, pp. 
219-248, 1917. 

153. GoppARD, PLINY EARLE. Athapascan (Hupa). Bull. 40, Bur. Amer. Ethn. 
(Hankbook of American Indian Languages), pt. 1, pp. 85-158, Wash- 
ington, 1911. 


























154. - Chilula texts. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., 
vol. x, pp. 289-3879, 1914. 

155. ————. Elements of the Kato language. Ibid., vol. x1, pp. 1-176, 1912. 

156. ————. Habitat of the Wailaki. Ibid., vol. xx, no. 6 (in press, 1923). 

IG Hupa texts. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 89-868, 1904. 

[The first of a valuable series of collections of texts from the Athabascan 
languages of California by this author. ] 

158. The Kato Pomo not Pomo. Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. v, pp. 
375-876, 1903. 

159. Kato texts. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. 
V, pp. 69-238, 1909. 

160 Lassik tales. Journ. Amer. Folk-lore, vol. xtx, pp. 1383-140, 1906. 

161 Life and culture of the Hupa. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. 
and Ethnol., vol. I, pp. 1-88, 1903. 

[The best written general monograph on a California tribe, and the first co- 
herent picture of the culture of northwestern California. The only defect of the 
work is its brevity. ] 

162. The morphology of the Hupa language. Ibid., vol tz, 1905. 

[An exhaustive grammar. ] 

163. ————. Notes on the Chilula Indians of northwestern California. Ibid., 
vol. x, pp. 265-288, 1914. 

[Sums up what is known.] 

164. The phonology of the Hupa language. Ibid., vol. v, pp. 1-20, 
1907. 
165. . Wayside shrines in northwestern California. Amer. Anthrop., 





n, s., vol., xv, pp. 702-703, 1913. 
166. HALDEMAN, S. 8S. Beads. Rept. U. S. Geog. Surv. west of the 100th me- 
ridian [Wheeler Surv. Rept.], vol. vir, Archaeology, pp. 263-271, 1879. 
167. Hare, Horatio. Ethnology and philology. U.S. Exploring Expedition dur- 
ing the years 1888-1842, under the command of Charles Wilkes, U.S. N. 
Vol: vi. Phila.; 1846. 
168. Hatt, SHARtor M. The burning of a Mojave chief. Out West, vol. xvii, 
pp. 60-65, 19083. 
169. HarpAcrE, EMMA ©. Eighteen years alone. Scribner’s Monthly, pp. 657— 
664, September, 1880. 
[The story of the lone woman of San Nicolas Island, the last of her people. ] 
170. HARRINGTON, JOHN PEABODY. A Yuma account of origins. Journ. Amer. 
Folk-lore, vol. xxi, pp. 324-348, 1908. 
[An important scholarly presentation. ] 
HELMERSEN, G. VON. See Baer, K. E. von, and Helmersen. 
171. HEMERT—ENGERT, ADOLPH VAN, and TEGGART, FREDERICK J., eds. The nar- 
rative of the Portol&é expedition of 1769-1770, by Miguel Costanso. 
Univ. Cal. Acad. Pac. Coast Hist., Publs. vol. 1, no. 4, pp. [91]-[159], 
1910, 


KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 953 


172. 


179. 


180. 


181. 


182. 


183. 


184. 


185. 


186. 


187. 


188. 


189. 





Henry, THomaAs J. California Indians. In Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, vol. 
v1, Table xxxv, pp. 715-718, Phila., 1857. 


. HensHAw, H. W. The aboriginal relics called “ Sinkers” or “ Plummets.” 


Amer. Journ. Archaeol., vol. 1, pp. 105-114, 1885. 





A new linguistic family in California. Amer. Anthrop., vol. 11, 
pp. 45-49, 1890. 

[ Esselen. ] 
Perforated stones from California. Bull. 2, Bur. Amer. Ethn., 
Washington, 1887. 


[Concise, definite, and convincing. ] 





. Heye, Georce G. Certain aboriginal pottery from Southern California. 


Indian Notes and Monographs, vol. vir, no. 1, pp. [1]—[46]. 1919. 





Certain artifacts from San Miguel Island, California. Ibid., no. 
4, pp. [1]-[211]. 1921. 


. History oF MENDOCINO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA. [Lyman L. Palmer, histo- 


rian. Sometimes cited as by Alley Bowen and Company, the pub- 
lishers.] San Francisco, 1880. 

History oF NAPA AND LAKE COUNTIES, CALIFORNIA. [Lyman L. Palmer, 
historian. Sometimes cited under Slocum, Bowen and Company, the 
publishers.] San Francisco, 1880. 

Hirrett, THEODORE H. History of California. Vols. r-tv. San Francisco, 
1885-1897. 

Hopcer, F. W., ed. Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico. Bull. 
30, Bur. Amer. Ethn., pts. 1-2, Washington, 1907-1910. 

HopgGE, F. W. See Coues, Elliott, ed. 

HorrMan, W. T. Hugo Reid’s account of the Indians of Los Angeles 
county, California. Bull. Essex Institute, vol. xvi, 1885. [See Reid, 
Hugo. | 





Miscellaneous ethnographic observations on Indians inhabiting 
Nevada, California, and Arizona. Tenth Ann, Rept. U. 8S. Geol. and 
Geog. Surv. [Hayden Survey], Washington, 1878. 





Remarks on aboriginal art in California and Queen Charlotte’s 
Island. Proce. Davenport Acad. Nat. Sci., vol. Iv, pp. 105-122, 1884. 

[ Petroglyphs. ] 

Houper, C. F. The ancient islanders of California. Pop. Sci. Mo., pp. 
658-662, March, 1896. 

Hotmes, WittiAmM H. Anthropological studies in California. Rept. U. S. 
Nat. Mus. for 1900, pp. 155-188, Washington, 1902. 

[A traveler’s observations on various groups of Indians from the Maidu to 
the Dieguefio, incidental to studies of the antiquity of man, done with a master 
hand. The paper is as exact as it is readable. ] 

Preliminary revision of the evidence relating to auriferous gravel 
man in California. Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. 1, pp. 107-121, 614-645, 
1899. Reprinted in Smithsonian Report for 1899, pp. 419-472, Wash- 


ington, 1901. 
[The findings are negative, but in the best manner of this lucid and brilliant 
master. ] 
Hooper, Lucire. The Cahuilla Indians. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. 


and Ethnol., vol. xvi, pp. 315-880, 1920. 


HoucH, WAtrer. Primitive American armor. Rept. U. S. Nat. Mus. for 
1893, pp. 625-651, Washington, 1895. 


954 BUREAU. OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


190. Hrpnicka, ALES. Contribution to the physical anthropology of Cali- 
fornia. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. Iv, pp. 
49-64, 1906. 
[A careful study of skulls from central California.] 
Skeletal remains suggesting or attributed to early man in North 
America. Bull. 38, Bur. Amer. Ethn., Washington, 1907. 
192. . Stature of Indians of the Southwest and of northern Mexico. 
Putnam Anniversary Volume, pp. 405-426, New York, 1909. 
[Includes the lower Colorado tribes. ] 
193. Hupson, J. W. An Indian myth of the San Joaquin Basin. Journ. Amer. 
Folk-lore, vol. xv, pp. 104-106, 1902. 











194, Pomo basket makers. Overland Monthly, 2d ser., vol. xxI, pp. 
561-578, 1893. : 
195. Pomo wampum makers. Ibid., vol. xxx, pp. 101-108, 1897. 





196. Humpsouptr, F. H. ALEXANDER DE. Essai politique sur le Royaume de la 
Nouvelle-Espagne. Vols. 1-v,. Paris, 1811. Translated by John Black, 
vols. I-Iv, London, 1811. 

197. INDIAN AFFAIRS (U. S.). Office of Indian Affairs (War Department). 
Reports, 1825-1848. Report of the Commissioner (Department of the 
Interior), 1849-1917. 

198. JACKSON, HELEN M. H., and KINNEY, ABBotT. Report on the condition and 
needs of the Mission Indians of California. Washington, 1883. 

199. JAMES, GEORGE WHARTON. Indian basketry. New York, 1904. 

The legend of Tauquitch and Algoot. Journ. Amer. Folk-lore, 

vol. xvi, pp. 153-159, 19038. : 

A Saboba origin-myth. Journ. Amer. Folk-lore, vol. xv, pp. 
36-39, 1902. . 

202. JOHNSTON, ADAM. The California Indians—their manners, customs, and 

bistory. In Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, vol. Iv, pp. 221-226, Phila., 1854. 








203. JOHNS[T]ON, ADAM. Indian tribes, or bands, of the Sacramento Valley, 
California. In Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, vol. v1, Table xxix, p. 710, 
Phila., 1857. 

Languages of California. Ibid., vol. Iv, pp. 406-415, Phila., 1854. 

205. JOHNSTON, ADAM. [Report on the Indians of the Sacramento river and 
the Sierra Nevada.] Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 
1850, pp. 122-125. (Sen. Ex. Docs. vol. 1, 31st Cong., 2d sess.) 

206. Jones, PHi~iep Mitts. Mound Excavations near Stockton. Univ. Cal. 
Pub. Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. xx, no. 7 (in press, 1923). 

207. KeLSEY, C. EH. Report of the Special Agent for California Indians. Car- 
lisle, Pa., 1906. 

208. Kern, ©. M. Indian customs of California. In Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, 
vol. v, pp. 649-650, Phila., 1855. 

KINNEY, ABBoT. See Jackson, Helen M. H., and Kinney. 





Kino, FATHER. See Bolton, H. EH. 
KostTroMitonow. See Baer, K. E. von. 


209. KorzeBur, OTTO VON. Voyage of discovery into the South Sea and Behring’s 
Strait, 1815-1818. Translated by H. F. Lloyd. Vols. 1-11. London, 
1821, 


aah 


KROBBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 955 


210, Krause, Fritz. Die kultur der kalifornischen Indianer in ihrer bedeutung 
fiir die ethnologie und die nordamerikanische yolkerkunde. Institut fiir 
Vilkerkunde, erste Reihe, Bd. 4, pp. 1-98, Leipzig, 1921. 

{A scholarly interpretation. ] 

911. Krorper, A. L. The anthropology of California. Science, n. Ss. vol. XXVI, 

pp. 281-290, 1908. 


912. —__—. The archaeology of California, Putnam Anniversary Volume, 
pp. 1-42, New York, 1909. 
212. —_———. Basket designs of the Indians of northwestern California. Univ. 


Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. 1, pp. 104-164, 1905. 

Basket designs of the Mission Indians of California. Anthrop. 
Pap. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. Xx, pp. 147-188, 1922. 

915. ———. At the bedrock of history. Sunset [Magazine], vol. xxv, pp. 255- 
260, 1910. 


[An archeological discovery in the San Joaquin valley.] 


AA a 





916. —_——. California basketry and the Pomo. Amer. Anthrop., 0, s:, vol x1, 
pp. 283-249, 1909. 

217. ——_—._ California culture provinces. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. 
and Ethnol., vol. xvi, pp. 151-169, 1920. 

218. ———. California kinship systems. Ibid., vol. x1, pp. 339-396, 1917. 

219. ———. California place names of Indian origin. Ibid., vol. XII, pp. 
31-69, 1916. 

990, ————. The Chumash and Costanoan languages. Tbid:: yok ax, pp. 297 
Jari bea REED 

991, ————. The coast Yuki of California. Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. V, pp. 
729-730, 1903. 

999 The dialectic divisions of the Moquelumnan family. Ibid., n 
vol. vu, pp. 652-663, 1906. 

999. —__—._ Elements of culture in native California. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. 
Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. xIII, pp. < 959-828, 1922. 

294. —_———. Ethnography of the Cahuilla Indians. Ibid., vol. vim, pp. 29-68, 
1908. 

995. ———-. On the evidences of the occupation of certain regions by the 
Miwok Indians. Ibid., vol. vi, pp. 369-380, 1908. 

99¢, ———. A Ghost dance in California. Journ. Amer. Folk-lore, vol. XVII, 
pp. 32-35, 1904. 

297, _—_—_. The history of native culture in California. Univ. Cal. Publs. 


Amer, Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. xx, no. 8 (in press, 1925). 


998 ———._ Indian myths from south central California. Ibid., vol. Iv, pp. 
167—250, 1907. 


[Mainly Yokuts, but also Miwok and Costanoan tales, and comparisons. ] 


999, _—_——._ Ishi, the last aborigine. World’s Work, pp. 304-308, July, 1912. 
990, _——_—. The languages’of the coast of California north of San F rancisco. 


Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol, and Ethnol., vol. 1x, pp. 273-485, 1911. 
[Miwok, Pomo, Yuki, Wiyot, Yurok, Karok. ] 
991, _—__—._ The languages of the coast of California south of San Francise O. 


Ibid., vol. m1, pp. 29-80, 1904. 
[Chumash, Salinan, Esselen, Costanoan. ] 


956 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuLL. 78 


232. Krorser, A. L. A Mission record of the California Indians. Ibid., vol. vi1t, 
pp. 1-27, 1908. 





















































kes Notes on Shoshonean dialects of southern California. TIbid., vol. 
VIII, pp. 235-269, 1909. 
234. . Origin tradition of the Chemehuevi Indians. Journ. Amer. Folk- 
lore, vol. xxI, pp. 240-242, 1908. 
Dos . Phonetic constituents of the native languages of California. Univ. 
Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. x, pp. 1-12, 1911. 
236. Phonetic elements of the Mohave language. Ibid., pp. 45-96. 
21s . Preliminary sketch of the Mohave Indians, Amer. Anthrop., n. s. 
vol. Iv, pp. 276-285, 1902. 
238. The religion of the Indians of California. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. 
Archaeol. and Hthnol., vol. rv, pp. 319-856, 1907. 
Poo: Serian, Tequistlatecan, and Hokan. Ibid., vol. x1, pp. 279-290, 
1915. Fe 
240. Shoshonean dialects of California. Ibid., vol. Iv, pp. 65-166, 1907. . 
[Contains considerable ethno-geography and a tribal classification. ] 
241, Two myths of the Mission Indians of California. Journ. Amer. 
Folk-lore, vol. x1x, pp. 809-821, 1906. 
242 Types of Indian culture in California. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. 
Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. 1, pp. 81-108, 1904. 
245; The Washo language of east central California and Nevada. 
Tbid.,- vol. tv, pp. 251-317, 1907. 
244 Wishosk myths. Journ. Amer. Folk-lore, vol. xvi, pp. 85-107, 
1905. 
[ Wiyot. ] 
245 Wiyot folk-lore. Ibid., vol. xx1, pp. 37-89, 1908. 
246. The Yokuts and Yuki languages. Boas Anniversary Volume, pp. f 
64-79, New York, 1906. 
247. The Yokuts language of south central California. Univ. Cal. 
Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. 11, pp. 165-877, 1907. 
[Contains a classification of tribes. ] 
248. Yokuts names. Journ. Amer. Folk-lore, vol. xtx, pp. 142-148, 1906. 
249 Yuman tribes of the Lower Colorado. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. 





Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. xvi, pp. 475-485, 1920. 
See Dixon, Roland B., and Kroeber. 





250. KROEBER, HENRIETTE ROTHSCHILD. Wappo myths. Journ. Amer. Folk-lore, 
vol. xxI, pp. 321-823, 1908. 

251. LANGSDORFF, G. H. von. Voyages and travels, 1803-1807. Vols. 1-11. Lon- 
don, 1818-14. Translation of: Bemerkungen auf einer Reise um die 
Welt. Frankfurt, 1812. 

252. LATHAM, R. G. On the languages of New California. Proc. Philol. Soe. 
London, 1852-53, vol. vi, pp. 72-86, London, 1854. 








2D On the languages of northern, western, and central America. 
Trans. Philol. Soc. London, 1856, pp. 57-118, London, 1857. 
254. Opuscula. Essays chiefly philological and ethnographical. Lon- 


don, 1860. 


ROMEER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA Q57 


255. Lewts, ALBERT Buetyi. Tribes of the Columbia valley and the coast of 
Washington and Oregon. Memoirs of the Amer. Anthrop. Asso., vol. I, 
pt. 2, pp. 147-209, 1906. 

[Important for the study of the relations of the cultures of California to 
those of the north.] 

256. LOEFFELHOLZ, K. von. Die Zoreisch-Indianer der Trinidad-Bai (Cali- 
fornien). Mitth. Anthrop. Ges. Wien, vol. xxuI, pp. 101-123, 1893. 

[Yurok of Tsurau in 1857.] 

2°57. Loew, Oscar. Notes upon the ethnology of southern California and adja- 
cent regions. U. S. Geog. Sury. of Terr. west of the 100th Meridian, 
Ann. Rept. [Chief of Engineers] for 1876, Appendix JJ, Washington, 
1876. 

258. Loup, LLEWELLYN L. Ethnogeography and archaeology of the Wiyot ter- 
ritory. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and TthNoL., VOU. KL. DLs 
221-486, 1918. 

[The first detailed report of archaeological exploration in the north of Cali- 
fornia. | 

959. Lowtr, Roserr H. Culture connection of California and Plateau Sho- 
shonean tribes. Ibid., vol. xx, no. 9 (in press, 1925). 

260. LuMMIs, CuAs. F. The exiles of Cupa. Out West, vol. xvI, pp. 465-479 ; 
fcontinued under the title of] Two days at Mesa Grande, pp. 602-612, 
1902. 


261. Lyon, C. How the Indians made stone arrow-heads. Historical Maga- 
zine, vol. 11, p. 214, 1859. 


ho 
OD 
bo 


. Mattery, Garrick. Pictographs of the North American Indians. Fourth 
Rept. Bur. Ethn., pp. 8-256, Washington, 1886. 
[Pp. 30-33 relate to California. ] 
263. —_—_——. Picture writing of the American Indians. Tenth Rept. Bur. 
Ethn., Washington, 1895. 
[There are some California data.] 
964. McKrr, Repick. California Coast Tribes north of San Francisco, 1851. 
In Schooleraft, Indian Tribes, vol. v1, Table xxx, p. 711, Phila., 1857. 





26D. — Report of expedition leaving Sonoma AUSUST OStLSol=s 7 10 the 
Klamath. Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 4 (Serial no. 688), 33d Cong., Special 
sess., Washington, 1853. 
See M’Kee, Redick. 
266. McKrern, W. C. Functional families of the Patwin. Univ. Cal. Publs. 
Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. x11, pp. 235-258, 1922. 
967, +—_., Patwin houses. ~Ibid:, vol. xx, no: 10 (in press, 1923). 
McLean, JoHn J. See Rau. Charles. 
2968. Mason, J. ALDEN. The ethnology of the Salinan Indians, Univ. Cal. 
Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. x, pp. 97-240, 1912. 
[A careful comparative study of the broken data available on this group. | 


969, ————. The language of the Salinan Indians. Tbid., vol. xtv, pp. 1-154, 
1918. 
970, ——_—-. The Mutsun dialect of Costanoan, based on the vocabulary of 


[Arroyo] De la Cuesta. Ibid., vol. x1, pp. 399-472, 1916. 
{The author has drawn a grammar and classified list of stems from a dis- 
ordered phrase-book. } 


958 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


271. Mason, Otis T. Aboriginal American basketry. Rept. U. 8. Nat. Mus. 
for 1902, pp. 171-548, Washington, 1904. 

[The classic work on the subject, beautifully illustrated. California re- 
ceives its due share of treatment. ] 

272. —_—. Cradles of the American aborigines. Rept. U. S. Nat. Mus. for 
1897, pp. 161-212, Washington, 1889. 

[Pp. 178-184 refer to California. } 

273. ———. The Ray collection from Hupa Reservation. Ann. Rept. Smith- 
sonian Institution for 1886, pt. 1, pp. 205-239, Washington, 1889. 

[The first accurate description of utensils typical of the culture of north- 
western California. A few implements from Round Valley and northeastern 
California have got mixed in: Figures 20-25, 30-31, 35, 38-40, 56, 61-65, 
68-69, 111—114.] 

974, + The throwing-stick in California. “ Amer. Anthrop.,) vol? v,0p-300, 
1892. 


275. Matrrcka, H. Ueber Schiidel und Skelette von Santa Rosa _ [Island]. 
Sitzungsberichte der K6niglichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 
Jahrgang 1904, pp. 1-121, Prag, 1905. 

[An exhaustive anthropometric report on new material. ] 
MAURELLE, ANTONIO. See Barrington, Daines, 


276. MENEFEE, C. A. Historical and descriptive sketch book of Napa, Sonoma, 
Lake, and Mendocino. Napa City, 1873. 


277. MrrepitH, H. C. Archaeology of California: Central and Northern Cali- 
fornia. In Moorehead, W. K., Prehistoric implements, Section ix, pp. 
258-294, Cincinnati, [1900]. 


278. Merriam, C. Hart. The dawn of the world: myths and weird tales told 
by the Mewan Indians of California. Cleveland, 1910. 

[Prepared for the general public, but contains some priceless fragments of 
the traditions of perished groups. ] 

279. ————. Distribution and classification of the Mewan stock of California. 
Amer, Anthrop., n, s. vol. 1x, pp. 338-857, 1907. 

[Full of important data on the ethno-geography of the Miva and their 
valley neighbors. ] 

280. ————. Distribution of Indian tribes in the southern Sierra and adjacent 
parts of the San Joaquin valley, California. Science, n. s. vol. XIx, pp. 
912-917, 1914. 

[An attempt to conform the distribution of Indians to biological life zones. 
The ethnic data are valuable. ] 

281. ————. The Indian population of California. Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. 

vil, pp. 594-606, 1905. 


[The only serious attempt to approach this subject critically. ] 


282 ————. Indian village and camp sites in Yosemite Valley. Sierra Club 
Bulletin, vol. x, pp. 202-209, San Francisco, 1917. 

283. ————. Some little-known basket materials. Science, n. s. vol. xvi, p. 826, 
1903. 

284. ————. Totemism in California. Amer. Anthrop., n. 8s. vol. x, pp. 558-562, 
1908. 


285. MERRIAM, JOHN C. Recent cave exploration in California. Amer. 
Anthrop., n. Ss. vol. vil, pp. 221-228, 1906. . 

286. ———. Recent cave exploration in California. International Congress of 
Americanists, X Vth sess., 1906, vol. 11, pp. 189-146, Quebec, 1907. 





KROEBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 959 


287. MERRILL, RutTH EArt. Plants used in basketry by the California Indians. 
Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer, Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. xx, no. 18 (in press. 
1923). 
288. MicHELSON, TRUMAN H. Two alleged Algonquian languages of California. 
Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. xv1, pp. 861-867, 1914. 
[Wiyot and Yurok.] 
289. MILLER, JOAQUIN. Life amongst the Modocs. London, 1873. 


290. Minter, M. L. The so-called California Diggers. Popular Science Monthly, 
vol. L, pp. 201-214, 1897. 

Der Untergang der Maidu oder Diggerindianer in Kalifornien. 

Globus, B. LxxtI, pp. 111-118, Braunschweig, 1897. 


291. 





292. M’KEE, RepickK. Indian population of Northwestern California. In 
Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, vol. m1, p. 634, Phila., 1853. 

See McKee, Redick. 

293. MOLLHAUSEN, B.. Diary of a journey from the Mississippi to the coasts of 


the Pacific with a U. S. exploring expedition. Vols, 1-1. London, 
1860. 








Wanderungen durch die Prairien und Wiisten des westlichen 
Nord-amerika. Leipzig, 1860. 


295. Moonry, JAMES. The Ghost-dance religion. Fourteenth Rept. Bur. Ethn., 
pt. 2, Washington, 1896. 
[This monumental and unique work contains brief notices of the Northern 
Paiute and Washo.] 
Notes on the Cosumnes tribes of California. Amer. Anthrop., 
vol. 111, pp. 259-262, 1890. 
[Data from Col. Z. A. Rice, who ‘“ recollects’”’ stone axes, scaffold burial, 
boiling in clay-lined pits, and terrapin rattles worn on the knee!] 


MoorEHEAD, W. K. See Yates, L. G.; Meredith, H. C. 
MoureELLeE, F. A. See Maurelle. 


296. 





297. Newson, EH. W. The Panamint and Saline Valley Indians. Amer. An- 
throp., vol. Iv, pp. 371-372, 1891. 


298. Newtson, N. C. The Ellis Landing shellmound. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. 
Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. vil, pp. 857-426, 1910. 
[This and the monograph by Uhle are the only ‘scientific accounts dealing at 
any length with particular California shellmounds. ] 
299. ——-——. Flint working by Ishi. Holmes Anniversary Volume, pp. 397-402, 
Washington, 1916. 


Shellmounds of the San Francisco bay region. Univ. Cal. Publs. 
Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. vir, pp. 309-3856, 1909. 
[The classic paper on the subject. Its only fault is that it leaves off before 
discussing culture in detail.] 
801. O’Keerr, J. J. The buildings and churches of the Mission of Santa 
Barbara. Santa Barbara, 1886. 


802. OETTEKING, Bruno. Morphological and metrical variation in skulls from 
San Miguel Island, California. I, The sutura nasofrontalis. Indian 
Notes and Monographs, vol. vi, no. 2, pp. [47]—[85], 1920. 
ONATE. See Zarate-Salmeron. 


300. 





303.. PALMER, EpwArD. Plants used by the Indians of the United States. Amer. 
Nat., vol. x11, pp. 5938-606, 646-655, 1878. 
[The flora of southern California figures largely in this paper.] 


62 


3625°—25 





960 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BULL, 78 


304 


306. 


307. 


. PAtMER, FRANK M. Nucleus of Southwestern Museum. Out West, vol. 
XXII, pp. 23-84, 1905. 
[Partial description of the Palmer-Campbell collection of southern California 
archeology. ] 
. Patou, F. Noticias de la Nueva California. Vols. 1-Iv. San Francisco, 
1874. 





Noticias de las Californias. Documentos para la Historia de 
Mexico, ser. Iv, vols. vi—viI, 1857. 





-- Relacion Historica de la vida ...de... Fray Junipero 
Serra. Mexico, 1787. (Same, English trans. by Rev. J. Adam, San 
Francisco, 1884.) 


308. Pfrousse, J. F. G. DE LA. Voyage autour du monde. Vols. I-Iv. Paris, 


314. 


315 


Uta. 


. Popr, Saxton T. The medical history of Ishi. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. 
Archaeol, and Ethnol., vol. x11, pp. 175-213, 1920. 
Yahi archery. Ibid., pp. 108-152, 1918. 


PortotA, G. DE. See Teggart, F. J., ed.; Smith, Donald E., and Teggart. 





. Powetr, J. W. Indian linguistic families of America north of Mexico. 
Seventh Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., pp. 1-142, Washington, 1891. 


2. POWERS, STEPHEN. Aborigines of California: an Indo-Chinese study. At- 


lantic Monthly, pp. 3138-823, March, 1874. 
{A wild little speculation. ] 
Tribes of California [and variant titles]. Overland Monthly, Ist 
ser., VolS. VIII—xIv, passim, 1872-75. 
[The basis of the following. ] 
Tribes of California. Cont. N. Am. Ethn., vol. 111, Washington, 
1877. (Includes Appendix: Linguistics, by J. W. Powell.) 
[The value of this remarkable work has been discussed in the preface. It 
is fundamental. ] 
. PRIESTLEY, HERBERT I., ed. The Colorado River campaign, 1781-1782. 
Diary of Pedro Fagés. Univ. Cal., Acad. Pace. Coast Hist. Publs., vol. 
Tire no. 2, pp [133 af 2383 el Sis: 
. Purpy, Cart. Pomo Indian baskets and their makers. Out West, vol. xv, 
no. 6, pp. 488-449, December, 1901; vol. xv1, no. 1, pp. 8-19; no. 2, 


pp. 151-158; no. 8, pp. 262-278, 1902. 
[ Useful. } 





. Putnam, F. W. Evidence of the work of man on objects from Quaternary 
eaves in California. Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. vi, pp. 229-235, 1906. 

, and others. Reports upon archaeological and ethnological collec- 
tions from vicinity of Santa Barbara. Rept. U. S. Geog. Surv. west 
of the 100th Meridian [Wheeler Surv. Rept.], vol. vu, Archaeology, 
Washington, 1879. 

[This comprehensive volume on the region of the archipelago is still the 
fundamental work on the archaeology of California. It contains sections by 


C. C. Abbott, Lucien Carr, A. S. Gatschet, S. S. Haldeman, H. W. Henshaw, 
Paul Schumacher, H. C. Yarrow, which are separately cited.] 


9. PurnAM, G. R. A Yuma cremation. Amer. Anthrop., vol. vim, pp. 264-267, 


1895. 


. RADIN, Paunt. Wappo Texts. First Series. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer, 
Arehaeol. and Ethnol. (in press, 1923). 
[One of the few large collections of native texts from California.] 


ee 


KRONBER ] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 96] 


o21. Rau, CHARLES. Prehistoric fishing in Europe and North America. Smith- 
son. Cont. Knowledge, vol. xxv, Washington, 1884. 
[Pages 254-256 refer to California shell mounds, especially a site near Cape 
Mendocino examined by John J. McLean. ] 
322. READ, CHARLES H. An account of a collection of ethnographical specimens 
formed during Vancouver’s voyage. Journ. Anthrop. Inst. Great 
Britain and Ireland, vol. xxi, pp. 99-108, 1892. 
[Chumash spear thrower, harpoon, ete.] 


023. Retp, [or Rrep] Huco. The Indians of Los Angeles County. Los Angeles 
Star, 1852. Republished by Alexander S. Taylor in the California 
Farmer, vol. xiv, Jan 11—Feb. 8, 1861. [See W. J. Hoffman. ] 

[The fullest data on the Gabrielino. ] 

324. Ritey, J. H. Vocabulary of the Kah-we’yah and Kah-so’-wah Indians. 

Historical Magazine, 2d ser., vol. m1, pp. 238-240, 1868. 
[The tribes are Yokuts, the vocabulary is Miwok. ] 

325. Rivet, Paut. Recherches anthropologiques sur la Basse Californie. 

Jour. Soc. Americ., n. s., vol. vi, pp. 147-2538, 1909. 


326. Roycr, CHARLES C. Indian land cessions in the United States. Highteenth 
Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., pt. 2, pp. 521-694, Washington, 1899. 

[A useful work. California is of course represented. ] 

327. Russett, FrRanK. The Pima Indians. Twenty-sixth Rept. Bur. Amer. 
Ethn., pp. 8-389, Washington, 1908. 

[An extremely valuable work, describing a tribe usually reckoned as South- 
western but presenting innumerable resemblances to those of the lower Colorado 
river. | 

328. Rust, Horatio N. <A cache of stone bowls in California. Amer. Anthrop., 
n. Ss. vol. vil, pp. 686-687, 1906. 


329. ————. The obsidian blades of California. Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. 
VII, pp. 688-695, 1905. 
320. ————. A puberty ceremony of the Mission Indians. Amer. Anthrop., n. s. 


vol. VIII, pp. 28-82, 1906. 
8381. SANCHEZ, NELLIE VAN DE GrRIFT. Spanish and Indian place names of Cali- 
fornia. San Francisco, 1914. 
[The best general work on the subject.] 
332. SAPIR, Epwarp. ‘The fundamental elements of Northern Yana. Univ. 
Calif. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. x11, pp. 215-2384, 1922. 


353. ———. Luck-stones among the Yana. Journ. Amer. [Folk-lore, vol. xxt, 
p. 42, 1908. 
334. ————. Notes on the Takelma Indians of southwestern Oregon. Amer. 


Anthrop., n. 8. vol. Ix, pp. 251-275, 1907. 

[An invaluable little paper dealing with a region on which practically noth- 
ing else is available. The data are only fragments of tnemories, but the au- 
thor presents them with such discriminating precision that they picture the 
culture accurately. ] 

335. ————. The position of Yana in the Hokan stock. Univ. Cal. Publs. 
Amer, Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. x1, pp. 1-34, 1917. 


3836. ————. Religious ideas of the Takelma Indians of southwestern Oregon. 
Journ. Amer. Folk-lore, vol. xx, pp. 838-49, 1907. 

337. ———._ Song recitative in Paiute mythology. Ibid., vol. xxii, pp. 455-472, 
1910. 

338. ————. Terms of relationship and the levirate. Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. 


XVIII, pp. 327-337, 1916. 
[Largely Yabi.] 


962 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 78 


339. SAPIR, Epwarp. Text analyses of three Yana dialects. Univ. Cal. Publs. 
Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. xx, no. 15 (in press, 1928). 








340. Wiyot and Yurok, Algonkin languages of California. Amer. An- 
throp., n. s. vol. xv, pp. 617-646, 1918. 

341. Yana terms of relationship. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer, Archaeol. 
and Ethnol., vol. xu, pp. 153-173, 1918. 

342 Yana texts. Ibid., vol. rx, pp. 1-235, 1910. 





[A scholarly work, as important ethnologically as philologically.] 
343. Scumipt, W. Die Altstiimme Nordamerikas. Festschrift Eduard Seler, 
pp. 471-502, Stuttgart, 1922. 
[Mostly on the tribes of California. A reconstructive historical interpreta- 
tion of their culture. ] 
844. ScHootcrAFrtT, Henry R. Historical and statistical information, respecting 
the history, condition and prospects of the Indian tribes of the United 
States. Vols. r-vi. Philadelphia, 1851-57. Same, printed under the 
title “Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge,” vols. I-v1, Philadelphia, 1860. 
[See Gibbs, Henly, Johnson, Kern, M’Kee. There is a California passage by 
Schoolcraft himself in vol. v, pp. 214—217.] 
345. SCHUMACHER, PAatun. Ancient graves and shell-heaps of California. Ann. — 
Rept. Smithson. Inst. for 1874, pp. 335-350, Washington, 1875. 3 
[Careful work in the little explored coast region of San Luis Obispo.] : 





346. 





Die anfertigung der angelhaken aus muschelschalen bei den frtih- 
eren bewohnern der inseln im Santa Barbara Canal. Arch. fiir ~ 
Anthrop., vol. vim, pp. 223-224, 1875. ; 
The method of manufacture of several articles by the former : 
Indians of southern California. [Eleventh] Ann. Rept. Peabody Mus., 
vol. 11, pp. 258-268, 1878. 3 
[Stone pots, mortars, digging stick weights, pipes. ] 
The method of manufacture of soapstone pots. Rept. U. S. Geog. 
Surv. west of the 100th meridian [Wheeler Surv. Rept.], vol. viz, Arch- { 
aeology, pp. 117-121, 1879. 


The methods of manufacturing pottery and baskets among the 
Indians of Southern California. [Twelfth] Ann. Rept. Peabody Mus., 
vol. 11, pp. 521-525, 1880. | 
Remarks on the kjékken-méddings on the northwest coast of ; 
America. Ann. Rept. Smithson. Inst. for 1873, pp. 354-362, Washing- , 
ton, 1874. 

[Southern Oregon coast.] 


347. 





348. 





349. 





300. 





301. 





Researches in the kj6kkenm6ddings and graves of a former popu- 
lation of the Santa Barbara Islands and the adjacent mainland. Bull. - 
U. 8S. Geol. Surv., vol. 111, pp. 37-56, Washington, 1877. 
[ Useful. ] : 
352. ScoULER, JOHN. Observations on the indigenous tribes of the N. W. coast 
of America. Journ. Royal Geog. Soc., vol. x1, pp. 215-249, London, 1841. 
[Includes the Coulter vocabularies. ] 
SerRA, JUNiPERO. See Harly Western history. 


303. SINCLAIR, W. J. Recent investigations bearing upon the question of the 
occurrence of Neocene man in the auriferous gravels of California. 
Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. vi, pp. 107-130, 
1908. 


354. SITsAR, BONAVENTURE. Vocabulary of the language of San Antonio Mis- 


sion, California. Shea’s library of Amer. Linguistics, vol. vir, New 
York, 1861. 





KROEBER] HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 963 


Stocum, BowEN AND CoMPANY. See History of Napa and Lake Counties, 
California. 


. SmirH, Donatp E., and TEGGART, FREDERICK J., eds. Diary of Gaspar de 


Portolé during: the California expedition of 1769-1770. Univ. Cal, 
Acad. Pacific Coast History, Pubs., vol. 1, no. 38, pp. [81]—[89], 1909. 


. SmirH, WAyLtAnp H. The relief of Campo. Out West, vol. xxi, pp. 138-22 


mt ads 


1905. 


. SPARKMAN, PHILIP STEDMAN. The culture of the Luisefo Indians. Univ. 


Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. vit, pp. 187—234, 1908. 
[Compact. Fullest on the material side of the civilization. ] 


A Luisefio tale. Journ. Amer. Folk-lore, vol. xx1, pp. 35-36, 1908. 


Sketch of the grammar of the Luisefo language. Amer. Anthrop., 
n. s. vol. vu, pp. 656-662, 1905. 


. Spencer, D. L. Notes on the Maidu Indians of Butte County. Journ. 


Amer. Folk-lore, vol. xxi, pp. 242-245, 1908. 


. Sprer, Lestiz. Southern Dieguefio customs. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. 


Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. xx, no. 16 (in press, 1923). 


. SPINDEN, H. J. The Nez Percé Indians. Mem. Amer. Anthrop. Asso., vol. 


I, pp. 171-274, 1908. 
[The best account of a group having many affinities with the Klamath and 
Modoc. ] 


. STEARNS, Rospert E. C. On certain aboriginal implements from Napa 


County, California. Amer. Nat., vol. xv1, pp. 203-209, 1882. 


Ethno-conchology. Rept. U. S. Nat. Mus. for 1887, pp. 297-334, 
1889. 
[ Useful. ] 
On the Nishinam game of “ Ha” and the Boston game of “ Props.” 
Amer. Anthrop., vol. 11, pp. 353-858, 1890. 


Shell-money. Amer. Nat., vol. 1, pp..1-5, 1869. 


. Stewart, Georce W. Two Yokuts traditions. Journ. Amer. Folk-lore, vol. 


XxI, pp. 237-239, 1908. 
A Yokuts creation myth. Ibid., vol. x1x, p. 322, 1906. 


. Stratton, R. B. Captivity of the Oatman girls. New York, 1857. 


[Tries hard to be lurid, but a few facts on the Mohave have crept in.] 


. Tassin for “Fasstn”], A. G. The Concow Indians. Overland Monthly, 


2d ser., vol. Iv, pp. 7-14, 1884. 


Un-koi-to; the Savior. A legend of the Conecow Indians. Ibid., 
pp. 141-150, 1884. 


. Taytor, ALEXANDER S. Bibliografa Californica, 1510-1865. Sacramento 


Union, June 25, 1863—March 13, 1866. 


Indianology of California. California Farmer and Journal of 
Useful Sciences, vols. xmm1—xx, San Francisco, Feb. 22, 1860, to Oct. 30, 
18638. 


[A very miscellaneous but famous and valuable collection of data on every 
aspect of the Indian history of the state. The author was untrained as a 
scholar, indefatigable in his inquiries, and a most industrious compiler. He 
obtained access to many rare publications and to a number of manuscript 
sources no longer available, and omitted nothing that he could publish or re- 
publish. Very few files of the California Farmer are extant and a republication 
of the Indianology, with annotations and corrections of typographical errors, is 
greatly to be desired. ] 


964 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


374. TecGart, Freperick J., ed. The Anza expedition of 1775-1776. Diary of 
Pedro Font. Univ. Cal., Acad. Pac. Coast Hist., Pubs., vol. 111, no. 1, pp. 
[1]—[181], 1918. 








375. The official account of the Portola expedition of 1769-1770. Ibid., 
Vol no. 2, pp. [15 [bee T1908. 

[The first of a series of important editions and translations of documents 

376. The PortolAé expedition of 1769-1770. Diary of Miguel Costansd. 





Ibid., vol. 11, no. 4, pp. [161]—[827], 1911. 
TEGGART, FREDERICK J. See Smith, Donald E., and Teggart. 


3877. Ten Kate, H. Materiaux pour servir 4 l’anthropologie de la presqwile 
ealifornienne. Bull. Soe. d’Anthrop., pp. 551-569, 1884. 


378, TERNAUX-COMPANS, HENRI, tr. Voyage en Californie, par D. Pedro Fagés. 
Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, vol. cl, pp. 145-182, 311-847, Paris, 
1844. 
[The Spanish text, with Hnglish translation by H. I. Priestley, is in press 
in Univ. Cal., Acad. Pac. Coast Hist. Publ., under the title, Pedro Fagés; 
Noticias de Monterey. | 
879. THompson, Lucy. To the American Indian. Hureka, California, 1916. 
[Written by a Yurok on the Yurok. Valuable. ] 


TURNER, W. W. See Whipple, A. W., Ewbank, and Turner. 


380. UHLE, Max. The Emeryville shellmound. Univ. Cal. Publs. Amer. 
Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. v1, pp. 1-106, 1907. 


[An exhaustive description and interpretation by an investigator of wide com- 
parative experience. ] 


| 
bearing on the Spanish exploration of California. ] | 
: 


881. UnitTep STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE. Bureau of the Census. Indian 


population in the United States and Alaska, 1910. Washington, 1915. 

[The results of the first effort of the Bureau to obtain particular statistics on 
the Indian, and the only census worth anything as regards the Indians of Cali- 
fornia, Sections on Number, Tribes, Sex, Age, Fecundity, and Vitality by R. B. 
Dixon. ] 


882. U. S. GEOGRAPHICAL SURVEYS OF THE TERRITORY OF THE U. S. WEST OF THE 
100TH MERIDIAN, in charge of First Lieut. Geo. M. Wheeler. Reports. 
Vol. vir, Archaeology, Washington, 1879. (See Putnam, F. W.) 

383. VANCOUVER, GEORGE. Voyage of discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, and 
round the world, 1790-95. Vols. 1-111. London, 1798. 

VAN HemMeErT ENGERT, ADOLPH. See Hemert-Engert, Adolph van. 

3884. VENEGAS, Micuen. Noticia de la California, y de su conquista temporal y 
espiritual hasta el tiempo presente. Vols. 1-111. Madrid, 1757. Same, 
English trans., vols. -11, London, 1759; Same, French trans., vols. I-11, 
Paris, 1767. 


385. VIZCAINO, SEBASTIAN. Diary of Sebastian Vizcaino, 1602-1603. Transl. in 
Bolton, Spanish exploration in the Southwest, pp. 52-103, New York, | 
1916. 
von Barr, K. H. See Baer, K. E. von. 
VON HELMERSEN, G. See Baer, K. E. von, and Helmersen. 
386. WARDLE, H. NEWeLL. Stone implements of surgery (?) from San Miguel 
Island, California. Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. xv, pp. 656-660, 1913. 
387. WASHINGTON, F.. B. Customs of the Indians of western Tehama county. 
Journ. Amer. Folk-lore, vol. x1x, p. 144, 1906. 
388. WATERMAN, T. T. Analysis of the Mission Indian creation story. Amer, 
Anthrop., n. s. vol, x1, 41-55, 1909, 


KROEBER } HANDBOOK OF INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 965 


389. 


390. 


391. 
B02. 


393. 


597. 


398. 


401. 


402. 


408. 


404, 


405, 


WATERMAN, T. T. Diegueno identification of color with the cardinal points. 
Journ. Amer. Folk-lore, vol. xxi, pp. 40-42, 1908. 
The last wild tribe of California. Pop. Sci. Mo., pp. 233-244, 
March, 1915. 
[Story of the extinction of the Yahi.] 
Native musical instruments of California, and some others. Out 
West, vol. xxviII, pp. 276-286, 1908. 
The phonetic elements of the Northern Paiute language. Univ. 
Cal. Publs. Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., vol. x, pp. 18-44, 1911. 


The religious practices of the Dieguefio Indians. Ibid., vol. viii, 
pp. 271-3858, 1910. 


[A vivid and accurate portrayal.] 


The Yana Indians. Ibid., vol. x11, pp. 35-102, 1918. 
Yurok affixes. Ibid., vol. xx, no. 18 (in press, 1923). 


Yurok geography. Ibid., vol. xvi, pp. 177-314, 1920. 
[An exhaustive study of the ethnogeographical basis of a culture, with many 
references to the culture.] 


WHeetrr, GeorceE M. See U. S. Geographical Survey West of the 100th 
Meridian. 

Wurprpte, A. W., EwBank, THoMAs, and TuRNER, WM. W. Report upon the 
Indian tribes. U. S. War Dept. Repts. of Explorations and Surveys 
: for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, 
1853-4, vol. 17, Washington, 1855. 

[Some useful data on the Mohave and Chemehuevi. | 

WILKES, CHARLES. Western America, including California and Oregon. 

Philadelphia, 1849. 


See Hale, Horatio. 


WILLoucHBY, CHARLES C. Feather mantles of California, Amer. Anthrop., 
n. s. vol. xxiv, pp. 482-487, 1922. 


Woop, L. K. The discovery of Humboldt bay. Humboldt Times (Eureka, 
California), 1856. 

[Probably most accessible in W. W. Elliott and Co.’s History of Humboldt 
County, 1881, one of the innumerable anonymous compilations, avowed only by 
their publishers, of which H. H. Bancroft’s “ Works” is the most ambitious and 
glorified example. Many of the county histories contain data that are not avail- 
able elsewhere. ] 

Wooprurr, CHARLES E. Dances of the Hupa Indians. Amer. Anthrop., 
vol. v, pp. 538-61, 1892. 
Woops, Erne: B. La Piedra Pintada de la Carrisa. 

[Privately printed, San Luis Obispo, California.] 

Woostey, Davin J. Cahuilla tales. Journ. Amer, Folk-lore, Vol. XX, DD: 
239-240, 1908. 


Wozencrart, O. M. [Report on the Indians of California.] Rept. Com. 
Ind. Aff. for 1851, pp. 224-231, 242-249, Washington, 1851. (Sen. Ex. 
Docs. vol. 11, 32d Cong., 1st sess.) 

WRANGELL, FERDINAND VON. Observations recueillies par VAmiral Wran- 
gell sur les habitants des cdtes nord-ouest de ’ Amérique; extraites du 
Russe par M. le prince Emanuel Galitzin. Nouvelles Annales des 
Voyages, ‘ome 1, Paris, 1853. 


966 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


406. Yarrow, H. ©. Report of the operations of a special party for making 
ethnological researches in the vicinity of Santa Barbara. Rept. U. S. 
Geog. Surv. west of the 100th Meridian [Wheeler Surv. Rept.], vol. 
vu, Archaeology, pp. 32-46, Washington, 1879. 

407. Yates, L. G. Aboriginal weapons of California. Overland Monthly, 2d 
Ser., vol. Xxvu1, pp. 337-342, 1896. 




















408. Archaeology of California: Southern California. In Moorehead, 
W. K., Prehistoric Implements, Section vi, pp. 280-252, Cincinnati, 
[1900]. 
409. Charmstones or “ plummets” from California. Ann, Rept. Smith- 
son. Inst. for 1886, pp. 296-805, Washington, 1889. 
410. The deserted homes of a lost people. Overland Monthly, 2d ser., 
vol. XXvII, pp. 5388S—544, 1896. 
{The Chumash islanders. ] 
411. Fragments of the history of a lost tribe. Amer. Anthrop., vol. 
Iv, pp. 3738-376, 1891. 
412. Indian medicine men. Overland Monthly, 2d ser., vol. xxvii, pp. 
171-182, 1896. : $ 
[A little on California is included.] ; 
413. Indian petroglyphs in California. Overland Monthly, 2d ser., 
vol. xxvilI, pp. 657-661, 1896. 
414. Prehistoric man in California. Santa Barbara, 1887. 





415. ZARATE-SALMERON. Relacion. Translated in Land ef Sunshine, vol. x1, no. 
6; vol. x11, nos. 1 and 2, Nov., 1899, to Jan., 1900. Transl. in Bolton, 
Spanish exploration in the Southwest, pp. 268-280, New York, 1916. 


[Onate’s trip from New Mexico to California in 1604—05. The last section 
is of the greatest importance for the Yuman tribes of the Colorado.] 





CLASSIFICATION OF TITLES BY SUBJECT. 


ARCHAEOLOGY, 


General or comparative: 173, 175, 187, 212, 227, 285, 286, 317, 353, 364, 409. 

Northern coast: 258, 821, 350. 

Pictographs: 4, 124, 184, 262, 263, 402, 413. 

San Francisco Bay: 147, 277, 298, 300, 363, 380. 

San Joaquin Valley: 186, 206, 215, 277. 

Southern California: 1, 44, 113, 166, 177, 185, 186, 304, 318, 328, 329, 345-349, 
3ol, 382, 386, 406-411. - 


- 


ETH NOLOGY—TOPICAL, 


3asketry: 10, 21, 74, 75, 194, 199, 213; 214, 216, 271, 283, 287, 316. 

Ethnobotany: 27, 57, 63, 240, 283, 287, 303. 

Ethnogeography: 138, 14, 18, 22, 151, 156, 158, 219, 225, 247, 249, 258, 279, 280-282, 
202, O11, O20, 020, DD1, Dol, B94, 396, 415. 

Material culture: 16, 20, 24, 60, 64, 66, 70, 76, 82, 86, 97, 161, 169, 176, 186, 189, 
Dae 2te POL, 2Ota atari. 209, O10, 322,°323, 357, 361. 364-366, 391, 
399. 

Myths and beliefs: 12, 15, 17, 48, 48, 67, 68, 69, 73, 76, 79, 81, 88, 89, 101-107, 
120, 137, 150, 154, 157, 159, 160,170; 198, 228, 234, 241, 244, 245, 250, 278, 
320, 337, 342, 358, 361, 367, 368, 371, 388, 403. 

Religion: 11, 19, 25, 42, 71, 72, 82, 86, 90, 91, 100, 104-106, 108, 125, 138, 165, 
220, 25, 200. O20, O00, O01, 379, 3935, 412: 

Social institutions: 23, 82, 86, 145, 146, 148, 149, 152, 210, 218, 248, 266, 284, 
338, 361, 379. 


ETH NOLOGY—TRIBAL. 


General or comparative: 9, 75, 90, 118, 145, 146, 180, 181, 210, 211, 217, 218, 
223, 227, 238, 242, 259, 268, 281, 287, 313, 314, 334, 343, 344, 355, 373, 375, 
378, 398. 

Achomawi and Atsugewi: 67, 73, 81, 83. 

Baja California: 7, 61, 112, 384. 

Cahuilla and Cupefio: 27, 146, 188, 224, 260, 403. 

Chemehuevi: 98, 2384, 397. 

Chilula; 31, 154, 163. 

Chimariko: 76. 

Chumash: 41; 51, 70, 118, 122, 129, 171, 177, 274, 318, 322, 383, 385, 410. 

Costanoan: 55, 59, 109, 131, 228. 

Dieguefio: 71, 72, 100-108, 112, 176, 356, 361, 389, 398. 

Gabrielino: 42, 169, 182, 323. 

Hupa: 157, 161, 278, 401. 

Juaneno: 42. 

Karok?: 142, 213, 292. 

Kato: 158, 159. 

Koso: 64, 110, 297. 

Luisefio; 72, 146, 200, 201, 241, 357, 358. 


967 


968 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 78 


Maidu: 58, 74, 75, 79, 82, 89, 90, 91, 121,. 186, 203, 290, 291, 3860, 370, 371, 399: 

Miwok (Interior) : 14, 17, 23, 75, 98, 149, 150, 225, 228, 278-280, 284, 296. 

Miwok (Coast) : 18, 14, 18, 60, 111, 282. : 

Modoe and Klamath: 16, 638, 65, 69, 97, 137, 1388, 289. 

Mohave: 41, 43, 62, 98, 101, 168, 237, 369, 397, 414. 

Mono: 98, 148. 

Oregon: 34, 35, 99, 119, 120, 144, 217, 255, 

Pom0 10a elo ian Os 204 1a) (lee 
276, 316. 

Salinan: 268. 

Serrano groups: 62, 146. 

Shasta: 48, 86, 88, 120, 292. 

Southern California: 146, 183, 186, 198, 214, 239, 257, 293, 294, 303, 330, 384; 
388, 397. 

Tolowa: 99. 

Wailaki: 57, 156. 

Wappo: 179, 250, 320. 

Washo: 24, 295. 

Wintun and Patwin: 13, 25, 68, 75, 266, 267, 387. 

Wiyot: 114, 244, 245, 258, 400. 

Yana and Yahi: 3, 69, 75, 229, 299, 309, 310, 333, 338, 342, 390, 394. 

Yokuts: 62, 98, 148, 198, 228, 248, 367, 368. 

VALI PhS) pd te 2 lee 

Yuma and Yuman tribes: 2, 28, 41, 62, 98, 146, 170, 249, 315, 319, 415. 

Yurok;;.130, 142, 213,4256,.265, 292,33 79...396. 


LANGUAGES. 


Comparative: 85, 92, 98, 94, 95, 96, 184-136, 141, 143, 204, 280, 235, 252-254, 288, 
SILL DLA OOOe OF Le, at ee 

Athabasean : 153-155, 157, 159, 162, 166. 

Chimariko: 76. 

Chumash: 220, 281. 

Costanoan: 5, 6, 220, 231, 270. 

Esselen : 174, 2 231. 

Karok : 230. 

Lutuami: 137, 188. 

Maidu: 78, 80. 

Miwok: 13; 14, 139, 222, 230, 279, 324. 

Pomore 13.200) 

Salinan : 231, 268, 354. 

Shastan: 77, 87. 

Shoshonean: 49, 50, 184, 233, 240, 359, 392. 

Washo: 248. 

Wintun: 18, 84. 

Wiyot: 230, 288, 340. 

WANA OOS ool ODU Motes 

Yokuts: 246, 247. 

Yukian: 18, 230, 246, 320. 

Yuman: 140, 236, 239. 

Yurok: 230, 288, 340, 395. 


304, 336, 362. 


201, 
, 151, 178, 179, 186, 194,°195, 216, 265; 


s 


PHYSICAL TYPES. 


Living: an 33,36, (192, 
Skeletal: 53, 54, 190, 191, 275, 302, 325, 377. 





CLASSIFIED SUBJECT INDEX 


A. TANGIBLE CULTURE 


BODY AND DRESS: 


Body garments, 76, 173, 240, 276, 283, 292, 310, 
317, 326, 405, 467, 519, 572, 597, 634, 651, 654, 
721, 804. 

Robes, capes, 76, 173, 276, 327, 406, 416, 467, 519, 
546, 615, 634, 654, 805, 935. 

Hats and caps, 76, 92, 155, 178, 311, 327, 332, 467, 
532, 548, 561, 591, 597, 654, 698, 700, 807, 808; 


pl. 2; 53, 55, 71,73. ™ 
Hair nets, 156, 173, 276, 293, 405, 416, 808, 934; 
pl. 55, 72. 


Footgear, 76, 144, 240, 283, 292, 311, 317, 323, 327, 
405, 519, 597, 654,721, 805, 807; pl. 62. 

Snowshoe, 76, 295, 327, 405, 410, 807. 

Coiffure, 77, 293, 299, 406, 519, 598, 633, 721, 729, 
803, 934; pl. 57, 64, 72. 

Comb, 327, 406, 519. 

Ornaments, 240, 406, 739. 

Paint, 56, 186, 729, 730, 732, 783, 765; pl. 61. 

Tattoo, 77, 146, 173, 215, 293, 311, 357, 406, 467, 
519, 520, 521, 641, 651, 675, 721, 729, 808. 

Deformation, mutilations, 77, 240, 311, 326, 406, 
519; pl. 65. 

Postures, 520, 728. 


SUBSISTENCE: 


Foods, 40, 84, 144, 174, 238, 309, 323, 358, 409, 467, 
523-527, 547, 591, 615, 631, 694, 814. 

Food preferences, 88, 293, 411, 649. 

Foods, rejected, 84, 111, 216, 310, 409, 526, 547, 
631, 652, 737, 814. 

Insects, worms, etc., 84, 111, 409, 525, 527, 592, 
Hoa aol. 

Fish, mollusks, 84, 409, 467, 525, 722, 737, 920, 
922-925, 933. 

Nets, weirs, fish traps, 58, 85, 93, 132, 148, 174, 
213, 214, 246, 294, 309, 325, 359, 410, 415, 529, 
652, 737, 815, 816, 933; pl. 4, 6, 7, 33, 59, 67. 

Fishhooks, 326, 564, 652, 815. 

Fish poison, 529, 652, 817. 

Snaring, trapping, 86, 213, 294, 309, 326, 528, 530, 
615, 652, 817; pl. 46. 

Surrounding, 144, 409, 528, 817. 

Decoys, 86, 342, 359, 410, 528, 652, 817; pl.8. 

Cther hunting methods, 144, 174, 294, 295, 326, 
395, 410, 580, 572, 652, 817. 

Ethnobotany, 649, 694-696. 

Digging stick, 563, 736, 935. 

Seed beater, 91, 172, 291, 332, 415, 701, 814; pl. 
24, 29. 

Mortar, pestle, hopper, metate, grinding slab, 
87, 91, 148, 153, 172, 214, 284, 291, 323, 358, 411, 
448, 527-528, 548, 562, 572, 592, 631, 653, 695-698, 
700, 722, 736, 737, 814, 926-930, 932; pl. 16, 24, 
44, 45, 60, 66. 

Pulverized food, 293, 294, 323, 409, 528, 572, 592, 
649, 652, 695, 736, 814. 











SUBSISTENCE—C ontinued. 


Storage, 85, 91, 242, 294, 309, 410, 447, 548, 561, 
592, 598, 618, 699, 828; pl. 38, 54, 60. 

Leaching, 88, 293, 467, 524, 527, 649, 814; pl. 14. 

Cooking, 87, 156, 527, 592, 652, 654, 695, 722, 737, 
814; pl. 23. 

Stirrers, 87, 172, 291, 310, 411, 446, 447, 527, 572, 
737, 829; pl. 17, 44. 

Spoons, 93, 147, 174, 205, 284, 290, 310, 411; pl. 20. 

Salt, 84, 174, 256, 294, 310, 340, 363, 467, 530, 546, 
747, 762. 

Agriculture, 597, 722, 735, 797, 803, 815; pl. 67. 


HOUSES: 


Earth house, 175, 276, 290, 312, 317, 327, 340, 358, 
365, 407, 447, 572, 654, 704, 721, 731, 809, 811; 
pl. 56. 

Plank house, 12, 18, 39, 78, 140, 289, 809; pl. 
9, 10, 12. 

Bark house, 111, 140, 141, 144, 146, 175, 213, 240, 
284, 311, 317, 358, 407, 447, 468, 522, 572, 809. 

Thatch or mat house, 241, 328, 340, 407, 468, 521, 
522, 557, 572, 598, 608, 612, 618, 628, 634, 650, 
703, 809; pl. 46. 

Sweat house and dance house, 12, 41, 80, 140, 141, 
144, 147, 156, 175, 189, 205, 213, 241, 284, 290, 
312, 317, 328, 358, 365, 375, 387, 446, 447, 468, 522, 
557, 572, 591, 608, 618, 628, 655, 703, 704, 722, 735, 
793, 810; pl. 10, 18, 14, 56, 60. 

Menstrual house, 80, 150, 254, 290, 299, 329, 358, 
402, 409, 810. 

Camps, shades, 140, 176, 241, 290, 311, 327, 358, 
482, 506, 522, 655, 704, 765. 

Partitions, beds, 79, 81, 290, 358, 409, 521, 557, 612. 

Furniture, 79, 80, 93, 558; pl. 9, 10, 19. 


TRANSPORTATION $ 


Boats, 83, 111, 126, 147, 155, 214, 243, 277, 291, 
310, 329, 416, 558, 630, 634, 652, 654, 723, 812-813; 
Dinsmore owlos 

Balsa and raft, 248, 277, 329, 359, 416, 468, 531, 
608, 630, 652, 654, 723, 739, 813. 

Paddles, 83, 330, 468, 559, 723, 813; pl. 67. 

Ferrying, 35, 83, 174, 739, 813. 

Carrying basket or frame, 91, 153, 172, 247, 291, 
532, 571, 591, 597, 698, 699, 738, 814, 828; pl. 
23, 24, 54, 73. 

Carrying net, 178, 240, 247, 416, 467, 533, 592, 
698, 699, 704, 722, 828. 

Water basket (bottle), 5383, 561, 571, 591, 597, 605, 
628, 634, 701; pl. 53, 55. 

Cradle, baby carrier, 92, 248, 291, 323, 327, 358, 
534-537, 571, 704, 738, 829; pl. 35, 39, 40. 


WEAPONS: 


Bow and arrow, 89, 214, 277, 310, 332, 417, 530, 
545, 559, 572, 591, 597, 632, 650, 652, 704, 751, 
817-818; pl. 18, 78. 

Quiver, 90, 323, 417, 752. 

Arrow release, 417, 652, 818; pl. 18, 78. 


969 


970 


W EAPONS—Continued. 
Arrow straighteners and polishers, 90, 332, 417, 
530, 548, 560, 591, 650, 704, 818; pl. 16, 49. 
Spear, 332, 400, 751, 844. 
Harpoon, 86, 174, 218, 284, 309, 326, 359, 559, 652, 
815. 
Spear thrower, 559, 816. 
Clubs, 400, 632, 635, 704, 722, 751, 803, 844, 845, 
927, 934. 
Throwing stick, boomerang, 467, 632, 652, 704, 
817. 
Sling, 356, 531, 845. 
Armor, 298, 310, 332, 400, 845; pl. 18. 
Shield, 751, 792, 845. 
TOOLS: 
Knife, 418, 632; pl. 16. 
Adz, 83, 94, 332, 559, 827; pl. 19. 
Wedge, ax, 94, 156, 332, 417, 559, 653, 739, 827. 
Maul, 94, 156, 332; pl. 19. 
Seraper, 95, 417. 
Awl, 172, 448, 805, 806, 822, 928-930, 932. 
Drill, 250, 291, 418, 829. 
FIRE: 
Fire making, 93, 104, 105, 249, 332, 418, 651, 739, 
PALES Olls Ti emtitels 
Pitching, calking, asphalt, 83, 634, 651, 701. 
TEXTILES: 
Basket techniques, 90, 141, 144, 147, 153, 155, 169, 
171, 214, 244, 291, 310, 323, 331, 340, 358, 414, 446, 
447, 467, 532, 548, 560, 571, 589, 591, 597, 605, 608, 
613, 628, 653, 698, 700, 722, 738, 819-822. 
Basket materials, 90, 147, 171, 172, 245, 331, 414, 
447, 532, 560, 571, 591, 608, 651, 698, 819-820. 
Basket forms and uses, 91, 147, 172, 331, 414, 531, 
560, 698. 
Designs and ornament, 147, 172, 245, 276, 331, 
363, 415, 531, 532, 533, 561, 698. 
Bags, wallets, net sacks, 94, 294, 722, 738, 934; 
pl. 63. 
Mats, 93, 323, 415, 822. 
Fur and feather blankets, 416, 562, 822. 
Beadwork, 407, 740; pl. 54, 69. 
String, cordage, 85, 93, 148, 214, 291, 333, 415, 534, 
591, 651, 704, 722, 827. 
RECEPTACLES: 
Pottery, 537, 589, 597, 608, 619, 628, 629, 653, 702, 
722, 736, 737, 739, 803, 823-824, 933; pl. 51, 62, 
68. 
Boxes, cases, 92, 94, 654; pl. 15. 
Trays, dishes, of wood or stone, 93, 283, 284, 527, 
560, 562, 613, 629, 634, 653; pl. 16. 
TOBACCO: 
Smoking, cultivation, offering, 88, 214, 277, 419, 
469, 509, 627, 640, 651, 653, 674, 826, 827; pl. 73. 
Eating, 538, 548, 613. 
Pipe, 60, 88, 117, 147, 172, 215, 290, 333, 418, 424, 
516, 538, 548, 564, 653, 718, 723, 826; pl. 30. 
DOMESTIC ANIMALS: 
Dogs, 216, 341. 
Captive eagles, 588, 603, 608, 642, 676, 720. 
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS: 
Drum, 96, 189, 216, 865, 763, 765, 766, 824. 
Rattles, 149, 173, 216, 291, 419, 420, 423, 509, 516, 
632, 665, 723, 761, 823; pl. 67. 
Whistle, 96, 173, 665, 824. 
Flute, 96, 419, 509, 705, 824; pl. 43. 
Rasp, 549, 824. 
Musical bow, 419, 542, 824. 
Bull roarer, 266, 509, 666, 713, 824; pl. 44. 


CLASSIFIED SUBJECT INDEX 


MONEY: 
Dentalium, 22, 74, 111, 126, 144, 146, 176, 284, 292, 
340, 359, 421, 824; pl. 11. 
Clam disks, 25, 144, 176, 210, 248, 276, 284, 292, 


309, 311, 340, 359, 399, 421, 448, 498, 564, 630, 739, 


824. 

Olivella, haliotis, 25, 421, 566, 631, 705, 723, 826. 

Magnesite or shell cylinders, 176, 249, 421, 498, 
566, 825. 

Treasures, 25, 292, 498; pl. 2, 3. 

Reckoning, 23, 249, 256, 359, 399, 421, 448, 498, 
549, 565, 630, 825; pl. 11. 

Monetary value of property, 27, 298, 739. 

Purses, 93, 94, 147; pl. 15. 


B. SOCIAL, AESTHETIC, INTELLECTUAL 
CULTURE 
POPULATION: 

Numbers, 16, 101, 109, 116, 130, 188, 141, 144, 
154, 155, 168, 203, 213, 221, 237, 275, 282, 287, 
308, 320, 339, 356, 394, 445, 464, 488-491, 546, 
555, 570, 586, 590, 595, 603, 608, 614, 617, 636, 
649, 689, 692, 712, 782, 796, 799, 802, 803, 880-891, 

Relation to topography, 6, 8-12, 15, 59, 69, 73, 
99, 100, 109, 112, 116, 123, 129, 138, 142, 145, 
151, 155, 160-161, 163, 202, 212, 218, 222-235; 
272, 273, 282, 283, 284, 286, 305-307, 315, 318, 
335, 338, 342, 344, 347-350, 352-354, 357, 391-398, 
442, 444, 462, 474-488, 524, 545, 546, 550-551, 
569-570, 574-575, 582, 585-586, 590, 594-595, 606- 
607, 611, 615, 616, 617, 621, 634, 648, 689, 693-694, 
709-711, 723-725, 726, 782, 796, 797, 880, 885, 
889, 891, 892, 899-900, 902, 910, 911, 912, 916, 
920-925, 930-933, 937. 

Movements, 121, 159, 160, 211, 218, 219, 272, 281, 
286, 336, 337, 349, 350, 466, 544, 569, 574-580, 
585, 593-595, 601, 605-606, 610, 612, 639, 690, 
724, 782, 797-803. : 

POLITICAL STATUS: 

Tribe, community, 138, 22, 133, 162, 163, 228, 230, 
238, 252, 363, 396, 446, 474, 491, 585, 617, 720, 
727, 782, 830-832. 

Town settlement, 8, 82, 102, 125, 133, 163, 229, 
234, 235, 397, 448, 474, 831. 

Land ownership, 8, 14, 34, 220, 317, 363, 395, 398, 
720, 744. 

Chief, 163, 164, 177, 205, 209, 250, 276, 296, 320 
363, 372, 374, 399, 452, 468, 496, 556, 572, 573, 
603, 609, 618, 633, 640, 645, 686, 687, 688, 691, 
707, 720, 745-747, 802, 803, 831, 832, 833, 838. 

Chief's titles, 452, 623, 633, 645. 

SOCIETY: 

Slavery, 27, 32, 111, 146, 296, 308, 647, 746, 752. 

Property, wealth, 3, 20, 22, 33, 40, 41, 133, 178, 
294, 296, 363, 603, 646, 720. 

Descent, inheritance, 39, 125, 133, 209, 250, 313, 
363, 399, 453, 492, 496, 609, 633, 686, 705, 719, 
741, 835, 838. 

Clans, moieties, 125, 446, 453-461, 493-496, 587, 
603, 608, 617, 618, 686, 690, 705-707, 719, 720, 
741-744, 760, 834-838. 

Totemism, 446, 453-461, 493-496, 512, 515, 587, 
603, 608, 617, 685, 690, 705, 707, 741-744, 834-838. 

KINSHIP AND MARRIAGE: 

Family, kin, 132, 363, 457, 588, 603, 608, 705, 830, 
833. 

Marriage, 28, 42, 179, 210, 215, 254, 313, 401, 456, 
469, 492, 573, 633, 646, 688, 719, 720, 747, 839. 


icp when uted 


byte o-3° ~artl al Pe * 





CLASSIFIED SUBJECT INDEX 


KINSHIP AND MARRIAGE—Continued. 
Marriage by purchase, 27, 146, 179, 210, 255, 297, 
401, 492, 633, 688, 839. 
Marriage with kin or wife’s kin, 30, 179, 211, 
297, 402, 457-461, 469, 492, 588, 747, 839. 
Levirate, 31, 179, 211, 297, 402, 839. 
Kinship avoidances and taboos, 156, 180, 210, 
255, 340, 402, 461, 492, 588, 603, 608, 688, 840-841. 
THE CYCLE OF LIFE: 
Birth, 44, 180, 299, 402, 403, 498, 747. 
Couvade, 45, 180, 254, 299, 313, 402, 469, 498, 647, 
688, 720, 840. 
Umbilical cord, 45, 180, 299, 313, 402, 498, 647, 
688, 721, 840. 
Twins, 45, 313, 402, 733, 748, 840. 
Names, 28, 38, 47, 107, 179, 180, 211, 360, 403, 469, 
499, 603, 608, 646, 741-744, 749. 
Adolescence, 45, 254, 299. 
Transvestites, 46, 180, 497, 500, 647, 748, 803. 
Disposal of the dead, 37, 42, 46, 142, 146, 156, 180, 
215, 220, 221, 253, 284, 300, 313, 317, 327, 341, 
359, 360, 403, 452, 469, 497, 499, 548, 556, 573, 
589, 599, 608, 613, 633, 635, 641, 716, 750, 803, 
841-848; pl. 11, 41, 69, 81. 
Mourning, 28, 37, 46, 77, 156, 253, 300, 301, 313, 
316, 321, 360, 361, 404, 452, 499, 500, 577, 641, 
642, 643, 750, 839, 840; pl. 28. 
PLAY: 
Gambling, 108, 111, 148, 156, 173, 214, 291, 295, 
310, 333, 419, 446, 457, 470, 538-540, 597, 721, 
740, 846-850; pl. 79. 
Toys, play, 104, 108, 746. 
WAR: 
Warfare, wars, 50, 101, 126, 131, 139, 152, 156, 167, 
212, 219, 220, 235, 236, 298, 308, 319, 345, 356, 
466, 468, 484, 485, 497, 556, 594, 596, 613, 711, 
727, 744, 751-7538, 759, 760, 761, 771, 788, 799-801; 
pl. 18. 
Motives, 49, 131, 236, 308, 452, 469, 556, 646, 647, 
843. 
Manner of fighting, 50, 152, 331, 400, 744, 751. 
Leaders, 177, 178, 258, 374, 645, 833. 
Scalps, torture, 50, 144, 156, 178, 356, 400, 468, 
497, 633, 647, 721, 752, 843, 844. 
War dances, 50, 144, 148, 156, 236, 313, 356, 400, 
451, 721, 752, 843, 844. 
Settlement, 49, 50, 178, 215, 220, 252, 296, 400, 
645, 801. 
CONTACTS AND RELATION: 
Travel, 145, 213, 286, 395, 596, 606, 612, 654, 727, 
MD2s10os dlls 
Trade, 132, 166, 214, 236, 257, 284, 287, 308,.399, 
567, 629, 630, 634. 
Law, morality, manners, conduct, 2, 20, 28, 40, 
118, 133, 146, 181, 296, 466, 498, 633, 683-685, 729. 
AESTHETICS: 
Oratory, 276, 389, 684, 685, 720, 745. 
Songs, 95, 194, 321, 385, 468, 471, 506, 514, 515, 
599, 641, 657-660, 713, 748, 757-758, 763, 774, 776. 
Plastic and pictorial representation, 344, 540, 
630, 661-665, 675, 936-989; pl. 82, 83. 
Symbolism, 368, 398, 536, 572 662, 667, 671, 679, 
717, 780, 858, 892, 939. 
KNOWLEDGE: 
Mathematical, 176, 256, 779, 876-879. 
Calendrical, 74, 102, 105, 177, 208, 257, 322, 437, 
498, 644, 682, 718, 780, 873. 


ewe! 


KNOWLEDGE—Continued. 
Astronomical, 75, 439, 662, 682, 874. 
Cosmological and geographical, 13, 15, 70, 73, 
74, 145, 345, 395, 440, 596, 664, 753. 


C. RELIGIOUS CULTURE 


SHAMANISM: : 

Shamans, 4, 65, 111, 117, 136, 154, 188, 192, 196, 
258, 302, 314, 316, 361, 373, 422-428, 472, 511, 
513, 640, 6438, 679, 680, 718, 756, 766, 769, 775, 
778, 834, 851-855, 859. 

Acquisition of power, 63, 65, 68, 149, 258, 302, 
361, 422, 423, 425, 513, 775, 851. 

Spirits and disease objects, 63, 66, 106, 111, 149, 
196, 198, 302, 314, 361, 423, 424, 425, 426, 775, 
852-853. 

Practices, 66,117, 149, 303, 424, 515, 627, 628, 650, 
681, 718, 775, 854. 

Fees, 27, 35, 65-67, 303, 423. 

Classes of shamans, 67, 136, 149, 196, 259, 423, 
718, 855. 

Weather shamans, 427, 511, 518, 549, 604, 777, 
854. 

Bear shamans, 137, 200, 259, 303, 361, 427, 512, 
514, 516, 549, 628, 718, 854. 

Rattlesnake shamans, 199, 303, 427, 504, 517, 


777, 854. 

Cooperation and training, 64, 127, 148, 191, 302, 
361, 423, 426. ; 

Exhibitions, competitions, 68, 194, 196, 424, 
504-507. 


Apparatus, 117, 199, 258, 315, 316, 373, 418, 424, 
426, 507, 564, 853. 

Witchcraft, 66, 107, 136, 188, 259, 303, 505, 516, 
778, 853. 

CUSTOMARY ORSERVANCES: 

Magic, 4, 41, 69, 440, 529, 643, 850. 

Taboos and prescriptions, 68, 69, 81, 150, 180, 
188, 205, 246, 295, 316, 360, 429, 469, 499, 631, 
641, 643, 670, 688, 721, 747, 748, 749, 750, 778. 

Charms, 154, 361, 363, 567, 626, 630, 638, 716, 
928-930, 932, 935. 

CULTS AND RITUALS: 

Mourning anniversary, 316, 360, 429-432, 452, 
457, 500, 573, 589, 603, 604, 609, 613, 626, 642, 
672, 675, 690, 691, 707, 716, 750, 792, 859-861. 

Girls’ adolescence rites, 46, 106, 119, 127, 135, 
148, 195, 205, 254, 299, 314, 320, 363, 428, 452, 
548, 573, 609, 641, 673-675, 707, 713, 716, 748, 
793, 861-866. 

Boys’ puberty rites, 191, 295, 314, 503, 548, 604, 
640, 668, 713, 867. 

First salmon (or fruits) rite, 53, 60, 104, 188, 
294, 313, 437. 

New year ceremonies, 53, 103, 118, 126, 134, 141, 
367, 855-859, 866; pl. 3. 

Kuksu cult, 156, 170, 183, 184, 185, 188, 191, 203, 
204, 216, 260, 261, 263, 265, 266, 363, 364-390, 
428, 432-437, 446, 449-451, 470, 546, 549, 656, 
855-859, 866, 878; pl. 77, 80. 

Jimson weed (toloache, datura) cult, 367, 502- 
504, 548, 567, 604, 609, 613, 621, 626, 640-641, 
656, 666, 668-673, 691, 707, 713, 779, 793, 855- 
859, 866, 878. 

Song cycles and dreaming cult, 367, 599, 626, 
657-660, 707, 715, 746, 748, 754-778, 783-788, 
855-859. 


ae 


972 CLASSIFIED SUBJECT INDEX 


CULTS AND RITUALS—Continued. 
Other dances and rituals, 148, 183, 196, 266, 451, 
501, 507, 641, 642, 643, 660, 713, 717, 765. 
Modern ghost dance, 62, 191, 207, 269, 304, 317, 
321, 341, 369, 375, 388, 583, 779, 868-873; pl. 77. 
ELEMENTS OF RITUAL: 
Prayers, formulas, 4, 53, 59, 66, 69, 103, 106, 137, 
149, 299, 317, 471, 509, 529. 
Offerings, 104, 253, 317, 418, 471, 509, 567, 613, 
615, 626, 826, 867. 
Altars, ground paintings, 104, 105, 368, 626, 639, 
640, 661-665, 671, 673, 674, 713; pl. 6. 
Ceremonial structures or spots, 54, 60, 104, 105, 
205, 365, 507, 523, 626, 628, 639, 645, 655, 713, 
716, 717, 792, 794, 860; pl. 12, 22. 
Ritual dress, 55, 62, 76, 140, 149, 154, 173, 216, 
261, 267, 276, 277, 310, 316, 483, 508, 590, 591, 
640, 665, 713; pl. 3, 42, 58, 59, 61, 77, 80. 


ELEMENTS OF RITUAL—Continued. 


Ritual apparatus, 56, 105, 266, 373, 509, 567, 627, 
630, 639, 665, 671, 713. 

Ritual numbers, directions, 150, 304, 313, 321, 
440, 471, 509, 589, 627, 643, 717, 780, 875-877. 

Clown, 59, 383, 389, 425, 450, 497. 


BELIEFS: 


Soul, ghost, spirit, after life, 47, 67, 107, 439, 452, _ 
470, 549, 640, 642, 643, 662, 672, 679, 754, 116, 
778, 858. d 

Mythology, 5, 25, 41, 59, 73, 119, 155, 182, 206, 
270, 304, 315, 322, 341, 362, 382, 385, 446, 472, 
495, 510, 549, 598, 608, 619, 624-626, 637-639, — 
677-679, 691, 707, 742, 770, 778-792; pl. 5, 22. ; 

Divinities, 73, 119, 134, 150, 155, 182, 206, 216, © 
362, 511, 613, 622-624, 637, 638, 656, 680, 713, 
714, 770, 789. 





GENERAL INDEX 





Page 
LATE UCUN EDD tee guladiohal Soe bop: ele lodemaet ch melee st seal deipet id 11 
“NEDA NEW a YShc Le Sal oa ged eee at 895 
Achomawi-_.__-___- 279, 282, 305-315, 476, 864, 876, 883 
PaO De WGrockscaiees ln oo ee ee 232 
hard ieeees te se OO eee oR ok tL, 100 
Pe OGTURIN AY de oe eee ee 2 Sb Ppt a ee 803 
PA Wiesieen emer ae Bets iss an ae =~’, Heyl seted 319 
POLIS aren een oe fee Se date’ oo A Te 803 
JCEED US, (CRITI EEN: oho tye ik dT ard asta Pp 602, 689 
AWPETED UDINE). ate teal tac nappa ela ipa ee ane 694, 706 
EXPT EDIT TERR 2 Sk Se tel ale ee eda ee tenant 895 
/NgMAP UWELSS 2 in! a 5 ea, tee til ces «el elena ls 553 
MEER OUT VLEL eee ee mee meee ee Seige yee ye 618 
PACA ACITI cdl eee ee he Ae ee ee ee Arts 636 
Peale see wee weet ee rr el: Tere 711 
ESE RTT TA Vereen eee ne Mtn re ene oo ete 801 
Poesy oe eee Ge ee 596 
DAISIES WIS gq ej.cee SS ale lle ee ae Rte then 799 
MAM RSET lh eed lll eda aa lil sa. 800 
ELIA VEL Dae ime ee Ce en yt Es 286 
CPUC RST led led elt Decide peal tage tule 129 
MUO Gemeente e oe Lee oes = Tk a ee ene 100 
ANOOTIOIR GL 6S nucle < ieee dell ate 3 Set Rebel ere nae Maas 286 | 
cA a ee ae ey ene Se ne ee 711 
Det Ti Cerne eer estes th a 895 
AN CHOOT a eter ete ee rn ee ee eee 801 
JN BRAYE Tic os cool siete che ad thc lial al locnelaits geh ele oal Geaae te pela 
NOUS, “cS. ich a ler ede papel pea niemealirie Spladietee, Rabies ont 286 
ANTTROO)epeh ye a 2 le pee pele be alee tet att ey Bell 10 
DSN i ee fee oe ho RO 596 
INTENTS Ue See Sule nn eli elle ig ae pe heated. 322 
DNIUEKOUIYD Say 4 Salad <2 eg Tec epee eee et mdi 480, 491 
mer eicgiemee ts ett tt 636 
A KANKAUE Cia ee kee et tthe 445 
CH Nie ieee eR ied Ofer He ee Nae Pe ee 617 
JMS VSD ce ibd ileal Rect alos eer aaah a By 445 
85 Sal ys 50 ly 2h ale el peepee meek ae eter 648 
ee tee emer tn tc ee 356 
PCC OLO] Seer meter gee ee ts SY ee 100 
PATIL 11 eee tees See Pt ne eee 621 
PNKAIEAT) Kmart & Sem te ere 445 
ANDI VEAL. 2 Sete elle ded ners Geena ea ele tee a ane 709, 797 
PALA eee em oe eh ne SE A ae 445 
ANLEDI Sep Sidon es chee RE ae ern ocr me 796, 797, 798 
NEE). =. ee alee eect ed pee apes eh See 694, 706 
PARC ee temo a eee eo ee ee 782, 783, 803 
PAUAUT i -( heen ae es ee See EET ee 445 
NOD 2s Ue eae ee pe ianentainaet iad mee’ ode 213 
PL OHECUUI Tite aaeeeee ka ee et eye, 799 
TAI OS Bae. tee elnpn  d g eame ed ere ata bin 621 
PMIGRANUECr Valle Vie cont oe ees 219 
PCO UM An yen ee a ToS -_ 112, 886, 913 
Pe POGLOO Umer eters See eth. ue ee 895 
(CENTRO gS ali lily react oP aa apm rae 621, 636 
PA niu KOSmeee ee ee a be eee 584 
ae en anu Doky Oes, Ola, O14, Soo 








Page 
LOC See ae oe phe Toes se Oe SE Ee Ate Pete 553 
PNITUITKIT Os ee See oe ee eee eee Paes ee ee 165 
SUA wd 8 ee eee gna Sok in 475, 479 
EAT GIT ee eee Spore 28 te ae ser eee ae 475, 479 
PAIVALALAINGEE Sees So at ee ae ears eh goa I 552 
NACA DOSHeee sate ys ens Gea SSS ee aeeeee- ee =e 802 
CACIECA VAS eee Ree Ne ee ee 4 ae wee 802 
Bm ahabaaetemee see Ge Siem ie ll we Poet) Tee 612 
AANA ANA LE Soe Oe eae Le nde Ie eee 618 
ANN AIKIATAS cee ose 62, 70, 73, 100, 102, 103, 104, 105 
CITGO 3 Le eee eke oS ee ee ee eee eee Tae 
ATNAT OSA See See ee eee e = tee Ree eee eee 595 
PTR AU IOW 2 <a OW aL 6.5 er as eee ss ewes Se Peer eee 711 
NTO SCe oot ee ee eta ES be Aen” SS 8 2 oe 230 
American Museum of Natural History _____- IX 
FAM OL ICAI: Luly). sae mea aoe ae 391, 392, 393, 476, 902 
ATNOTICANEVALIC Ys sae = eee ees hese eee 397 
PX TLACA DAs Se ieee nee See was See ee ene 895 
FATA COULC = 5 <a eee Se ae ener SG Ope Ue nee 553 
ADB COAC pyc eaee wien enh aee See ae seen 553 
ATIEACORUS t= Sees a ene ee ae Sa teen he aoe 553 
ANOACOUS oa ctr es a ee ee ee ree ea ee 553 
ANAKOLA NOM Ges ere ats oe eee a nee 218 
PATIO Dae ae ee © ee Pe et ee eA 895 
FA TO CTSOM GT OG eters | Sete ee eee ene ae 231 
Andrews Island ---_.----.--- Bateeces ae ete 443 
PAT OL) Oe a eee ee ee eR Se me ores 615 
ATISISAW CDA sete aatae 2a ees Seren ee rey eee sae 445 
ALTISBLTT al ies ee eee § Reamer tee =e Nis = ae NPs Jig 
Ansak-to -___- SE ESS SEP Sem ees ae Pes WEN 356 
ATILA See eee Se ee ee ee eS eee 552 
“Ani telopes Creek enerosn sere res teens FAA aes 339, 346 
ATILCIOPEEV Ley 2a ee 8 eee See es 611 
NCAR DUE Orns test p dn er fap ea oe gm eee mre Be 602 
PA DALI Wil Uae eee ees Ree eee ce See 445 
Nap OEM CA Wh reese 0g as he nei eg Se pe outed 484 
VAG OVEN Dee — mae Ray ep eg Rp ete ety 481 
PAGO RGD eg Re Espey aha Bs re ee teas at nr 100 
INN ENA See ak ba tr ipa al gene a ap a eae Sah 286 
NTO S Seer ens Sen ea Ren cen See Te 799 
(A ATUINO KWESeee ee ees Oe See ee ne ae ee ee 99 
AV EUSRY LOLCat Seen aa ee eee Set ye ene er 590 
TA TINOT eee te eee een See re Rae Ne eee 483 
ASDA Deh eee ee cere te he ae Rees Sree fsck cee 220 
AShachakw Os ss eens eee ee Sen ee ae 648 
INshachatlt es seen = Ses Me ae anne eee es Sees 234 
PAS neha Keel ch ke een eee eee eee eee mere ra 44, 70, 99, 105 
ENS ADL DI aera sae eae Se ee eee 100, 105 
INGUIN eee 2 degen ese oe age eae eee 105 
AST keene Pe ae See se eee oe 32, 100 
PAC STLOCL AIT ae te ee Rens ee ae Oe eS 219 
Ashochimi. See A’shochamai. 
NS IUAC eee eee eee ne SOR ee een oe ee 555 
ENGI] | eee ce te Wer eae ee = bee eee eee Pe 553 
PASS TIENT Karten ee eee ee en ee ee eee 100 
IASOU ITS eee ee ao ee oe ees eee See 286 
NST een Ae NS eigen 8 8 as 9 Eee 286 


974 


Page 

A STAK CREME See cereus wee Wh: Sek eas 307 
vA STi Vy etn eee en eee, Mires Or eke ns Lee 307 
A SUPA a Ween GNIS = tne Sa Pe ne ees 2&6 
A TAKA eae ER ee Se a ne 124 
WATE ONCE, TEVAIUE IN A ee ee S 121-158, 886, 913 
(A Chismiethice waste ete es ae eee met 318 
AG LL De eee renee ee seated tage he 14 
ALSwergunenipuUray On. week ween cue eee eee 70 
ALSULC Wises. meee see re ee 279, 282, 315-317 
ASUBTT sooettn es Lees Woe Po BE alae Bee 307 
ASV AM IATA coe eee elven ra PGs RY Ps Oy 618 
A CWellStl sland tance Yee ee rule be 5 Mey de 474, 483 
NI UICH Cae eee Fee Wee Pa Neen! meres) ths oe ee 100 
CAT Tee te. Bien tome mre Brave 7 ee Bie gn 100. 
A TISA1=111 0) fe Seen eS ine Nia: RN Ae RO 466 
(A USAY INAS a2 Sys ie A tata ee. Sy pan 895 
AVa-chuhs yas ep ere en he OR See 800 
AWikwame jac. oheos ees eees ou 599, 600, 715, 771, 791 
AVI-Nya-KutapalVa cose siaee eee ee 800 
AN IAVAV A eee eae oe re Boge Seria tee Sess aay ass) 
PAT Wath one st oe unm antares el ate te Pee a 760 
PAWL Ac cere ch ec ts een ee eer Oe eae 28 

A wal nc. ok Agee ee ee od oe aa 445 
ARWATI tit pale suka t Ee et ee Sk ee a 445 
WA WASK RRR eee oe Sele ete ath a en Bee 711 
AWW LAST 22 minnie seme aves Sec oe Orel ey 552 
JA WIDOT Sr OT See agence Oe Hee le Pe Reel 70, 73 
Ta A062 0 W612) dep ae ie S eta RR MN cute as dite 710 
NaN AL Ez Was Se i i ep aA Dey ge eS a hea Oy 723 
HAY CUY COLE Re — 2 tt ape ater ne aye ee Dye 49] 
PAY Sia ete uae Ee NEE he ig ae oe te ee 100 
PAR O SoS eo oe eee arate = Nt et ch Oe ae 115 
AY OIMOK Seale. Mala sie fe ears tae tien eid 70 
BAO ti] ee ee eka ak OL RE Seng MO ee ee ot 2 
EAL LOCS utes ed Rae ea Re eae re 575 
PAZ UISE, SWS ee Les Pree een Oe ee ele eS ee 895 
Ba AWOL Soe See EP ee ere, Pad ot Carre We easing 203 
IBAGCtODL S15 oe ee ee oe eee ge 345 
ASN e Kaya ate| Ole] aba cet Mien oe Ce ep oil 
Bahacechass.2 25 ss ee 2B 5 takes ee 802 
Bahia -dé.los. Fumos eos 252222 eee 555 
DOI YUE Sass ae A Pe Be eae ti ee ee 394 
BOLT =e eee Se ule See a re eee pe ae ily 
BajatCaltfornia. se se oe Ree eee Ge eee eee 709 
EB AJ OTL OS SAR ce ee te Pl PS 710 
Bakam title= ps SSE eee a ee EN eS 1232 
Bak at sec 8 Se ec See Geka nee gee Ue a 230 
Bakersfiel di c.5 3.502 eit” eee 2 Wie ak ee ae 482, 607 
aKa. Soe ee OE EA Be ee eee ce wet 231 
Balai Hill sr ee ee ee eee 34, 73, 17, 137, 138 
TB UL SVT OUTAGE Te Sees ee te are ee re 167 
Bales 2a ee ee he eee ee ee eer ene 345 
TSUN hide tet oping Qn eh Coll Peed CONN ae Rei SL 895 
Balo-Kai bs eee is. 3 eee oe ee and eee reese ae, 230 
iBalo-Kal-Pomno 25 BAe = SE ye eee 231 
Balwisha 2 s2 pta me Pee, Son a oe nn eee 586 
BAM O ee eee ee eee ee ee nae at 394 
Banmkalachtufees: see ire ra! leone eee ee 607, 610 
Banning see Sy. eee Site nome. 1 618 
Banning. Water CanyGn Suse se oe oe ae 617 
IB ATTeb Es. DL Sig ee eee eee neater eee VIII 
TRAYS GOW ee ee Se eee rE ree re 614 
Basskal yaoi. eee ee Oks Pak eestor 151 
IBATOS. SP. oe ce eee eae Bir ho ne ere 482 
Batiklechawisee cose seas «see ee eee 233 
Battle Oree sss ere se eee ne eee eee 339, 345 











GENERAL INDEX 


618 


232 


Page 
Bauksecl ve soes ese eee cece ee eee 394 
Baulines 3.202282. ooe8 See ee 274 
Baytl 23.0. CV A ee eee 394 
Bear) Creek. yh Sc eee see =} Saeee 125, 3389 4 
-Bear Harbor--.-- aug 2 Ee ee 145,212 — 
Beare Rivereectea an soeen eso 115, 128, 142, 145, 3938 
Bear River Mountains:._:2...2.s.uauueen eee ee 
Bear, Valley. .2tsa. san dee ee ee 
Beaumont Neen ncasee2teese 617 
Behiepal :- 2.2230 .¢ee 2 ae ee 231 
Bekiti 2 12° a ee ee eee 475, 479 
Bellavista: otic s7l ie eee ate ee 339 
Bellevue osc ee Se ee 481 
Benedict, Mrs Ruth <2). 2¢23.2 eee 616 
Beneme 22) 2 2 eee 602, 614 
BenkUmKUMie | ee ee 394 
Bennett Mills.) 22 one 590 
Berenda: 2022s ee Se See 485 
Berry ck. eee ee eee 117 
Betum-kizei- 2. coy sec Ss ee 230 
Beubeu_.. 20 isco 22s eh ce ee 
Bidamilwinds. 2224.2... 2. ee 228, 229, 232 
Big Bend Greek...) Se ee 151 
Big’ Creek? 24. 2252 4.2 2 i eee 585 § 
Big Dry Creek Sa Loe ee 481 
BigeLagoon he sa see oa eee 10, 15, 61, 62, 116 
Big’ Meadowsae%. 22-20 2s s2es 316, 345, 397, 398,425 
Big Morongo Cree iccN ie Se 616,618 — 
Big River sg. ok ore ee ee eee). 
Bic Sandy Creeks22- 05 ee 585 
Big Spring. 25.2.7 22Y 2: eee 398 
Big Valleyecitel2- tte 22 See eee 307 
Bill Wiliams Pork. 22222222 s eee 768, 799 
Bimire te eves ee ee 115 
BiSvovscen 222k ee 553 
Bishops tis. ae eee 589 
Bitadanek. 2.03 a ee 230 
Black:-Points22 et 2. 2a ee 234 
Blocksburg. 3 ss eS 145 
Bloodyisland:..212225_-42 231 
Blue, Creeke® 222008 2 ue So 70, 73 
Blue Lakes. 22220 0 ee 113, 236 
Blue Nosele 2 £212 ee 165 
Bochawels2c.. 22 Ue a 231 
Bochiptats: 23-22. 265-1S-4 oe ee 480 
Bodega Bay .222.22. 4 2 248, 273 
Bohemotash.2 2) ss 2 eee 895 
Boil-kal-pom0 sft. eee ees 231 
Bokninuwad 2.225. Se 480 
Bolbones 22.2.-.- 2222) =. Se 895 
‘Bolinas, Bay22a.2hc 2 =300- ee 273 
Bolohtiwisiic. 36.22 ee ae 345 
BOMAG. 2 oes see ee 231 
BONSNZar28. Poo Soa ee eee 319 
Boomiis4 2. 2220 eae 
Booneville... 222... ces2e58 ee eee 231 
Boscana, Father Geronimo-----_----------- 636, 642 
Boteli 212 os bees oe eo ee eee ee ee 230 
Botoko. eg Seen pee ee aes igs 394 
Boynton Prairies: 223225 ee s= ee 113 
Brannan Island 125223202222 2525 ee 
BranscomD 222 ee le ee ee 155 
Branscomb Valley2. -- 2 eee 212 
Brawley_.: lan eee 719 
Bridgevilles.2 ce. 2 te ne ee ee 145 
Brush Creek oo... i2 Leen ee 232 





GENERAL INDEX 


Page 
Te limi aS 483 
SSUES 1M Ger 2c) a a en ee iy a Ra 125 
PE OV ONOLGOK .-64.. a2. ode ces Ht oe, Fe 233 
PreK Ino ia LANG, 0.2 pe ee ee 232 
Se resemiuspernnizne 9.2 890 ee SS eS 545 
SEACLETIS) MASUR BGs Bere alge ep Oe CaM BES eee 478 
YES UTI wee te en Ps a 480 
ini JWG EE 0 nes phe tees ie eo ee ena een RS re peeewrs Sw 230 
erate iO at eee ee Aen OO eT 227 
evelan reo eee pres Ae. ee) oe yee ad 145, 146 
rE VEOLIOO D2 een th ee 8 oe ee ee 895 
LE LICRD ce 2 om seer a a eee es ola ge 397 
Bureau of American Ethnology_-_--------- VIll, 1X 
EG ri mete ee ae a eee 895 
BITTON GRe TORK ne ae et ee ee 305, 315, 316 
Te TOD Ket or eek eae ee Mine oe Be De 585 
SRristartiilitiee tee 5! poe 8 2 Bee ae he 394 
UOMO Viet iee os  e ee 398 
DERE eC = eee ee ee eee 392 
Bites aAKCrso go eee sto c ok saaan Je Seees 318 
OAR e Lak {ee aS, 2 a ee le eae 553 
aCe Se seg ees ei re So ee 553 
TLZONE Le oe | cee, ee ee? tae ee 595, 694 
len besOHereck ie fe ee Se ee 618 
oLiy io. ere ee ae 275, 277, 546, 552 
PCT GA beeen a See eae ae 615 
Wache,Greek = —=.7 52... 224, 249, 272, 353, 355, 356, 357 
CHC Jal 5 ete a ee ee = Beene, 5 Pts 554 
COU): ot ee ain Sn Tn SPS eee eee 155, 212, 895 
‘CRUD EASES coS  s  Sea a el ee ee 895 
seal. 595, 692-708, 786, 865, 877, 883, 895 
RO St) eee ee aia? oak ase ane ee Se 655 
enyOnsGerAmmUSCOPlabltes--2-—.--. 25-2 sees 615 
Mabie AON saz gt alc sabe ae bees ee oe 798 
CEST SLES oe = 2 Scene eine a oe 486 
CEDILERGISTR SRS RUT of Chee Sale ee 442 
IO MCMUCWENGIANG ae0 52 scu les sete vee ee 602 
fealiounia Wig eelses. sae 2. 28 ee ee 570 
CAMS LO ee ees eee Soo Seo ee 218 
CHAI aU gy sae ee ns se ee 895 
CEPR Gi yh sae Bsa a ee ee ee Pee NE 554 
SE Ee oe eng ee SIS ke Se bee Ce 230, 895 
Cosi igytiiey 18 it ere gs eg Ree pe ee 480 
Pe MerOne Nake wee Met 9 ets eee 719 
(RSW OM) BSE 0 se a 798 
ETS 120) ail pee eal ese re ae ee 70, 99 
OE ea aes es ee 710, 711, 719, 725 
POS meee oe 2 ee Seo So eee 895 
Ma taiOl inertia... 40.0.5). 455-s65- 36.22 552 
(OT Seth. | Oe nee ae 307 
SA te ot 25 Lae oie hn 2 Oe 491 
Sener ug nope seme 895 
UL GRE Ee Cai he a ae A See 278 
Remmesi Orting 2.06 cnn ewe lee oee 113 
Cape Mendocino-.-------- 114, 116, 142, 147, 243, 558 
TWAT AIMIO + dens ace ek ee 719 
ETON EVOlete ee ee ae tec eae ee 545 
RermpiarinieciOn 4.2 owont<=-c-a~oec~ ce Jee 545 
ESE) Oe ek an Rp ee Se ee 621 
ORS a i al a a emer ee 553 
1ST ECy he iS aie meinen eae ieee! Fee 895 
Perriitinar AOU sos 22 sacce<nenpnmoe essen 923, 924 
Mergcines BLAS... 24-o~ oo weg doe 902 
Seth, ee tee ee ee ee 711 
Cia Feige a aa seeder ee en 551 
Og EA) ee ee eS 568 


3625°—25t——_63 








Page 

SOBA ee eon ee oe een eae 553 
Graslamayvoniie ss speeee sia 8 ese ee 895 
BRS O ae ee et ot ee SS RT gin ee 212 
COC Set ee ee Me Eee ee OS 895 
UA ge ee ee ey. 614 
astro MOUNG 4 eee ee 2 Re 923, 925, 929, 932 
AEWA Geen te tee ee, eee 801 
(Gay IISes 2 52-3 eee he Le ee 895 
cine GT Ogi se oN sk 339 
SENTOE VENG yees 22 2S ne SE ne 480, 483 
(Ghacog pas 24s salen fowl Aes 2 Bee 895 
ClntchaciGnsnaewe py. © on gee a een MRE ee Bl 
CMa SITTO: Tote ees se eee ee ee Ee 165 
OTA cee ae ie Raat oe Mee Phi kt ae 231 
Gialpar sw OUlah ates meer, ae ee 789 
Givalcdebi-NO.ceemeter s% ok fone te aad 445 
@hakane-su'e Aes Mentos cee etd Ke 445 
@hakornmn Ont 2: See 2o8 bee ole i See 165 
TSI TEL ee ee a oe eps Punts s te 648 
(ah a RHIN Gb ee = oe eee pers Pen a eee 789 
@hglanghawilexe~<e- = pe ee ees oe ee 234 
OL GIIT KAW iy) Chee es = eee bee 99 
(Shain kawiteewsna ee hie ele ee 231 
CW Amis! SARs eee: 5 eee 491 
Ghanchelulla= tha wet Ok eee 895 
Changichnish. See Chungichnish. 
Wha Dat See Beet ae i ei a ek ee ee 394 
Gharleston Peak #25" see eee 596, 760, 788 
@hauchila.. 4 eee ee ee 443, 484 
@hanishak tye tkee a2 es eens td See 230 
(OD GUN e ae on ae Se a a ee eee 621 
Clhedtl-1a-pomos eet oe eee eae 228 
Ghedilna-pomOs sassssseece ss 2 al eee 230 
(Chater ols pete eee, Meme eee ee at ee Se Ree eK. 232, 236 
Cheibt- panes sss 4 tier des da ot ee 607 
(Ghemrdekoudin tease sss ae ae oe ee 129 
Ghieka yl. Ses 7 bh oA) eee ee 484 
@heleh dantvertes<e? se s25040 5 eee 145 
hielh elles: dates des Aee tok ee 219 
@heinegu Geese. 264 ees 3 has s Se 593 
Ghemogue.@Ua jal ae eee ee ee 593 
hammers Savintaas sees. sass e ee ee eee 593 
@hemeniovisees sere eee oe ee oa tenon BIT, 

582, 590, 593-600, 786, 877, 883, 895 
@hemehtiewls Valle verse sos s=saoeeee = 594, 595, 726 
Ghemeuaba see tse = ne eee tee 593 
@honp0-s6l eas tas se a ee ee ee beh 356 
Gen ORR Mot des Ss oes oat ee ae BS 356 
Cierahota sweet sere Soe eee ae 799 
ODer nk wer ee aera es eke cee ae et 138 
@iterokivoech ka ease ee ee 115 
Gherrihquiul eee se eee hen te See 138 
@heshanmMes sere se toe bee ee Soe a See 124 
@hestlishsesees eee 22 8 Ae ee i 124 
Ohetman oulch=: Sot sses2 cee ee eee 212 
Ghowillindincest e-e- 22 26 eece oa Gi 
CHiey alls sere ease oes i eee 482 
Onan aS 6 eee ee Ee eek ree 484 
Chavankot-kyanhanteuweweeewes aes eaeee 151 
(OJ ene iL ete ee ee PRB toe eee Seer eee eae ae 483 
(CO: Cree Ka ee ee eee 392 
(hidepuish’s Lebo sa22 foes Woeset teen 480 
G@hididiknawasies So 222 eee 482 
Ghikeiniisigectee. 8-2 ee SR ee 394 
ELA sie ee Se eee eR OE 137-141, 883 
(OSaitaabs Ui; 2p oe I eee 109-112, 280, 876, 883 


976 


Page 
Ching Oreck 2eneeee cee catar sce Lee ees 100 
Ohineguisme..2eeemose ne eee eee NE REE He 491 
Chingichnichw oecseet eres see eb eee oe 622, 638 
@hinigehini ch yas eee eee see key ee 636, 637 
LO) aWk ca cet Mamee Chak 9 ony, Seg ern eee ye SAME a 99 
COINS Hots eee eek Sete uc doe oUe eee 99 
GBINnGOKAN ‘Stock «200 va s.bere os 55s Se sae 913 
OHinolewianee aus ee eee eee OE vee 116 
@hisko-kaly qe: sucesken eet as tae ee ee 151 
CHittatioht cere: et okie doe i Sees eee eee 480 
Ohitatowokiigec ae soe ee ee ete tee re 286 
Chitisbide-kall 20 els ere a ae 234 
CRUG ase ee ee Le epee tis een 482 
COREY UL DG-VO. ete eee ea eee ee ee 612 
Chiwaimeld jigs sees cs. pee aoe ee eal eee 345 
Chochhantik cas sous Sena fe co ne ee ner mens 163 
(CHOCUY Olicnnwiaced. ceeheue ee pete aene 274 
Chidentinne...-5 weceeek Bolas e eee nee ee 895 
Choholchwedingaas2sesse. seers eee aienane 18 
Chointinnh 20s. aku pe cee kee eee 474, 480 
WHOUMO CE re oe Be as ee ea ee 482 
hom OK S222 Sea ee eee ee ee 482, 491 
Chokishen@e. 6: com eee hae chee be ae es ee 621 
Chokot-kiyahange.s.2. 94) oe) oes eee 151 
Ghokowishoie2-k Joss 52 eo ee ae One, 482 
Cholames 222 seem eehee ees Steed wee oe eee 547, 895 
Cholame @reeke eee see oe ao ke eo eae ae 547 
Cholovommnecn22.0 so oe eke" sean hs ems 486 
Ghomechadilae ys 2 ate aa. os Sees tale ene 230 
Chowchilla see oo.) ee ee ee OL Se ie 895 
@howchillagh ver sete ae nei een 443, 484 
WOR OW Le sees SON es ee 621 
CHOW HOZUG 35 So5 255 oo ech ce 491 
GOP ISEUN Gi ee foes iar Sy ee a 231 
MN CuUMINeS Ley Ses eee Ae pees iene 445 
CONUEM CU Soe eee Tee ee gee eR aE Oe 394 
Whusichechwelate sss a2 nea ee eee 116 
@hukaimings.9 a pena ene, nen ene 480, 585 
@bhukchan ative sees set sete oie eats. *! 482 
Pau Chansh. 85) ket ce ee 475, 481, 492 
\CALWOU EH ae balit meu pepl pee een eb SU Foe ig ue 485, 486 
Ghul gon. eee Aoki al eerie” kadar eoneee Reena 231 
Claim as hee eee 552-568, 575, 876, 883, 885, 886 
Ch tment font Pea Se gh ee 307 
numetOKO 2s ete eee sa eae a eae 444 
Shun eiehimish eee see 567, 568, 622, 656, 668, 714 
CRunOtachl a a Noe Mae, Pree ie gage 491 
CUDA ce hoe ae ee ee ee eee 483 
CRU ee oe oo oe neha eee na 483 
Ghupeanes a: So soi i See ee ae ON 445 
Chupiskoto-2 fo ach ee ees a eel 345 
OCHUDDUTONG Aso cae ee ee 445 
QuurUp-10. sce eee ee 356 
CMT valia katate eb eae ee: heen ee 444 
Chwaltalkets ens. 2 ene vias, vor ee Sama giias Jie 11 
Chwaregadachitl given eae 2 se eee eee 116 
@hyichnanineadin gs. sae ee ee ee TAL 
Choa kitt p22 5.0 ey on Bee. oe > Mee ee eta eee 553 
Cinente 2. wees ood tes coe ee oe 553 
Gtear Creek .2 esa) oie ewe ee 99, 100 
Clear tice 2 lis 0 ye ee eee oe a 166, 


167, 219, 222, 224, 226, 227, 228, 231, 236, 237, 
240, 241, 242, 243, 257, 272, 304, 318, 323, 353, 
357, 370, 490, 933. 


Clovers@reek. tee canes eee eee 339 


GENERAL INDEX 


Page 
Coachella... tS eeeoeeeneetebee eee 706 
Goahtile\cncei Sc eee eee ee 693 
See Cahuilla. 

Coahuila: Reservation =—. 1222. oe ee eee 694 
Coane ie ote se Geta, Stee. eat 798, 803 
Coarse Gold.Creek . 222220 7 See ee 481, 482 
@oast Miwoktwen eis: we ceees 272, 273-278, 876, 883 
Coast RangedMountainse 5.052 e sale eee 160 
COastiiat Kies Ue wuts eee 211-216, 876, 883 
CObayi tee ee ee 602 
@ochimis Aye ee 709 
@oconoon.28 oe ee ee eee 485 
CocOphise ks eee 709, 742, 744, 786, 796 
Wegultac 2 cvcecs bes see ee 480 
Cohochs is s.0 eae ase A eee 491 
CGohota 44 2203 bc 802 
ONG 837g SA Slee = ae eg Ree ee eee 783, 798, 803 
MOldiCteck saseoc ee eee 230 
Gole: Creek 3322 Soke ee eee 219;) 2207228 
Collayomis se 3 ee 895 - 
OLOC BoM dads cont edad ate gk 553 
CG GlOM as kee ee ee 895 . 
Colorado River__. 594, 595, 709, 726, 781, 802, 902, 913 
Colteche, ye. 28! 2a 491 
Cohimbiatkiviens..42022 2 ee eee 326, 335, 913 
Golisad sou biden aos oa cieeehoe e 359, 895 
Comatyah: Sas. Sons She Oe ba re 724 
Comanche cre ee 589 
Comanche Creek 2) on foe 612 
@OMeY a oo) ne eee 723,798 
Oomoystzusl)). 2G. eS eee 798 
CONCOW ost eee eee 895 
Copelian stock. -.... /c..2=.:00.5 Lee 355 
Cortina... .sh.d=52222550 0 ee eee 355 
Cortina Valley... /.-..<51.0.. i222 
Cosnilt...- iu. iS sss. 895 
COS0jo4eeu te ee ee ee 895 
Coso Mountains_- 22: .2.....4.. Gee 590 
Coso Valley... es oe - §90 
@ostanoans 4 sete reese 462-473, 876, 883, 885, 886 
GosumMNES,_ veo hs Se 895 
Céstmines River... ls eee 442, 443 
Cotati ot Soo ee ee 895 
Cottonwood Creek __-__--- 166, 353, 354, 481, 482, 590 
Wotton woodisland== ae sseenes 594, 595, 596, 726 
Cow Creek xustcstp kas e ee 339 
COYCOV 505s. ohn cal ccey eee ee 554, 
@Coyeheten.¢ 5 3c a eee ee 491 
Coyote. soe ULE os ee 270 
Coyote Malley. 6225 oS 219, 228, 231, 238, 272 
COVY 0 igs coy so ee ee 545 
CrescentiGit ye. oe aoa eee 124, 125, 126 
Cross:Greek 213) one ee ie 483 
Cucamonga t= 2 aa wee eee aan 615, 621, 895 
Culing Stewart_22 22 oo eee 846, 850 
Cumang 26, els ee ee 803 
GA DONG 52 Sere 2 cl Jee arene ee 577, 689-692, 883 
Curtain’ {5.05.10 ee ee 355 
@utrich aus an yk ee ot Se ee 491 
Guy aM acs. a a a ee 895 
Cuyamaca ces 2 ee ee 895 
Dachachitding..s ~ 52 Sie Aas heey eee 99 
Dachapaumi-yahi. 2. ee 345 
Dacht. 3. nel ee 484 
Daggebtcecicn Bowie tet cee eek ee eee 614 


Dahauyap’ahdicontes- 2 345 





GENERAL INDEX 


Page 
MIN Which Suds i cica denen deuctivace bine 151 
BPARMBHOWHYOAWiK sd fe cc ccncceweicecdece 2k 116 
BOI e hc adkotn ec dutence ede l 115 
re ee, rns 2 aes 129 
Prmcwaserawakwe. icc. ccesccccacccancuceuce- 115 
A a Sa ae ee 219, 220 
Os ae a ee ere 117 
Pee ON cto see tes ovate gi ek octal) 481 
QT oe sae er ie 481 
a eee ee tee 116 
LL a a es 7 ae ee! 231 
EI S20 oc. D2 os brscvks Gx » os ah a'n a Vale 234 
ti” EE SR aed ae ee oe 231 
pi EO) hae A ees Scr 231, 232 
il te) OE i a ere oe 230 
MEME TIONTD ant 227 
OT SST ESET Te, pa le ee aR 9 ge 345 
URNS ese ot ode ee te Ly, 
eres Coe es ba) A ee 116 
Pe ANDIN. os 5s ns ows Soe cee ee 356 
ees Crary Deel he ek 212 
pA eke POEs a 771, 788 
PENS EO Gg ote bo So ee el 602 
SE i CLES ns a re re Sis 590 
hie, ATS a ee ee Cn Sg 202, 212, 223 
USEC es 2) oe a 339, 341, 343, 345 
EMME OUT Lf O38 see 123, 143 
OVO CO ne re 577, 694, 703 
UE OCT a Cee ieee: ete 803 
Dieguefio__ 575, 661, 662, 664, 709-723, 786, 865, 877, 883 
Berrioere s SNGISNS ois >. So ee 394 
RR gr the A No ee = dpa pet 112 
PD a re an oe ot 481 
ra eae the es ee 315, 316 
pram aey A TeGk ie oh ek ee 305, 306 
mentale Abt et bg oo oor bt Vu 
LE oe 2! 2 en oe eee eae 345 
A ee EE ie oe = ches Sega Lh PAY 231 
ARAN ee hue kk 145 
em Po SP i eek Ae kL 100 
ee ge ee le eee 145 
PS hee 9 a, 70, 129, 131 
itl sit og 8 A Res cn tee 145 
fap oy | 1 ROSS a or ere Leng 230-231 
prem ODN ae Seco et. 123, 143 
MUM ee Oa eo a du xiv es hos) 480 
FE CARCI RA Geral iss So a So Se cus ilo ok 472 
Fes ts Sa ee aa a 356 
A SDL 9, ee 275, 277, 278 
Ls) Syl eo Re lie A a ee 275 
Uo OE Si a lan 220, 232, 233, 345 
Me ore en hd eta 14 
Re ene ea oS ae 483 
Re Se ae eee ees eer ae ae 115 
OES” Lo ON ae See See eae SE 481 
he So Se SROs Geen nee ere 480 
SUMO AUINP os se 445 
CC ae SE ee a er a 306, 315, 391 
DE aS 2 ahd Ee eT 113 
OEY CSN 2 fds ee a eS oe: eee 491 
CS eS ae Ee 124, 125, 126 
0 LS 2 Ga aE ae eee ee 224 
OS Se ee Cen Toa 232 
Oca ee 6 a ee oe 545 
TI eS es ee 545 
PEN at SE, OE Re Rn ee eee 545 


Page 

POCHIRING 4 de ioat Ge BPE ct ee 125 
PMG Ges otek oO pk on. Sa 124 
WCSARS Dan ea ee oe 2 ee 491 
Peso lOty Jae ee Ta ene el 545 
den Valleys so-2 et Se Te 161, 165 
Bereryene! 22, see eee 112, 113, 115, 119, 

123, 142, 143, 144, 145, 151, 161, 165, 166, 202, 223 
ch ae MO Oe MRIS Oy gs heat 49] 
PMR WIV Ole FART eR LU nhs 8 Ek PB 10 
FOAIOl 7: Bs Se ae Se ad a a 216 
Ularee 1S. ot Beds elf ey ee eee Ae 547 
SURO Dab tel as. {eye ales BS 394 
Re ye 8 teh (cb Gee. pel: Bee 545 
Pie WONG: Petey seta Pens SOL ga te ae 797 
BEG Web cle cee keg kink ee 706 
POGABOO katoi e! eet Le. SoA hee * 3) MOPS 617 
Ger Gree Ra os ee ae ot de. Sa 356 
ihiorsde. Canyon va soce 4 Jaks co 594, 596, 788 
lia hisie: Ok 224 Tae ew eee Fhe gh oe 232 
PDO al ge Se hice t hose aA ee 553 
MRDYIAT US ee at ety ta ae ee) BS ee 552 
PD URVEGT VE eee teat ene be yy 2 ay 113,218; 233 
Ellis Landing mound______ 921, 922, 923, 924, 929, 932 
AEN ere tele ot he lary a oe ne eee Meee ae f bos 
NEED 4 dn | IC Pay ey Se OS 345 
Emeryville mound___________-_ 921, 923, 924, 929, 932 
PENIGI-K WAC AI Sanat Os oe ee ewakl ins ek ee 711 
UG TOR ee oe a Cee Wa Soe Eee aes a5 woe 100 
Ble Va eeu peaked. ih eas meso nes ol eee 621 
Giver Ralepiciv Ss. 2 yo Ue fhe ces 2 a eee secre EL 115 
LNs Si eae ve eee Ok | ace ee ee ee RSE 10 
opr wean ie an ets cooked Soi See Svaale We 545 
ape ricite: 0 We Meh ai alse eae eh ae CN 709 
pales. ste ea Poe See cee ny ed) Oe 545 
TERED er Rune ae gel aye el oy yee 480, 585 
PAN ee Pe ae aes ek he eed aie 12 2 bY len ese 286 
eC ee re ee ees eats cat Wey Be og 124 
Lee) th ce AOS ME EVs are ee eS ee 70, 129 
jg hag eae TW Oe ee ee ee eee ee 234 
{ER gap ae a eget Ee Oy eee oD; 129 
OTOL Witewe sande et), bs Se eS JS a a oe 115, 116 
PRU Rents aie sh as Jawan ee dee ee Ulf eeS 10 
SG tO), Ane See ae SUNS Mk we eee 115 
Er ey eure ee ec ert bee Sa Bel at 125 
ESP RLOr Do Or aeen seme oe oy 8 oS SL aah dh oe 10, 11, 70 
ET USS eee a eres ae We A ot ee OMS 234 
TH SCGLOU Ess sae eee eee. ae et 545 
SAN 6 a1 Ree” Seed ee POLE ne ee, 116 
SOM Oreo kere ns) ews wy eee ee 586 
JOSE) POR Se Se ee ee ee ee ee Oe 13 
IGM pigs EA Fe OO ee Bere iad Les oe Tt 
IDS uth Bika Ss 2 te See See eee et EA Bee 2! 212 
INS alae ee SE ee ee EO ee eee 394 
POS LV EP er ht ee ee nee a eek SL oa er 545 
LOGI Gai ty. en tee Oot Oa | ny 5 eee pve ee ane EE 545 
JU UGA 3 WE eee eee ee 10, 11, 14, 15, 116, 124 
HISSRIG Tee een ee oe 544-546, 876, 883, 885, 886 
HSCCRO RD ae eee ere et a pe 551 
TStOPDIOGOgd so ect She Noe ee 554 
GSPN BNCT CO Keer era es Seen ee ae ere 547 
BMLICCD IR Ree ne net OR erg. eG ee AS he a 319 
Loita crs Ok a ee eee ee oo eee S 14 
HAD aLD eee Beek pe a ees ee reel 
BLL Gee eee Oe Re eee 307, 309, 317, 476 
HI OTe Bs eee ae te ee eee ee ee eS 482 


Beatlier Riverss ves .< 222.4-5. 345, 391, 392, 476, 902 


978 


Page 
HGUZOTCCK emt Ce eee ee een Pee re 232 
HETNANO CHO see. eee Oe ee ae 556, 577, 620, 883 
HMO UP COE OUT amee a Mee en dee Sa te pk eine 706 
BING Goldk@reckss ie sane ea ote eee e vee 481 
HTT Daa te eee te ee en ae! 11 
Flonko. See Sinkyone. 
Horsyitheue reek See ae bake ee ee Pee eee 230 
PERO Tats 5.1 Wie Le seek eae att eset So et 584 
ONL COL Cte Le A Dey a Pech ee 213 
ORG REC OSS crease ne Se cee Seen eae eee a gel 234 
HOU LO] ONE wets = tee ae ee een RON Seer eee 612 
IB HAD CISCANSOISS] ONS ae eae ae eens en See ee 463 
Hreeland © lS beh cete cee creas Serene oes 259, 266 
YC CSE OT OS sean tee a eee Sey re ner ci Seta es Sa 273 
French Creek Sake ee ee eee ee ee ee 109 
Hresh water Oreck: (07 ete eee eee 113 
Hreshingater sae OO l= seer em see eee ee 72 
ETresmo. Hats 2 esos se 2 fees me a hed 482 
resno REV els 52 see eee cee 442, 443, 475, 481, 482 
Hen ena beVVOUT Falls aaa nee ee ae ee 590 
Hivttloseeay ise cee eee een eee Vee 545 
Gabehe sy oc. ote ee bees ee 231 
Gabrichino ee ae. ee 552, 556, 577, 620-633, 877, 883 
CE PEN BUSTS) 0h Me wh eA RR ips les anh SS oA A 345 
GRalveCh in {28 se See oe s.2 ante Sey eye ce ree Ae 220 
Gallina: sath fe sa ee Se on yee paler eee 226 
Gallinoimiero 22 oo Be See ees pee 226, 233 
(GAT COS ate os ieee ae sR re Oe a 803 
(Gear Cla cRaVel ema Gene ee eee eee ae 232 
Garomisopons..=5..-....-.2 Ree Pee eee a LS 553 
(PATEOUETOS 2 eer ec ee means 782 
Gashowillesti. Sat otc ae a eee ee ee 481, 585 
GalSeWAnaS eo 6 ae Cha eee a eee a ele 116 
Gatswokwitt.c2 22 ystems te ne a ee 119 
(hanyiaeey ase tae ee ee ore eee, 474, 480, 491 
(OW ACEIUL oe ern SR ae ear ee SC ee eae 484 
Ce EN TASTEN ici a ape ap Rie EARN Se ell ie a 219 
GOySCEVILCt se Ae ne ee ee eee, Sanaa 219 
CBI AS-6 Gis oe eames Ace, ere ee ae 635 
(ibecshis'? tec soir? oat Le See ot ae ay a 648 
CEILS TI De eee eek a ee AE Ce 479, 610 
Gtor du liat Wows Se eras eee er ee Vill, 238 
(HILAR LV CPe te peer eee A eee See ence 782, 799, 800, 802 
CTL TIT 1 SS eae eee ores ee pa re ee eee ee 545 
(LUGO le eee Se Sn eT cee ge) een ee 145 
Glenng ou ritiy eee ee ee ee eee ee 353 
Goddard, Dr. P. E., acknowledgment to_-___-_ VIII 
GOB OMIC est 318 2 ace bp cae ae ene 4 ea 485 
GIG BIT Re. 54: oe hale 7, eee CORN 116, 124 
Goleta sees te OMe ee oe a wee oe ean 553 
Goletamarshe ae sy. canes works Seek 1 ce eee tee ante boo 
Golomshtoks, (Hastert = she Aas me ee ee vl? 
CA OLOTIE sae 2 StS Ie We ee ee See 484 
Goose bake. 1 Abcs aces 2 oe et oo ae 305, 318 
(Goshen Sis s eke eset Me ees A panlteat sett ae Ue 483 
Grang. islands ye Jeu seo. sess sem one 2 Aree 443 
Chravdelinose sete ohh dee 3 eee se SE ae ss oe 620 
Grea teBasinas. easel ame 574, 582, 585, 913, 937 
Greenbrae mound ___..-___.___-_-- 923, 924, 929, 932 
Grindstone Greek Moros 2 en yet ee 166, 369 
GrousejCreckeis cao ok te os ese ee ee 141 
GUID See a oh ae he ie foes. PO ee ee ae 553 
Seu sh (on na chedemh me Rela eee DR Raley ek Ans tee = 895 
Gutalala: eee sa ak, Bis eel Se geen 895 
Guslala ROM 0 see oe eia ods At eee ee ee 233-234 


GENERAL INDEX 


Page 
Guaplabit sol coco. ee ecs cesses Seen eee 615 
Guatay ie es J 895 
Guay penis: 2222-2222 sok Pe ee 445 
Gudatrigakwitl. 3-2-0). 2 2 ee 119 
Guenoth on. ees. 222..c2cst fie eee 895 
GuleSiSOSl.- 22. 5455 22 oe 895 
Guilic0sie2 iy 8 See Le 895 
Gukechs. 025.22 oe ee ee 117 
GuEi. nents ee oe 231 
Gunther Island 2) sit. sca.c- 02-54 ee 928, 925 
Guthrie Creek): 2.2 242.22 eee 113 
CP YaDIPel aswel ob eae oe ee 710, 711, 895 
Habel ods. 20s ioe S suse 231 — 
Habenapo...222-..2-- 219, 220, 221, 228, 232, 237, 257° 
Hachupaits {22.0.2 ae ee 719 
Haclli_ i so02 lan vee ot cade eee 803 
eda b tum en. Saeco ke ae oie eee 229 
Hadalam 21.0. ctcceedh ee eee 229 
Hagasho-bagil. 222) oo eee 229 
HMaglive ooo ee ee 803 
Hiaghas. 2. 5 Ss ee ee 554, 555 
Haien=pom 22. 22 su5l A ee 356 
Haikalolise 2... foi s02 = 23 eee 229 
Haiwochitding= 252.5. =. a 99 
Hoalyati eee oc. 1b 3 2h ee ee 231 
Haken... 2% Fe at 8i oe te 164 
Hakisap._27.22.-22c le 719 
Hakiteges i0.2 2: see c8t $s 3 eee 115 
Plakum . 32 22.5252 2s6e0e050 ee (lige 
Hakwasike eile. 20 2 ee eo 719 
Hakwaskwak...2)...2¢22.. 2203 719 
HMakw ich yaes- tt sce la 6 26 ees. See 725 
Hakwino.t 22.5 -cstint soon eee 719° 
Halas se 28 hu ie Lo ae 478, 485 
Halchedoma. 2. 222.2-.2.. 25 eee 802 
Ealchidhonmai. sass 594, 709, 727, 796, 799-802, 883 
Healepa U5. ek 2 ee a 59 
HialfiVioon. Bayes. ese ee 923, 925. 
Hah bem 2.2 once ee ee 229 
Hall’ Créeek.o2 0268s ose Se 590 
Halliquamalla.- 1.2. 42.422522)455 eee 796, 803 
Halpéla.ics. 4.452222. sen eo eee 230 
Haluwi-talaleyutls 23... eet ee 129 
Halyikwamal: 2.1 ve5s 3: oe ees 709, 796, 803 
Hamakhava.2.-.-=-35..2) 22... = 618 
Hamewi. 2.22 oo ene eee oye ee ee Be 307 
Hamburg ‘Bars. 322 er 100 
Hamefkuteli_.. 2242) <0 95 ee 307 
Hanaupabs'. 4... 920 foe 895 
Hanchamtacl_- s052. 2.5 2.6 157 
Hanchhots 228. 52. lace. ae 165 
Ha®chhotno’m.. 2.5222. 442. 165 
Hantord.= pet. oo ee 483 
Hangtwite. 3 so ee 445 
rannesuk (3 ovbe lo. Ss ee 485 
Hantiwis coco. sop ee 307 
Hanwiztno.st 2 occee eet eee ee Til 
Hapusau iis =. 222 oe sea 443, 482 
Hapaw to 2s3eos.--6n- eee ee Le 
Happy: Camps... cescst= > ee 62, 100 
Hapshis/ eee. aes ee aes oe 116 
IH AU Vesa... tee Soo 8 bone eee 800 
Hardy: Creek "222 ce donet tae 21205 
Haro0k wii este. oot were a ee 286 
Harrakarrakas. 2) Shc. 760 
Harrington, J Pa wens eaeene ee vill 





GENERAL INDEX 


Page 
Soe nee eed ks 711 
LEEPCUC CHIN ae Sco eed le Se ce ae» 2 Oa 99, 283 
PERS TIY CHIT) 7 ese ae ee a ee 70, 129 
HEED SCP EKID de ies sa el eel an ee ee See ape ae Es 711 
CEI er el eae eS ee a 305, 308, 315, 316 
eicue pe eee So SS ae = 7tl 
ADU ONT CAD VON oe ao Se eee 617 
leh rindi aye a Sa we ee eee ee Re 782 
MU penne Vale = ek se 801 
Hatsahoto"tne ______-. i hts ta oe 125 
IS Maicelest. <.e oa. ee ee ae See Peon oes 203 
LEST QUE. 2 TE oe ee a ae 145 
REReaT ERT Ue eee = ee ee ee 607 
AU TGr OT OG Kew ak ed 234 
FEVER OULD aL eeee ee Pee ee ss Se ee 595, 709 
TEED RSID WCE oe Go See a SE gare ee 602 
TEED AA | bog: Se a es A 711 
SEtevarye ir tebe © soe eh eae heat - 5 cee eT 345 
TELS alli. 4S ese ee a A A pe ee eee an 
LE EDM UAE ety ee 232 
RMRUAIE WG USED atte eho? Se ok ae dead 125 
ve MOEKCOL Ee Tint Veli LVeren se Se ae 352 
TEMA Cap a a ee a ae ees ee ae 357 
DER Er Val ba Os mae Ae etal c Seed owe is 157 
ERGRIGS DULY O ewes 2 oS re oe 219, 220, 221, 233 
Hearst, Mrs. Phoebe Apperson... --.------.-- Vil 
EETGQ@I TEL ee ee Se eS a ee ee Bed 648 
PEI@CH Nine wee eee te SD eo eS 445 
[Blaha cl tues an Pee | pea eee een, ae ee 445 
BEETS bass tail a |) ements Se Oh 480 
13 CONS oe aa ae ep Be 445 
EEticais tl een ne eg eg es Ue a 648 
BEETS KW eC eee CS ee 710 
SENGICD trey eet ee UE he eR ee 32 
SEL UTC) me TE RE Ft 9 oh ao a 553 
VEO ek ee eae 394 
FELT DOM eee eee ete Sc eke 394 
TET QT Ag Cie ene ep vat nn oe 2h oh ae 125 
TEL GED WC ere ee int ae ree oe Ee Se Ae 10 
Te Gitete (ih. 23 VE ee ees oe OS 484 
ROR V Cle eeR EO) es oe es eae 52 
eR COMELCUCI Veee sor ou 8 a ae Se ET 895 
PTeurON CHOWaoee oree Oe i eiee er 5 2 SERS 895 
VEPEVOI ORO 2. le 5 SE ee a ce 484 
JERHO eerie) Ss SO A A ee ee eee ee ee, = 483 
ISEQOU A il otk, els ae ee ee ene ee eee ae 234 
OTA S kee mete SA oe ee 118 
IkGiinieeeas a> ek 2s ee 445 
Ed GUS are erik ee a Lk eee 115 
Tei theses bill. Sea Cee cee eee eee Seen eee apn Sea 1 
SUTIN EN eee eye SAS A bee 8, 10,18 
Te berinnc Wee) hop iee See ek eee ee ae My Spee 552 
LEGHIL 2 Son ee at oe ee a eee 124, 125, 126 
TEEWTAN ORE: A Oe oe ee ee Set 124 
CEN ep geen at Sy ep ee ho RE ee 356 
PASTING AO KCI tee Pa Fe owe PAG: 
REPEL () Sen ene bar at, he Re nee 444 
TP LL oe eee hey ete! 5524 et a a 233 
MLCT WIN Witla? Es ee 138 
Peiporauline-WInA.. 2. > Jo 22 S24 535-6 229 
Pfocunocksmegic atc. oe oa eee ote 445 
PRIS On VY eet recat So as A oe Vul 
TE fe} OWNS ean, pe ee Seg eee UES, See 11 
TEC GLC tos Bo eee ees be eee ea ee a a st ae 75 
Fe ORLISULESO Dee oak et Dr Ft 100 
Ponoenitdings.-.. ...- RE Oe STE 11 


Page 
LODO EO es i ee bee 394 
PT OU IT, seas et Peo Oe few 21 ee 480 
HOkan Tam y seen. Poe te ee 8, 


98, 109, 222, 223, 337, 544, 546, 568, 575, 709, 886 


FO kobene tee ae ye se See ee ee 115 
FHOK Os eevee oes 5 ee 8 ee ee ee 394 
Hokomows* sta. 26" 9 a 394 
EfG bern ee 7 bay. kee he ee 394 
LOL gy gcnh ic 0 Eh eae es A ee PM Gee me 595 
HTOVKOTIAN® fees 2. eo Cae Te ee tse ee 585 
pa Celbesnhiw S. © ceqore 16 hye ear ee Mery is! ” 475, 479 
FLOOR O Pasa. seer eee a. Bo end eee 345 
ELGLO Wallin eet ea ee ee ee 484 
EFOMIGEW.Oll 2b Sees ee eee ee 475, 478 
OTA eee Se ee ele 394 
TOI OAs ee ee ls ene ae 895 
{BUC MEU ADNAN Meee toe ee ae neler OEP tee, 478 
FEL OMCN than ao ee oe ee i ok Sr ee. 394, 895 
HONG COG 2a ewes) ee ee coe eee 393 
Hone wilinats eee oa =o ee, = ee 612 
Je Koyeieny BBN does. ao eee es Pe ee 391, 399, 584 
ELAN NALIN gS =e es See ee 11 
HGénmoyanshtis 2 529-6 eee ee Ho2 
IFONSa Gin oerereee oe 2 ees ee 70, 129, 131 
PONCE b Ines. eee ee ie es Ser eee 138 
HOOK 006 KOSS Se ee 273 
Hoo pas Sa Pr Ce ee 895 
BGO pa Vall Gye sa ee A ee 128 
ELOO DOR ce en er a ee ea See 703, 708 
iGO DOTS eK tak NEA Se Pe A we Pt A oe pase aye Al, 
EO; Datla Se a ee eee LEAS 
EO Dea ta dj ieee eee eee See ei eee ee 129 
0 ieee ee ee ee ge 577, 595 
EHO Dla GeV alle vos sane see ee ee ee 232 
TIS DROM=KOV 02 eee see ee oe 393 
ETO POCO; ee = ae te ee ore Se ee 518 
Hopperm@ reckon 2: 2) 2) es oe oe eee 234 
FLOrsea@ ree ka fa) ise k oe Gas oo pee 305, 315 
Horsevbakes se a5. 2. <i ee 316 
ETOTSORANUO mes et ee ee ee ee 129, 895 
POS Se See 2 5 ee eee 124 
HOSCHI Saas Re Ph ee a 479, 482 
Host] Grae aes th Ble. oe) re ae 129 
HOG Sprin Cs Bee ee oe ee eee 590 
HORS pring sp Vialleya5 = ee eee 307 
Hoterandin gt Sh 22 eh eS eee 11 
RO GUT LTT ee oe ee Se eee 11 
LORIE LN Ot ee ieee ee ee Se ee Lig 
RiowkKsorek Wee’. = a eee ee See Lr ee 7 
LOW alle kee ree = eS oe le eS 231 
ROW es sn ee 129, 131, 135, 138 
LORY eee ee Ce en ee ete eas 5o2 
ERG Vilma, re ee a ee ee 232 
TE COM ANOS yn SES Se oe a eS 484 
ETT ec) re oe 8 Be ee 491 
EAS eee oe eee gen BRI dase EU Seg 552, 895 
Eehnoniees ee ee eS ee 202-211, 883 
JENGA. Syl a ee Slee, OI En eA ee ee 231 
DE Ubleralsinoleee © kop ts ae eee ee Oe 553, 895 
ERY Gat eta ec Oates ee Fa ee 895 
Eirias = eee oo be ee eee 555 
Burititno eee 2 as # eA ee 161 
ELISA De ta yee ee ee es 233 
TAT ALSe eee ee Se ee ee ee 782 
Ball Creek fas ees ae ae ee eS 151 
Hill ville ee ee ee eee 166, 202, 203 


980 


Page 
er ue ee ee eee Pe ee ete 444 
ERG PUM seat a eee ee oe he 444 
ETAT GAS Kae em eee ney ecg on ae Ape 164 
CL OU Se ies soe Ae he She ee Late ee te Ce 232 
FUN Es See ee Se ee ey 445 
Finn DolLdts ha yee eee eee 61, 112, 115, 118 
tim bold iG ount yee tee ase eee 124 
PRIM AC ieee ee Nee es ee ee ee 478 
Pl CHI Kas Gere oe Shy Paes Oe ees oe 553 
‘Hunala pas) See te 2 Ee eee eee 648 
Euanehisutakecets = S26 see te ie ee eee ee 163 
TERRI OE & oink ere ed oe Se oe oh 445 
Phmkalichi as 228 20 2 Te sea, soe eee eet ae eee 166 
Hunter, Creekig == 2 ot eae See eee 590 
Ds lhhornet A samen ewe ed, sala 128-137, 864, 876, 883 
Mu pa. Walley sie a Se oe a 128, 143 
LPO 6 Ae ae oe year oe ee Se 130 
BIsShKii 2.9. S552 eee. Soe ee See eee PAD: 
AG arSU sees Se ee ee ee 445, 
Buwunkits on be ee ee ee 124 
ER Vaks. Sk. ae eS ath SA eee eee es 552 
ERWaS9)2 6.9 oe ee seo ee 124 
Fiyam poms... 22 a ee ek ate 356, 895 
Cal ike] kate os epee eee ek ee el 614 
FAQ sae te eee 2 5a RS one 895 
haiqua: Butte 222340 2s ah ee eee 141 
Tee Ch 62h ree: Se eR Otel Sie eee ae 232 
NCHeN Te ces :-2 eee Vee be 2 lee Sen See 545 
TEN ACLOld So Seem yee Ee ee ee 273 
fas hire alls MR ue remanent Pee tebe te SS 286 
ao AI Saki) Via ee ar eee re 151 
WEECAI ios 4 yee oe ye oe eee 286 
Liana ai Pee Ae aniehee vi Se Se eae! bee ae: 2 116 
Kwame ke 4s otis SS eed 2 ek ae Pen BUM 99 
Hamnes eigen ee ee See ee ee 445 
TG Wal fetes eee Ree ke oka ee 307 
Inmichshotsis-2s ta eka So eee ees 152 
Tnperial: Counbyis sae eee eee 594 
Imperial (Valley ee se ce ce ee ern 709, 719 
Timitomol 22a: Wee eer ek ee eee 152, 165 
AIO fs ee cee ei 3 eee Ro an eee ees 895 
lin oe tea oe 14, 70, 100, 101, 102, 104, 304 
| GaYeje) bh oy) Peewee ae ree eee eee 553 
AW aYo EH ca Oey oaeaee tees Ae, 7s RAS RS ee x 8 394 
Inidenendencet 22s teen ene eee eee 586 
Indiant@rec kre aes a eT ok. eh eee 294 
Indian; Valley ate 3 oe Se 398 
Imdian aWiel Sai ciecaeee seo Sheets ee 694, 706 
Imdim bichse S225 oS 1s see ee 480 
Tinie 2 Se Serle yt cee ech ee a 694, 706 
Initiate-of-the=Warth. 2 sae ee eee 270 
Jinottak. 50 a: Meee le ee 100 
Tnomasi 2 3 ee ee th ae ae ads 711 
LOAN tO. Ae Soe eee ee ate 394 
FEchecehel ids) ee eee LN SS i Re ees ee 711 
Ti VOSe se el ee Sete ee eee cee ee ee 895 
Tri yOeCOuUnby = ee ee 586 
Lh) Ce ee Ee eee rats Famer rte es OES 710 
Tron Bridge's 426 seo 2 eae ee eee 480 
TY UA LOS tobe ae ele ee EI Se 286 
TSan Gdn 6 on eee en ae eee ee ene 621 
[ahh Site A free eee maa 343, 344, 345 
Tshipishid pails Slee ee toe ao Yeo 33, 100 
Ishkeishahbachips. <7 20-2 e eee nsec ee see 33 
Tsui? . See dk ee ee ae et ee 286 
Eshumipiee G22 oie Bese cesta eee 286 


GENERAL INDEX 


Page 

Isla dela‘ Posesion_-.----2-2 2224 2e2-eee See 
Tami!.2:. 2. 222i. Sas eee eee 307 
Ttayab.ivto:. elie Oe ae. Poe ee eee 286. 
Ttiwtkhaus.96-0 4: cts'. 222 ee see 286 
Tvanpabyen «igi eb. 5252 inde eee 895 
Ivanpah Valley. 2: --22 222.8 -52--- eee 595: 
Iwatakiies. cous 2352. ¥ssSos ee eee 100 
WWaoterd sence osecolsds. see 621 
Jaboneria..ci:- -ss2s5: 2436s. Ae eee 621 
Jack -W.ilsOnsei Seek cee eee c. 8583 

See Wovoka. 
Jackson.-V alley 22225-25522 5358. 282 eee 212" 
Jacoby: Creek 224 seen eens 45225.) 42 118 
JacuM ba 22) 2 e2ese sie peal eee eee 
JacumbpatP ass 229s 24 2s SEU s Ss eee 711 
Jacumba: Valley ss: 22022 lesen eee eee 719: 
Jalaiid 685. S2ob2 cada ee eee 895. 
Jalched tines. . -aslsc4 <2 saat a2 eee 799 
Jalliquamay S2essse 2245225522552 796 
Jamacha-ces-) ssh siden lest Se eee 895. 
Jam ee ae el ek ee ce ee eS 
JADDSYONSS Sos ss see =e eee 545 
Jenigueche s22s252¢ ss28eses eee 617 
Jesus Creckiv 2st. = eee 151 
JoOlOnSE RAY a 255 tasccebcesesl 2 eee 895 
Jones, DrePhilip Millsee- 22225222232 vit 
Juan Rodriguez. 2 2S eee 555 
JUANGNO Bae eee ee Sess 556, 577, 636-647, 883. 
Julpunes® 2s cece wien Jedi 445 
Juristee 2220-22. Se eee 895 
JULUDAS Ses es ees erases eee 895 
Kee’ S25 ee oes eee oe Se ee 75 
Ke arler ess so 8. 52 4o eases Sa eee 70 
Kabel icsoseo ig DS see ee 231 
Kabestilah 8 sscssess0os3) Sa eee PALAL 
Kabinapek 3.2 Se 2 Se ee 228, 232: 
Kachabidas-ses22 25552 ees eee 230 
Keachakee 9c oo ies 23 S50) See 230 
Kachewinaehn kee oes a See ANS 
Kachwunding «2036s cose ee eee 129 
Kachyoyukuche) 442355555 eee 552". 
KeaGiti sane sats a he see ss 4224s 230 
Kishosadi a .atece. 425 eo See 286 
Kahpa 5232022 Sete Bed a eee 648 
Keahtetl ge ct ee ee 129 
Kahustabding. 222. oli: 24-4222 4. Se 
Kabwalaviae Sens. 2233252825 232 
Kaialauwa ens losses Sess Eee 895 
Kail. pee 8 ayes ies = ae yy 589 
Kaikiche-kdivasesss4s2. 2 eee 15iey 
Kaikisdeke! 2c Seseg sel Soe eee LY 
Kailuhwehengetlding 2: 22525 ea eee 138. 
Kallubwtahding > 24%.) 32> ee eee 138. 
JCoI MUS Serre aoe Bo 218, 221 
Kainamero: 522242 seccbsssecessasass eee 
Kali pomo22.J.c2- se 154 
Kieitimtl sook ws ah. 2's Eee ee. See 445 
Kai wit essa) 2 ee 345 
Kaivanunga vidtkk wets ee eee 584 
Kaiviatam Sexe eee 617 
Katya 222 a ae ee eee 231 
Kalye-kivahang 2003-03.) ee ee 16h 
Kakahula-chigee sat SN See ee 445. 
Kalailicen 2c ose bs 3 ee oe ee 230 
Kalanoigu2.26e. 3 io le eee 232: 
Kalapuyan stocks. 3220 ae 913 





GENERAL INDEX 


Page 

TA MESS US i 9 ie Sn a Ds 394 
PROMI ete eee See 230 
UO eS a a eee bp! 394 
ATL ER C70 a tp ae: 0 ee ee Oe en eee 6: 711 
ental eee oe Be ee ee a 232, 23 
ROUTE OME no) Mee Lee ee oe 694, 

709, 710, 712, 719, 720, 723-725, 742, 786, 796, 803 
UTTAR CCH Sipe ae Soe i oe 710, 720, 725 
COUNT Ral cite Suey Road: eg nn sel Bele S88, 232 
ORSINI WAS ee eS ke Y 286 
SPCC eo. Se a oe ree elas Te 552 
VO Lees 2 2 UR aaa aa re Sane eae, ae ane, = 723 
OTD ATIO MAY Ae. ees eel. oe ee 151 
RAG OUMR yee Petes ea 2 Nk i eS 345 
LS MOAI a Se le ee ee ree oe SPD 7 394 
Gen it eee eee A a eg he 445 
DO et Se Se Sea mee. Bk be 73 
TSU a Si Os Ses Se es Fee eens be oat 356 
SCT Ge. OE SE ee ee aa 98-108, 281, 864, 876, 883 
SSS Fa ds Eee LEE) as ho a 165 
[ROPES ETO GG ETO Re Sie Mrting Mer re SER eae eee Pee 165 
eGOIT VAL Ae oo Go = so te 70 
STARR OCG (08 ace nc ee ee 228, 229, 232 
Gis le een Ne get ns ga eek ioe Stains os 2 553 
FRASHALKOSIMALVG 2 S23 Seo Lee een 151 
ASTI TULA pcr sient ge Fo Foor” an a ee 445 
SA TAI Ree ee ee ete at et Fn ee 482 
LSS Oh Gs pee ee 37, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105 
[SOON PUTO UESN Ta nen te gga tee age ee ee 99 
TECSES103.(G BSI HITE 2, ppt ecg a pp pe i 116 
SGI. hs 7a 2 De ee mee as ee 154-158, 876, 883 
USS SOE GESLINSY 6 {OS 5 eae SE ae a eae 229 
runt oA ee es oe AA 445 
CESEG EL: ee, 2 a ee are ee Dei 
eC ACOM 5 eae ie a ee 617 
ROU ED RUD TAL ed Iw a Se ie et eS 232 
A ORETN et Ws ts Pe 232 
icant yOkIS-Nunding..2 0 =. = es 11 
LROeT TES. okies Eo ch, Re oe oe ered od oy 100 
PM TICHIGN AE eer ec ae tek ee 595 
RIGA ee eee oe we Ne 694 
PCr QTIS UL oe 2S 577, 580, 590, 594, 595, 601-605, 883 
eM he NUS <p HER Lo ee 710 
LOST EE ee Sy Os ee ea ae PR te 117 
ei eee ee ee eee 895 
Kawean River.=..-..=-- 474, 476, 480, 482, 585, 586 
LEGIT oe” 5 a 2 a rel ee ao oe 480, 693 
TCR CADIND Se ee = ee ee 5 eee. 445 
TRCUGALS LT ARIES eh 9 pp ag ae Oe EN 694 
IR ERE. ht a eee Se eee ge =e 618 
LPO nian -_ =p ee ee See eee: 648 
foetal emcee toe eee ES se A ee 481 
TALON _& ace, 5 SR RUE eg ae eae ee 648 
GA) MN eee ee ne ee oe 74 
IPRS Ci deg >. SS eres eS et apr ans an Se ee 8 
EVEL. Ss aa Pen Sp gen Ss Seneereheee So eee ae 648 
TEAST IGN af SS RD SNR PRR ROSE Chee 895 
Weokaweake (reek 3. st oak 143, 151 
CLE ATURE eo see oe 484 
BGRISe ROOK Style 8 oe ee 220,.221 
WIE is A ne ee 232, 270 
THES LES Ad Oe aie eng ek ane 130 
1S VETTE LE See Se ee oe Ren Speen ae 70 
G1). a ee 7, 8, 10, 11, 25, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 83 
ACUATNOK (SELES Se ee Sa RS hei 8 


TREVOSE aS ec Re at 895 


Page 

RB eae a oe a in Se 895 
MSSTV OUI Mra hte + Bas an cents 2 a eo SO 129 
PRS ns fe Soh Re eo FG or a 100 
RSP Gleets te 555 ee soe So oe ee 8, 
10, 11, 14, 16, 17, 18, 53, 58, 59, 69, 70, 72, 102, 105 

ACOTIALES a2 tes 8 el Sy St eS ee ee 59 
ISCTORINGD Ket aoe sis od oe ee, Ste 75 
ROBOT VICI cs Be 48 Wy aa At SUC ate 129 
ierrit Wali Sapte gi eA 5 ol 2 “479 
PRE Ina iak Gates ot Go 8 ea Bare ee ee 478 
COT GRU CRS a yee 475, 476, 576, 577, 602, 607 
Kern River Shoshoneans__.._........._--- 577, 605 
COTTE GILL CES Wate pL hep ap Hoe 2 os Ma a ae 607 
ies SP) 2 eee oe Sees A ee as 445 
CRS KES a eek danke let eS i ee 10 
PA GOEL E cee kee ce eet he Che ae fh yey ie 212 
1euatre Seer 2e eae ee ee Oe Seen etal 445 
KewG-N0.AGano eo etole eee ed Se ee 445. 
KiG Wel timate: oat cote. ae EN PR oe 64 
HewetsWLOUN TAIN G3. ee ee ees 57, 74 
PE SSESSEAIE] pe terrae el rane a ST, $e RG Bes a ay 480 
BC Cte ee ae ers Be a ee St A Se 607 
IGG vec CN a eee eee tn ROC MEO, Mitreiean hte 895 
CT GIST UCIT 0 oe et ee ed 710 
TCH GN UISNES 205 ee ee ee ee eS et, a 480 
LECciNe ah ele mes aN wee Dek eee os ae ee 8 165 
Reaichili komm ues es aoe eee 165 
PT GST ese eae I ag ae nee 286 
Gab sake Sie eS Dee we, aie ey ee 4 eee CD 796 
Gist oyrading Sesacc peek A ee eae cee 72 
KOEI ae aie a nts ee eek Ae 145 
GW CalH 3. 8 piney reat DRONES 1p Ae eee ee Oe PED 164 
GI UINOAI oe ae 8s ae eek ee 165 
CL EW iene eich Ge ere: Pe, ce pec ee 709 
alaievoding sexton) 3 0b o bed eee 99 
GATS OV ee ene eS nee pe ee 895 
Kanshontandings 2... 222-2 sel. see 138 
nS DMIChi est beet eee te ee eee eee 552 
Im CHT yal ket Sie eee 2 Ale bee 2 oe 129 
Rancksvyoldiga ss = een ele tet oe 138 
Kanes Riveises soe 475, 476, 478, 480, 483, 484, 585 
FSM St OTe eee ee ee len tke eae 483 
Kangstons\lounbains = 222 == == eee eee 595 
TAN SSvTOMMENAN SOL See we eae ee we Sees 594 
Heine vik OmMlUng ae eee le eee 138 
LGhilats Se eee ee eee ae | oS yess ed 621, 649 
Ramin aneci be ae eee te eee 621 
Reranch ok ee Se ee 345 
Khatri Onelodd € eerte bi 8 et oar cds SPOS 803 
FO OU GOGs shee ee eee ee eee See 231 
KG DAV Uae ee ee ee 480 
FCA ICS Reet Ene Gi ead ane ee be A oe 394 
ME AIO ee pe ee 577, 611-613, 883 
Kabaneniitke servanOe fase see ae ee 595 
ent ATO TLIC tee ee ee 694 
| Roa ac sty eae ee te ee ee Dense Ree Bh eS 5 445 
Gil WEIN IS ay ae eee Se oe ee eee Fine 
{Sue kes | ays eee ete ee Se Pee See SS eee 72 
Keaweshonamegerotiss 22.2.0 =. ot. eee cee es 74 
aan athe eee eee Ue coc coe eee 895 
KigmatbncakOecceopee leak tae eee 318, 319 
lamin ialgakes: 2-2. soe ck et ee 321, 325, 913 
Ramah Us Wia te bo ere eee oe eee 318, 319, 324, 325 
LET a aR Nag BOR aie Oe Be ie ee ae ul 
6, 8, 28, 51, 84, 116, 280, 286, 287, 294, 318, 902 

Ralammathr River eee 8 oo eens 99 


982 


Page 
GlAmMAtHE UL Deze eee Osean ke ee 318 
emt Kan Clipe see e se ete eee kd te ee 322 
PRGA CS Wil to tee eee ee eee kee tit LE es oe 124, 125 
iKkKmeclandeerairies. 2=s2 oe ot ee ee aLilay 7 
Knewoleteu™ Wemee ve a pt a ee Je ees 75 
KI PH tS eLh years =. eo eas es eee 485 
TKS GS ey Cn eae oe eee re 385 
NCODLC Ree ae ee et ees ae 230 
ICOCH GY ali Sane s se eee eel ee ee eee 481 
COCOA etree pet ee ae ee ed Wnt 0, Ee 232 
NO GO VAIO ee wea aetna ee See 183 
Moh eS SF se 8s Be be th i hed be Oui BEE 394 
HOH ORCS 2st = eee eee |e ee eee 593 
On pCi same aero See ree Oe a dae 13, 124, 125 
ARGON GI ike oe eee eee eee lee oo re 145 
KOH OLAw a eee one ra ee eee 70 
ICOWtSAWEUSEL. =f tee Oars ee ol eee 75 
Kohtse wets ene ee oe eh ee ae er ee 75 
Kohuana_-____- 594, 709, 742, 744, 783, 796, 798, 799-802 
Kghvotiz=s.. 43. tie sce cat oe 2 484 
KO WaAlt=t Ms 2a 2 See ee Be eee eee 648, 710 
OH Walton oe fete oe eens Aen es Sty eee we ee 730k 
AK Olio eee. ee a ae 232 
CONDE 222 Peek on Pou 895 
Kokohebaseeu. Fist eh. Pie ee Soe oe ee ee 585 
Kokomattce - 230 Se = e582 eee 789 
ok witl M228 ae on ee et A aed eee eeu 711 
Kolin ne 2 ey er eS oe ee oe ee ee 188 
NG eA Sie MN ea A er See Bese! 553, 554 
AKOLOKO Sets are = ee ae Bao fe. ee 220, 233 
TCOlO-IN1A 2 Bae eo ee ee 394 
KIOMACN OL ee a ee ee eee eee a 231 
KOMaChO-POMOscer ss toss ee eee eee 231 
Kig mp0 sree sis. NEL kre ee 2 Sn eee 342 
TCOMG S22 at eine on cee Oe ee ees 648 
OTN Tere es ee ee oe A ee 231, 235, 236 
FCOMONMEMUG= KU VU K oe ee =e eee 203 
COTO GA Sete: Skee oe ta, May |e gs ee 760 
FOOT tals See a eae Cee ek ree 2 ee a 443 
ACOn Kat Bt es ee i eee hee ee eee 394 
KON O-11 Kin Bek Seale a Pes = a tae ce 482 
FOONOMINU se Cee a ee ee ee 280, 283-284, 883 
IOLOMEN ob aS en = Sere... er ee eee 99 
KiOuOLODstses se ae 8, 10, 11, 16, 18, 19, 25, 51, 52, 59, 62 
Koshkatinik 2 ) 83 23221 eee a eee 145 
ACOSO see de oe a te ee Ree Lael Eee ee ee tn 589 
IKIOSTMIGAS Soe ete een ee ea ee ee 485 
KOSOE See 3th. i Aue VP SEN eR 577, 586, 589-592, 883 
KeOso=Banamintses 24566 8 ees eee eee 595 
Kiosolmuno-ntl 222 o_o eee a oe ee 445 
DC O-COSL 2) whet MIME Sys SU Sener deep eee 393 
FCOCLING a eee fee te os ee Le ae eee 355 
KcoOuSNOMOta Te see see ot ee See ee ee 219, 220 
FGotoplanase whet ee ee a ee eee era 445 
KO UST Sa Pee a so coe re aa A eet 115 
Kowichkow1cho -a ene ae ee eae eee ene 481 
Keowishal attests oo aden oN ae ak eee 234 
ROWOMMU 4s 8ee 22 5 pen ee) a ana ee 482 
KG yet Qe oo oO to ee eee 482, 491 
AC OVULW O-Kim one 2b See tee te ae ees eee 444 
Kitlonech Ka." 9" 2 8 2k. fe a ee 116 
Kbahmore: 2630222 2 sock eee eee 233 
KiChavigtam See ee ne i oe 618 
KGGiChi anda visas vee ae cee = ee 782 
Cun a=1e pO. eee ee eee 228, 229, 232, 237, 257 


Kuhblanapoits-. oksese eee ae eee 221 


GENERAL INDEX 


Page 
Kika. wanse ee. 2 22 wee oe 686 
Koulakal .°- 2. ee ee 230 
Kulalamae:* 92 co" eas Oe 552 
Kulamu: 23.230. a et ee 445 
Kulanapan stock.s..2 0.22) eee ee 228 
Kqilayapto vice... eee ee eee 394 
Kulkumishi!s. 25. 23220. ee eee 394 
POOIUUL I 6 eee 445 
Kumachisi.. cls 2 aoe ee 479, 482 
Kumaidada. 2... 2.005 Aes 116 
CUMS WC? 22 gone eda 13, 100 
KumbateAte es. 2 oe onee tee 319 
Kumshume. | ...to.o. 3 ee eee 163 
KUNG. 2c A eee 895 
KoUnUSU seen fc oe ee ee 445 
Ko pats sas 2 ee ae 689 
Kupacha: 2522.22 28 23s ty Oe 618 
Fourpacham 22) 2s a 618 
Kish wee. Ses es Re oe Se ae 398 
Kyshna.. 2 osteo See 394 
Kusta. 2022 oo ho eee 286 
Kutsastsus....92 20 38 Oh ee 286, 
Ku yamuzt< "2. Soe ee 553 
Kilyebisio 2s. foo oe 482 
Kalyoi. 22. A eee 482 
Kuyui-dikas. 2.0 ?s) 2" 2 eee 584 
Karyuka-chi x82. 2 eee 445 
Kwalams.2222o8 2 ke 3 See 648 
Kiwalhwit io sos. es a eee TAL 
KwaniSa-Viteo2 2 ete oe eee 636 
Kowasttk.2 22... 2 ce a ee 286 
Kewich Vana. acto 2 eee oe eee 782 
Kowikapace 2o..cce aloo). dee ee 710 
Keworatem= 0 ee a ee 100 
KwiltS: 22 2 ee ie ee 589 
Koyincko8 = ee ee ee 145 
Kyintigesoik02. 2) eee ee ee 145 
Ky0l..t232 4 ee eee 150 
Kyuwitleding..2....2..42 22 eee LAR ae 
Wa, agune. 2 Oe os ee 710, 711 
Woe IMGeS6. 2). oho ee 694, 706 
Wa, POSta.32 2. sao se oo oce ee 710, 711, 719 
a Presa: 22.2822 3 ete eee 621 
a. Purisima Concep clone. 22.2.4 551 
Lch0.22 te atest eee eee 49] 
Dachupds 2823-0. e octal eee 232, 
Maguna de Santa R0sa:2-. 2 {se ee 233 
Baguna de. Tache:_-...--- = ee 483, 484 
WMaikiut fo 2 2 kee 612 
Traka?amul 24-2 oe6i.c -2ebesete eee 554 
Wake Miwokie*. cee eee ot eee 272-273, 883 
Vako Taboes su. okcactick cou .ctt Se 391 
bakeportwce 5-22 cae eee eee 2315232 
DLakisam nits) toate ee ee 485 
Lali oa et 212 
Lapaliagocc ttt du. ik A eee 552 
Larrabee, Creek... 2 cen eee 123, 143, 145 
Das ;Pulgas 2)... eee 636 
Tasseck == .o.stote J eee 896 
assik. tz. ucaee Bee tee ee 143-144, 883 
Lassik. Peak. -22/-.-h. tet ee 143 
Wate sce on 232 
Datelatefpw.1.u = Awe eee 491 
awilvani <2 ook a he ee 694 
Tawrence ‘Creek. 2: 4 20 22 2 ee 113 
Baytonvilles + +..e cues eee eee 155, 212 
hegetkuweceieccectGte cw ete eee 115 





GENERAL INDEX 


Fege 
BMPR CIRO ther thro OL 2 oe 233 
APOE ea Oe Gs 5 «renee ie > A SP 445 
MRC Lo hore 9 eal Se e's an EE A 444 
POCURT EL tee rr 5 er We cee BOA re PR 164 
(fl ol hte), yn ele a a a a 394 
AEA ey ee ee ee eae As Oe 75 
Were eee Sb tec es nw 232, 547 
RING yi de Ree Os re Doe 
Dye U1: T0) Wt Lees ee ca a 231 
EATS TO VSN er fe 480 
err Omeee wee 8 ek Re os Fe et Ce 484 
RS UOTige Rem ee es SES ee oF EY ois 115 
LEO oe ee ee ee en ee ae 555 
| biG Uj Gye" SS ted apt i pe a el 394 
CLEOEUG TT eek aes bot Fs Or A Dooy ale 
METAUST CITT yl eben lee ow Se en NE 157 
| io NUS E) Se a A ee oe 217, 219, 220, 221, 222 
AUT DBC Ue atte See art se tc 554 
OY ee Meee we ee See ie DIZ 
MELO) ee bee nr re Te ee nn gt 203 
TLS OATES Ieee ee ee ele ee Ran ss a 212 
WSs TG Irie i ee Se Oe 161, 166, 167 
Lvl SasNcow alas 10 = 2 aoe eee Se eee Ee ee ee 165 
JLslicayel cell Wed Os ve) cp eer a One ee ee eee ee Al 586 
HORT eer ee ec WN OE 554, 555 
HoUIA UIT Pen Nii ile a von ee en oe ee 554 
EIDE] SAV eee ie a te 28S rd ie et 479 
EVI Sm VOI OVie wiee mone as ends ee 479 
ABV OpIA TTL yaa ee ee NE oe 553, 554 
MISHA CHOW oe 2h cee Soccer se astec oe 229 
MISTI y skeen eek ole c= th nh ee os cla SIR 444 
NEipulee bs ULeOT Oreck ts 42 6 2a 4 een n se S28 286 
mbt los@ow OTe Kk sSo8 2 eles saci soe ts 339 
NET OM ivr @TCOK 1eo 4 2.3 nee re oo 481 
Lith Neal We Wie ay Ss gine eh, Sane eae Slee een aa 230 
NMipUOMEVIV Ole sees thee). os eS oe ot 14, 116, 230 
Auber Stoll Yy ©1eCCK 2s sec. 22082255222. = 229, 355, 356 
SEW ell =U meee es ee A en PT LN 356 
OI UT eames wi satertd am oss nh = 555 
LOGE Sg oe oe ae el te 478 
HAO COA OM ween ae a STIS Se to oo Le 896 
GO COMOII Aas eee teas -w 88 thane ee eke 896 
OPT Ob lseaee 24 (Bay eo bebo kee dees des lee 1245125 
HOO ReTroli ees ae EPS = eae one eddie tee 219 
Lolonko. See Sinkyone. 
IUGHEGIN a 8 St oie le ee ee oa 356 
RAD CE metastases eS 896 
BOL ED CAC Iam See mets cee ae es 621 
Ones Valleys ssceS2a5802 stele a 212, 270, 356, 357 
Wong Walleya@reek<-+ 922-8: Sec. 2 ee 391, 570 
RO LOD () sere ne ees b> Se ea Bees Soe * Bg 14 
EO OLCZ OMeen ry cde te Sei he oa EEN eS 57 
ARSE AN OTTITD OG ae See eS Pl Pa O's 637 
GSAT Peles COUN bY as4=- 2: a2 es SEs eee 620 
I OOVOCOS ere 2 oA nad kk See CO Eee 694 
EOSHINIGHOS™ «ee Se Ste £ tae ser SET 638 
NOUS Tar eS meee ee wees wat cee eos See ets eS 476 
CROCE ene ee ee 2 ee Ls ees ea Nees 896 
TLS PSRE ABU igs) 2) hic a sale te lal tee aah ae 305, 318, 319 
Lb G]ETC ly 1b 1 Dement ee ae ale et ee ee, eee See vill, 115 
Tower mismatn Wakes. covens sss 22eh228 305, 319 
eG Were a KOe ss =e oe oy enemas = SEES 224, 226, 232, 272 
BRUNI Siee tor eke cet ee tee er see 445 
ICU CLIN en ae pine eee ee Seeds ee 554 


Page 
Plier ee Ee ee ee oe ee 577 
SOLE Ty isl eee eee ne ee ee eg 444 
cE Capen eA - Sak Mee OR APS seth BL 115 
EACUa ee. ee ees Le es ee 319, 334, 335, 886 
ISOb IATA SLOGK? eee ee ee ear eee 318, 913 
Oris: GATLIVOne es ee tte eee eee 618 
ESA OL ome eee ee ee Su ee eee 115, 116 
iG CA y ya a eta ES Waa hE oe ee ee 554 
NIG O1Oudt Teak ers ee ae ee pth ee ee 352 
NCGlovd Rivera oe. ss 280, 282, 284, 306, 354, 356 
NebDonnldCreckaen ee) 2a sare ae 151 
MoDewell Greck-29t = te ee ee 232 
NUCICCL TLS VV Ce eer eee ne 2S eer ea 358, 363 
AV ECHSTULLICK see cee teen eee a ee 478 
AVTCIN DS, CTOE Kemeny ene ee eee er 232 
Mad River. 61, 112, 113, 115, 116, 118, 141, 143, 145, 352 
IVER CIETY EL: Cha) te sae ee meee ee eee dhe 
IVES 6 HS ieee eee ee ae ee eee 307 
INEScelintes Plains ae. a eee eee ee 306 
WETTING ee ee etre AE Saye ee 183, 270 
LGN RSL ee op pd eet ee oe hare cpp sarincd us Bited orden 5 552 
Manel Chelers ers meee. ere nas eee Rees 232 
IWC RIAV CUA eee ee ee eee See e ee Serer 791 
NICIGII SEE See eee ek er 391-441, 864, 876, 883, 885 
IA UE TIEEW WO OKO) Sparel ge at ee bh a SPO ye et PBB OAT 
LNW ei aes, cepa a Gat Ae San, deo ah epee ig are, sire 711 
Vin ate eee ene ae ede Soe Een e 356 
Wialalachahll See = ae eee Seas bee eee 220 
INEGI AV ae oe eet See eee ee Oe ce eer 648 
INT ALS Ura Ree eee ee ere te ea ee eee 896 
Malibur Canyorss te eee meee ee een ce 551 
Nraltpur Cree ae sass on set nares sarees ae ere 621 
NES ACOMICS amet ee = eae te. Seen eee ee 896 
Iams b1S in) Sees ee eee eee 163 
VETS 1] Seen eae eee fl eer ee eee 229 
NMatlchalnowns sess aes Se eee 165 
NANO Me ee ee eee ee Sees ee She ee we 188 
INES DUNO) ee eee ee eee ee nes a Pee Neen 165 
NaN Z antares See + OR ee ere ee eA he 710; 711, 725 
Maquinanog se: a5 seen oak Se eRe eee bbe 
Wiardce -e ae aaa oe he Se pero Ya ees 618 
WiarANIOLGO ee eee een ons eee. ee ee eee reel 
NiariCOpa Metre eee seen eee 709, 742, 744, 786, 800 
INTaTICOPARVV els sane =) seen eee nano o snes 801 
VERT ieee eee eRe Re fe eee 896 
INarine COUNTY sees coer ek ewes ee eer eee 273 
IVEAT ING ae ae eee SN wae Peete ees 616,618 
INVALIN EA Voces eee eee ee ee ee eee es 616, 618 
NUSTApCsa eOUNt ys 2a. 2=- fs eee batten. 5 - 488 
DEariposare stereos Stee sont eee so ones oeeee 488 
Wrerkiosee mete peed teas 3 Pe el ee Pe 617 
INEATLINGZ eee saaeie eee et eee ee oe Eee 694, 706 
Miartines Reservation: .es.62c+<..+2. <5. Ee 
IME Ve wllesBiitesa <=) ee eae ee peer ee 439, 472 
Mish chinlemers} 2c Ae 5 Se eae 554 
VERS tUa Ul ener a ee ce = aoe 480 
WMissonse Dre J ALOGN Se eee ee VIL 
INDRS Garin Ome eet ee ® oe ee 754, 791 
IM GGL s Ca en ee ee eee ee ee 230 
Vac ALLW A UclS eens eos oe ae (an! 
IEG ey Ul ene Cee lane nto eae rs 719, 896 
Wa tain outa ee eon = eran noe Scone een 166 
TG RTE TA 0 ee ees peya ee A te | a pe ae Pa 711 
ae Vi ly ee eee eee ne ee eee ee 754, 789 
Vea pill shiatee =o4s 2 eee ee ee ee eee 547 
Wratilisawe ees = ce ee Se eee SL ee eee 899 





984 
Page 

QISci On Gee Le oeee Le eo eel ees 129 
VI One ee ee er ee ee 230, 238 
IVES tbOs eee eee Stee see eames SE Lee ee 142 
Vit LOG moaeee tees ee ee 142-143, 883, 896 
INEATTOIOMR EW Clee dere eae ee see 116, 123, 142, 145 
SME DR BT cae >. eee ee Oe ee he pane REISS fA 707 
LCG gh EN AYER GR: re 5 .cUOROe 0 te SERRE tle pany Seah aN SH 618 
AVIRX Cee ee hte Ee ee ee ee ee Sag 554 
SADE Ral Coie TNS REN ta CAN i ie Pa at OE FSi a ae 218 
IVE GRY CVG) See te = ne Aeon Cee a = rage once 515 
IN gone ne is ce eS ele tal errs oe eet 444 
OVE Giada ee Rie ae Ee ee eae ee 231 
Mia yioltades ses aor eee eee, ant a oe een othe 789 
VEGCCHic ae an eee tes ee a eee eR ae 706 
Miedtlding sis 5 ee see ere ek are ee 129, 131 
SIGE WOMOLS... Att ae ea ee ae 73, 74, 134 
MMelhorietkem, 22. £5 lobe hose e ad ee 212 
AMelitheriten sce ater ee ee ee 125 
IM eMMpPONNa 224 Sees een eee ee Fee 345 
Mendocino Countys.c ce patel ee ee 144 
Mendocino Reservations. --eseesteseeeee a= 221237 
EVLeTCeGUR LV er eae ene eee ee 442, 476, 485 
Wher Ki wigs 5 ee ses cee te 270 
Metipcls Stecy mies tte to 10, 11, 59, 69, 70, 71 
INTEL OY Biase ene Ce ee Note, sae Re eee 75 
IVESEDOPMOr ULE sea sera eet Ok eee eye ee 129 
IMiGVactnodiem Din (Os Je ynre Phe ee bee ok oe 880, 885, 891 
Mesa Grande._-.------- ABST TS See 709, 710,719 
IVT GI TT See oes ie es oe ere 129 
Whestet esters fee = ae ee ee 124 
iota re Ae eee ee 11, 16, 18, 25, 51 
IV Gt erie =. 50 st ose Se es see Pe a 234 
IVEGL OUI O aenee ek cok eee epee ee See ee ee 125 
IVE Gti We one et acho Ss AC eae ae eee 711 
INGCUICUL YK oa eee ae) Dee ee 93 ee eine eee 212 
IMetkiivyak-olsclems.as> tee cee a= a eee 212 
INF GESKIW.O Same Seater ee See eee oe 10, 14, 113 
Wetted 2.2 2 eee ee es 896 
Wichalaiase =22e ees ee 2 eee oe ee 480, 585 
Miho els 40 4 a8 kee ee ee ee ee 219, 220 
INTIGHI CanwB ar sae=tes see Ae Re ee eee 443 
Mich Opd 022 se 2e8ee Bele Soe ese ee een eee 394 
VII C OIE s Oar dened eS 2 hs eee 5ao 
Middle Oreeks 252. 2 8 Sai eee ae ee 231 
Middle: Fork of the Gualala.._-2...2:--.22 233, 234 
IWFid dletownat 222255. 32 eee es 219, 273 
IVEICGtSI is sae herpes oes a = ee 483 
MTNEhot-eme uses ss Sy Se eee Dk2. 
IVT SIRO «1 creak na aul woes 194, 196, 197, 199 
Mill Creek o2_8 230, 339, 341, 342, 345, 475, 480, 585 
NGI Creeks Indians: s-62ss-5 ae eee 342 
Millerton. 2s esses vss ee wah Soe eee as 481, 484 
Wd vill@22 sees Woe ot ee eee Se ee ae 339 
TIVELY a eh ot ie he oe al ee a le 394 
NMingkekyoding ss=ss>se=seeesaeees see aenee ae 11 
Mingkutwme iss dened a 2 <b eee set eckeg RS 
Wetnor! Creckins Sar) tea ade Soe eee Se eee 137 
Weidtesesdueltig= sss" sae =e = eee eee eee 554 
Wir isesopano: stots] Sak eho eee ee 553 
WMiishew al ste-2 tees so he eS eee 219, 220 
IMishtapalw ant gee eee oe eee ore ee es 552 
Misinag tia Aco a ere ase eee one 553 
Miskivho eto a ete eae oko. eat 129, 131, 135 
Miskwatnuke so 2seeeeeee= EYRE A ieee oe abe 719 
MMismat uk 2t- 2: See er eee eee 552 
Mismee assert ae eee eee oe 138 


GENERAL INDEX 


Page 
Mission Creek Ju. 0.4 so.) oe oe 618 
Mission Dolores2-2 2222.28. 2 ee 464 
Massion Vielaee.. 2220 26. .c2. ae eee 621 
Mitomia 2228: 62.5 ae ee ee eee 230 
INT OKA. a>. 3oat ere ee eer 442-461, 864, 876, 883, 885. 

See Coast Miwok. 

Miwok bake. 22000: 6s 2 es 272 
Moal-kai-pomo. 2... 2 3A oe 231 
MOG OC 371-58. . e ee 318-335, 864, 876, 883, 896 
Mohavetin.2:2-232 5.30. Se 594, 


595, 612, 709, 726-780, 781-782, 786, 794-795 
796, 865, 877, 883, 896. 





Mohave: Deserta. 2255.2 feo aoe 594, 611 
Mohave Desert Serrano. 2-2-2 ee 602 
IM Ona We. RIV CLs 22 eee a re ae eee 602, 614, 618 
Mohave Valleys Seto e2e ee eee 726, 801, 802 
Mohivyanin os coe eee 614, 618 
Mokelumne 222225 tle ee eee 476, 896 
Mokelumne’ Rivers 2s. 22. 22 a eee 442 
Mokel\(-umni) +o-2 ss eee 445 
Mokelumni 2222-2 - <2 5 2 ee eee 444 
MokKos-umnice A oe et ee eee 445 
Mokosumni = see ee eee 444 
Mokwats.. 2.3. (S22 eee 595 
Mokwonmals 2007 2 aes eee 648 
Motkusic oS a2 os a eae ee 164 
Mola... 4 eos ee eee eee 394 
Molonen= 2% Se eee 481 
Monache.. 2. i229 5. 22 eee 896 
Monachi. = =<). ae 25. lee eee 581, 582, 584, 585 
Woona-SUe - oe one soo 282 ee a ee 445 
Men Osseo =a 444, 577, 581, 582, 584-589, 877, 883, 896 
Mono; . Western. 22 =.) Ses ee 580 
IMiono=Bannocke fe ests. 577, 581, 584 
Mono -Countyic. = Ss2 2. ee 586 
IMOnOquakOw 9) 5 et se ee 586 
Monterey Seek ee 4638, 470, 546 
Montgomery: Créck 5... ee eee 339 
Mooney; J ames 2 382e8- sa ee ee 884, 885 
Midoreke 222.2 fe ie ee eee 896 
Mooretown «221 seine oo. ae Soe oe 398 
Moqudlumnan:. 4.2.2.0. 444 
Mloristull £240 Sk Se eee 896 
INE OTOL 0 222 Le ee a 616, 896 
M OtWiss -< 2 ee 203 
Mio’ t-huyupee a Oe ea eee 164 
Mot-kiyuk esis. se ee a | 2 
Mount: Diablo... 2 ee 472 
Mount! DiablogRancve2. 2.22. = 22... eee 462, 476 
Mount: Massen fs Ao ee 338 
Meunt (Pitti es-0 05. boas e es 285 - 
Mount San Amtonios 222s. aoe. ee ee 621 | 
MountiSan. Gorgonioe. se. 5s e ee 615 
Mount:San-lacintos.f0 2s ee ae 616, 711 
Mount Shastageee. 26. -rsee = eee ees 72, 284, 306, 318 — 
Mount) Teettyacs 220. 2 ee eee 552 
Mountew hitney 12222 228 ee 607 
Mountain Branehia te. seis t ner eee 345 
IMountainkG abuilla Sa se eee 577, 694, 703 — 
Movaatsiee:. oi Se eee 595 
Mioyides . <. ...  ueet ts a ee 164 
MOVOHU 2s 20. diene 484 
Mtom-kai-pom0.. 22.242. 26 2c07- soae eee 230 
Miia 2) See De ee ee 896 
Miupitsuegh! ces si tie.) Sa ee 553, 896 
Mihiatnim 325.22 2. 4s 618 





GENERAL INDEX 


Page 

MME ATs te eet eC de Cathe eee, Se 614 
Min RAMA WOIAdINg 2s. fs... oe ees 11 ae 
pemkurdanehiwa. 29.0 ce eee 345 
RATS RL 20 os oe ao tae CA ee eo 618 
CP ELER ETUC E12 6): ep ee ae Comes Se Se 394 
SATULER eb sara ae ey a ia ee Ce a 202 
TOTS SS Ee A Retell Sens 203 
[A CCEESE ACERS ik a ON oon Se en eee 345 
Uaioe o's aed OF, ne ooo: 61 
or aL” ae oS se Ae te 554 
A Te ee See ees 203 
IINER GIN Ota Se pat ob Gy Ah 8) ie eS 445 
POINTE Wie Pets ee se 10, 11, 16, 18, 25, 45, 59, 68 
OU SS ee a a ne eee eae! ty 
ROS OCIRIME gee a bie to SSL is a 896 
ES ES 1 ee oo Peewee ere 896 
aT ete TEt (0G) ee RN oe eR ge el es oe 212 
RV tin Aner trene 1 be es oe Sk ee bead 483 
aati Me pee el es ee Cee 218 
DVITTESTIT Meee ene ot oe eae, Sot 444, 463 
POETICS Tee ees oe es oe ka 2 Ae 466 
TRC eee eet a. 2 es a 129 
Tiny | ae ates ee a ar lee eee ee es 596 
Wiisaral <A ¢ e e Gee ae eee ne eee = 553 
MET TMU WONndINe =. >. 5S aE 11 
SES = 2 Ee ee ere aree eS 75 
GND OS) MRE Fa ee > Oa ee eee 230 
SEG Chote, = a ee a Seep eee pees Dre SE 553 
MBcimibniOsivelre.e-—. oo 2 29s 5e. 2 eae 547 
DSEECELERVG: CVO | SS arene es eee te ele rm ree 150, 155, 182 
Ot: SLs Sa ee a eee me ee 8 
SRL OU Ree ee en ey eee eee 7s 
Te ae Se re ey ee 617 
A 22: i a ne aE eS fa 896 
Digiensaal oye oe A ee ee eee 398 
OES a ee a a a an eee aes 393 
ye a ee er oa 621 
Parmael Obras eee ed Se JL Es le 612 
ne ORIN Sg 2 ou bd eS 356, 896 
EINE a Se ob ane was eae ee 221 
AES Se ener 218, 353 
ERO ie batho gee oo feos haces 933 
thn. Se ee a ee 145 
Sie uel Pon i eee eee ee eee Se 230 
Miser tice nek 2 ea Se lS 394, 896 
BCA OME VOLE eit See Seer Mesa ee 231, 2a2 
IIGECIDU OO Kate es ne te Sea ae 145, 212 
RSet Gi EV O-ICALy Oe tet coo «ate eee ee 151 
tats | eee Pee ne es ua Ars Bee ee 
Ta \ sa nehelanYel (2) 00 eee ey ne eee eee ee 212 
RR Or Sits Nor as ope Seen nee —-ahate Vu 
eri wert ee 2 GA ee et ee 545 
PMeryitmuorm =. o2--.--- <= --s24-++----naree 10 
NatiniOlse we od wh co. et one i ee 711 
TSR RO ed gale eo = 110, 280, 282, 709, 724 
rawe hive pastas: =a. ee ee 109, 280, 282 
Newey Or VL OUntallS.---25-—-seesn---=+n = 760 
Newberry Mountain ------------------------ HAs 
Pete ee ee Oe et mee 445 
Pale OA Rina, al. Oe ee Lr eee oe 602 
IS e ey | Se eee ae es ree ease 554 
Lb a er rote 554 
ONE EN pg ect ce Sn ee eR cee a 8 ee 125 
Sp heii), Oe eee. See a eee 554 
Nilchwingakading---_--.--------------------- 99 


Pimninlge 22 vee CRS 2 ee See 554 





Page 
init heabh 70} 6124 Oe ene Res Se ORCI ape EGE, SSUES | 3 554 
iit Olmert ke ee ae tlhe. 2 ee 554 
Pana ly", 4 a ee ale eee ae ee ee PRET « < 394 
BUMS TIO Wee ee ee SD) Se A ke 896 
Paar ii ee el ok eS 17 
BAPTIST CIN Pr ee 6 ok ee eee oe 11 
INTO ATTNCUSKALVAse. SA es os Se 151 
NATTY es ane chee, Soe on ee ba 554 
Siva Uh Wyeth NTA CY or ee el 11 
INDO IG = Se area 8 2S ot) a tole, 896 
INGUIN DOSE Se oye tg pt ee 554 
USCA TGR 0 40 Ge See Re Oee ee  e 392 
USACE © ORI Set he Ok Ae ete, pl 554 
INAUDLE Eee et ee rhc ney ee SS) SS ee 135 
TS Ye aa eh bane oe ee ee Sates See agent cee © 231 
NRG) clGhet. 2c, h. et aN ee a ee We 584 
INI OGUUTI ACT Bem ok let hd > oe 445 
INGCOSM eats 3 b>. Be as Oe ee Seas 553 
THOLOS CE = acuk, SO Ree ps a Se ee ere Pee, Shee. 75 
IN ONES KAT i= eee ee SE he el ee 16, 18, 25, 71 
INGE UIs aber se Oe ere Se eS 11 
ISSO] O Pitre eerie Se ee eh es 896 
EST OLO CLIN ies pete ee Ci en ae ee Rae 138 
IN OTT OMe Sa ee en be DE oe ee 445 
INOUE CUT eet oe ee ee Re oh ee 896 
SCO TH) RCI se tuna OR eet a) nh es 356 
ONT OT Va eee eens aoe cd ig eat eae 356, 359 
INFO na ae ee ee ee he ee Pade ee ee 164 
IN DANA DOebL eon 36 pone bua ae Seen 229 
Rionspotie ss wedkas hk os pease means 232 
Nongat! iS ies co ee ste 143, 883 
INGnhoOnOUL wae Seek 2. 52. ae ee eS oe 203 
IN Onlaenn Oss ee Oe = Bee 165 
IGT es oe ti aoe sale eae en Fae Re 896 
INGO UG ee ses eee cee Ue Sa tees 485, 491 
INGOT POSH aa tee ne ee eee 356 
INCOTGLITIO Katte ees Se ee are a 356 
INIGETINO Ki, See A oe re ee eS ee ee 356 
NiGronpeks ase oe ean eG See Gee 124, 125 
Norther ofc of lel Rivers eo. 2 ees eae 148, 151 
North Fork of Kaweah River--:------------ 586 
Nortietork of san. JOaqduin= 22-2 2-424 s022= 585 
Northern ealtbe=sscsee- case 570, 571, 577, 583, 883 
INFO SH WIeSE OGAL OC Kee ee eee eae 124 
i hoy 5) 6 Moka AO. Set eae ee de ew ee eg 232 
INSURE ook ee ON ES eee soe aoe = 491 
INO SOREHIN Gs Cae eee re eee =e ke eee oe 445 
INT Oa 6G Oe eee ee eR Ee seer 273 
INO WCities Se te ee ee oon EU eck ee 445 
TSO 0 icy cae ee Sea Sees - ce 2 ===> 213, 896 
NoyouRi Wie: 22 s- sbae see ~22-5-<2----5 212, 224, 230 
IN 0-V Ube eet eee ok 2 2 3 Se oe e- 22-5558 356 
gla 0 ts, a ee sere neni 356 
ue CHOI aoe ee eee ee oe eee ee a ee 212 
ICH KON eee cee ee ae ee eee 166 
INIT tr@ Koesnen ee 2 ane Anes Se Le ae eee ee 356 
NTU eee ee ee ees 397 
Nth ile = ee ees ee ee oe 554 
PULTE ETO Kae ees ee Bee ee ee 356 
Nupatsu. ...-=2+4..------+4--------+-------- 100 
Nupchenche--.-...--------------------------- 491 
Nupchinche- _---.--------------------------- 485 
Nushalt-hagak-ni-__.---.--------------------- 319 
PNT Eerste eee ee we ee RE ee SE eee 479 
Daatta ae tee eee taka tte es - 584 
INGER ener ae eee ber EES Sete aes 483, 491 


986 


Page 
IN UUW CAIN C See ee oe hs a ee ee 485 
TIN Ui V-2:1 Gales eee ore eee AC Re ke 596, 600 
OS KR ID cities ert ch l.  e e t S 339 
CO CHEN aK Ae caidas cesaie a een ae Fee 445 
©chehaniniss 4: Sas. See ee ae 444 
OOCDe|aM NGS a ten: Gare en eee 445 
Ochohoisx Band tea ee ae ee ee 584 
OCHO POU ae oe tee eee ee es ee A 481 
O Tal Ue ae Ce ee De 2 ee Sa 138 
Ohpa Pewee OF sete a Ps re 138 
OVA OINS*KO yO. -e wees eee Sy. in ee he ee 393 
OlGree kw Beck fed Oe cee pe et carte LAS aG 
Ojai ek 2 OR ee eS 896 
EAS ew a Reet ee eee ey ee 73 
ORE CORR ee htt BL, the in ek oe ed 70, 73 
Oketo So teks ee red ge 10, 11, 52, 61 
Oketurs te ee ee ae oe 99 
ORNUtL. oe ee gi ee cee be le Ree 70, 115, 129 
Ob Ometa a ees. . See Sees Pikes Se eee 212. 
OROn ite Te UO ss oat eee fe Sec ee 100. 
Ok pas! A <a eth ee et ee ie ee 394 
Okwanhuchtssssss=n— === aes 280, 282, 284, 352, 883 
OR WAY lire ect were TS at ee 286 
OLS Spe cle ol ee Sei a Ee 394 
Olamentko iss sepia ois a a eee 273 
Olancheree =A a. fore Ss Re a eee 896 
CO Law LV C48 sah eee bese) ae ae ee 445 
OTere 1 eee te ne es ae ot ee 6 es eee 70, 99 
Olelbiskeeeteeraets AS Ao ye eee sae 182, 270, 362 
Clery a trees BR hy ee i ee ree 273, 896 
Olema=slokes eis te eerie hy ee See 273 
OTOL Seer a Seely eect Oa ee ae. eee 274 
Olepotl eee ee ie eee pene eee 129 
Ole renin 22 ee See ie aC Ed eee ts 99 
OLESIn 0 See eye ee eee ee Bet See 553 
Cle pate me ere Pans ci seh irene te Renee eee 896 
Oley ome eee ES rete a ae 272 
OFhepech:kemta sess0 8:3 2 yor sea eee 212 
| OS RENNIE 8 “Ee SR ee 61, 115, 119 
Olohntem-esich-keisesen a2 =— en ee eee IA, 
Oloikoto. ct tse! Se ee ee ee 445 
Ololopales So ee eee 394 
OLOM Palio Sls See Tae ee Oe ee er ers 896 
Olom pallies Bett 1 eae ars oe ee eee 274 
OTonppo lls ee ee eee see eee a eee 273 
OO W ITOK Ota ae ee en eee er Cae ene 444 
Olposelees. 2 Ssas es EPS CE ee ee eee 356 
Ol Wisse eee ae 2 Sele mt 2 es een oe 445 
CL ViOST re ete es UR NS Eee ee ee en 164 
OZTION here eet aoe 2 rete © Rca ere 15, 116, 126 
OZMen HIDUT see eee oe aes See ee eee 10 
COMENOK Uae ees eee de ee ee ee 70 
OMT DORR a ee ee ee eee 397 
OMT QD Se 2h eee Se ee ee eee 896 
OTH OLE MES eR ea) eit ee 2 eet ot 445, 896 
@Omochumnne se eeeee ae es Se ee 444, 896 
Omipines = secs. 2a ee ee ee 445 
AAD. Ate il ee ee Se eee 164 
CALC IS Bee eet BS Pea oo: Bis ee eee ee 802, 803 
(Onechitl-ein fren aie) Se eo ae ee ee 212 
Onchtilka ae eter oe en ee ee ee ee 212 
On-Ghileka Moe semen See tice ake et ey oo ee Deen 212 
ONCHO-11 a2 pa eee ee ete eer eee Sere 394 
Ones Morse, Sprints eee ee eae ce eae eee 618 
ON Gals. 2s ere eae Cee er ee eae 481 
Ono KO VO-CUKN OMe eee ere toe eee eee 398 


GENERAL INDEX 


Page 
OngoVilnéunk tbc eel ee eee 621 
Onkolukoninoum.-2-02-2 22 161, 165, 167 
Onnatsilishic:.2.2¢ 822 lc= bc eee 219 
Ono esc es Choe 2 ee 138, 896 
Onp’otilkei.t 422) 223 ee ee 212 
On’ pul tel hs Sree Bete oe 212 
Opal Wate a ee eee 138 
Opegol 2 ee Se eee 99 
Opelt0.4222:. 32 eee ee eee 394 
Opergerzccusc2tces$te te Ae 99 
Opie ac Se tees eee 553 
Opie... soir A eee eee 648 
Opistopias| See. See 553 
Oplego 3. Se ee a eee eee 129 
Opok2fe3ls it cect ee ee eee 394 
Opshirtik? = 4 Joo. sieves ee eee 286 
Optiles. uss. eee se ee 397 
OPYUWeSi.22 ee ee eS eee 10, 51, 61 
Orange’ Gounty2- cua. 424 See 620 
OTall 2 ee i eee 14 
Oregos=.- Sees. sect ee eee 70, 71 
Orok wet’ téeceieeee 10, 11, 14, 15, 52, 61, 72, 116 
Orestimba.= 23. at fae eS eee 896 
OreuwW -.2_.chtee eee eee 70, 73 
Oricks.c2 eect ee eee 896 
Orleans *s22 ee = eee 33, 52, 70, 98, 99, 116 
OroVilless Aw ee 345, 398, 476 
Orowichaira <e.2:22- ee eee 236 
Osdgon 2 veeSe. ss eS ee eee 896 
Osepen : 2ipo ct eee 14 
O80). tec Se eee tome 
Osok 2s ee Eee 115, 116 
Ossokowil== 22-23 ee 219, 220, 233, 238 
Otakie ete. So. a2 ee 394 
Otayic los ee ee eee 896 
Otepet] 2222. 2th ceet ee eee 138 
Otl-am0o2c) we ee eee 34 
Otoavitis oo Ae eee 607 
Otsep suo. oe Lee ee ee eee 70 
Otseporss soc. eh rts te eA eee 10, 11, 17, 70, 72 
Ottepeth. cleo ae 5 tees oe 138 
Otwegol 2s he ee eee 10 
Outlet, Creck=====--= 202, 203, 212, 213, 223, 230, 237 
Owelinhatihti== ===. = eee 445 
Owens. Vakele= = ee 586, 589, 592, 607 
Owens Rivers... 22S eee 586, 589 
Owens’ Valley 222222233: eee 585 
Ozvarass ees RM en Be 783, 802, 803 
Pa’ash. sere et ee oe eee 596 
Pa’ aw SMS ott Sew id eee ee 648 
Pachawalitt 2.) a ee 694 
Pacheco Pass2_ =. 222 eo eee 444 
Pachhepesiti2 2 2 eee 545 
Pacoimatc i. sot eas: eee 896 
Padewyami_. 22 ee ee eee 479 
Pagninoas. 2... fea see ease 480 
Pahamuk? £2.23. ee eee 648 
Pahutet ene 896 
Paiute ee eee ee ee 581-582 
See Northern Paiute; Southern Paiute. 
Paintes2 = 32 ete Beer he Be eee 570, 593 
Pajaro: Rivet: 2 tise. eee 462, 471 
Pakwihuns 2 ee eee 588 
Pakanchi-¢42(c2 24 = eee 394 
Paki: 24S eio oe ee eee 394 








GENERAL INDEX 


Page 
Be eee oe A hk a cadeda Sheets 694 
Re nO Gass fee ys Bt oe SP eee 694 
ese oir 0 shed. we ook. Sees az 689, 692, 896 
Ten e025 Gt ky Sm a a ea 445 
PRL DoS fae ee eS 279, 280, 282, 308 
Ne in Se Bh ade Sak oe 308 
TS i ee ee epee eo 475, 479 
Sembiermined | (ope Joc... eee 706 
Peat Dorimnes Gan yon -*23.2 5255. . <2ulte Po eee 693 
SUOMMALeVLOUT bAIiies Oa: oes. aoe 648 
EPOUNDT Metre oe tea = Salas iss ee ae 553 
TOR te oterveh. 221 ak Se ale See, Seer er ee 553 
i cGalil wee eee ree J Le eee Se 618 
Peinranaeninea-pan =. oe o..-scces.l estes 607 
TER, ite = 5 el Os ae 2 ee a ee 719, 720, 896 
Her Oeeee tee oe pee Se LE ohn Fe eee 648 
Wari genie 22 20. See st 99, 101, 102, 103, 104, 116 
1 EsyBeSWegVe ra She pape eee a 70 
IS aii... pho a ee 577, 589-592, 896 
Panam WOuntaInS=".-< 222 Sas 590, 602 
Peataiiniev aleve. es enn n eae see eee eo- 590 
0 OEE G1 Se ee eco i en oes 445 
Beetir TA ieee ee es a awe oe Rs 394 
LS tle A ac ee ne ees 801 
Herrin Tm eaititGe) se oe ee ae oe a oe 593 
ance eee ae ae es on ee ee 799, 802 
EES OLH Cee oe sete BS age ee 553 
TRIAD NS ie i ee ee ee 345 
IDS SH: oa ee See nee ei a ee 319 
Panne seco ew eee see. eee eee 621 
jE SHG 2 oe See yee eer ees epee 621 
TESST sen eee eee eee ce ae 445 
[Pe Re aa ae eee ee 356, 369, 896 
Pag CaS ees ae eae oe 482, 611, 612 
“ONE EE ats a CR ey at Seep a ote 356 
HerSceC ailitl) Awe tee eee wee Se ee 577, 694, 703 
IEASSASIiES seed sw eset toe eS 445 
Opeth (Chie eae. ae ee ee ee 614 
UTI Se a A eo ere 554 
Meri ee fo ee ae 554 
nT Gre ON Ge ee te eee ae 74, 116 
eaRciua en eo ere a: ee ae ee 607 
Papwaniws s2 228. 25 _ 354, 355, 364, 367, 379, 380, 384-390 
atta eee er Ce ae ec Se Ce 895 
rE te oe ee ee a= 895 
TERSYBU PONE) 2 on, 2 2,2 5 Sku a le in eer nN Rr a ee 686, 687, 896 
ReTTAVIOLL ieee mee oe eee Te 618 
TEENA IS Cae = ee pened 581, 582, 586 
[2 bles. ue ee ee a he ee ae 648 
Pea GN airs. feo eee eo etew se 617 
Pagani euennm 52200. 225--2----22a5 562-2 5--- 648 
AVC Teak oak to ee. Se. ox. Se sae SF. 339 
1 PUR SR tee i pape rapes Tg ae ne 593 
TESGLSHBYATD TS a) ace acl ea al ere rey RR = 5 ee 232 
Sei ie eh pa reese ers oS 231 
Dan PO Rd iii tke. ee ee ee 621 
TEND ee OAC eS we ae See oe ae eee ae 125 
"nal 2 ipa ae epepeaeeaanae Ramee a 58 Lead 896 
OC ue aay ale eee me Se eet 10 
Pekwan-_-_--- 10, 11, 18, 16, 18, 25, 51, 59, 60, 61, 72, 102 
eet Tie ROGK te he eee eet omen 10 
oo l@ ia WISN 2 (ete ci ale Bale apes ee ae 124 
ak Wwalulitiene ee ook cent eee ee 10, 11, 25, 57, 71 
Ae oe a ee ee eet eee eee 479 
Palins hee ee ee ee eae 74 
MRT S ee ae ek ee ec oe ect a 445 


987 


Page 
Penutian family_._ 234, 347-350, 445, 477, 544, 886, 913 


Pepinarisee tes Je Seta tee’ one 634 
PBrighG sare sett eee ot ac os dee eee 232 
Perali minarets oe cee eet oe 273, 274, 896 
PRetalumavOreeks so. 54 = Jecek Sree eee 273 
IPOUSODLK Oe sete ae oes ek ee 70 
Phil eet ees ne oe et ee Bl oo chee Se 231 
Ria as Omar lee. Bo oC 33k pe ee 75 
ae Cell ress hoe. 6o js 19h cen cade ecw eee 129 
Pea clio” P Oa kee ses ee a a ok pe a ee 788 
Picayune Creek_----..- bind Bd pede 482 
‘PigWanga see-O2: tao. ete. ek See ae see 687 
PiCt NG TOC ki) @ . bse Bee ee a ee 233 
Pag ik Viasat: Sees Oe eat ee ere 445 
PAU US Wa et A Rd. othe Seek be on 554 
Pali Walii= Dall eer eee oe eee aa ee 607 
uilivig cities oe Be he ks he ae eee 719 
ETT) Liners eee 2 ee dS AS eee 115 
Bimoke-ne ao pee ee eee ee eee 621 
PTL eb ee ae eae 5 554, 621, 634 
Pann reek sa eek oy eer eee x ee eee 233 
Bhs $25 62 o5 ek ons Pen ae ee oe 10 
PIGS c2 oie eee A ee ates 618 
Pipa yee oo ek i ot eee en ee 621,634 
Pipoboling 4.2236. 2a, ba tae oan eet 219, 238 
Pints eee Sa ee 896 
Pity Creckis = = 35. pee ee ee 614 
Pistiopearre ro ees See ee 552, 896 
PIs@tlGnoien 62 ecko ets ee 554 
PiteEC Ve hee oe eee aaa Ek eee 280, 
282, 305, 306, 307, 309, 319, 337, 352, 356, 476 
Pie PUPVOneLnd ial See. to) ae eee Aen ere 352 
BiRiversv alley. 222) =2- es. eee ee 308 
SEPT EMRE VORGh ee re eee ee ae et ee eS 308 
Papa eee bee oe ee ee 585 
BitaniGhatteseea ss ee ee Se, a ee oe 482 
Pitche indians a2 eee ee oe ee ee 151 
PT 1A ee eg ea ee 397 
PiGleae ie) arene oe ee eee ee 484, 491 
Bigka tle] a oe oo oes oe es eo eee 484 
JT Hee N Cub Roe ee Nee Doe Ee nee TS Se 607 
Pitsokut sess a ek ae x3 ale 394 
Pitt River. See Pit River. 
iti beeen ete eat 6 ee a eee 896 
BRULGte DIN ese 28 ee ce ee 596 
PRUICA GING Mee, eee Sete) ee ee ee 491 
Plains WoW Oke. koe ee ora eee 442 
stead eee oe eS Ee ee eos 913 
Pinteall snoshoneans. ssa === eee 577 
Pee DGkete ot Peds s Bete a eee aa ter 10 
Pletalaulelitn sei oe a2 ee ok ee alae 
Pletkatisharmmalit| tests. 2 ae eee 116 
Pietiaika cheers 2 ee eee 117 
PIGES We kite gue eee ee ee hr ee 115 
joa Vela ecye 1s ee p eekcie © Oe tie oe Le peo ae ait 
IP ORSCU Seep ee ne oko Ni a ee oe 73 
PI yMOUtN foc 2d, he sis ee enna eee 443 
POC Ott pane See ees sore we! pee ne ee 554 
IP Galiny bin ieee ee oe oe eee 478 
‘Pahonichi ame eb scete a asa ee eee 443 
ON OMIT a eee ee ee) oe eee 481 
GGT Ot ee eee ee ee oe ea re 896 
Polono re allsz ees oe ae oe eee oe 443 
Point Concepcion: ...-=--.=--- 243, 551, 552, 553, 574 
Pout Lowa: i: 285252245 2e ask ey 923 


PHint Hever «4.2 22- 2 S8s--a hoses DhowerD 


9388 


Page 
POMS tMGCOreOMe eta sect koe teen 124, 125 
EGO) Eka Sarg Sy ape SIE Be a See TAL 
POKtO-nO* St oa See oe esa ee a era ee 445 
PlOSAS Ut Sean Setar est Oe os oe eh ee ae 445 
omaha - Seles 3. oS ee Seen ee 165 
Ronraha2no,migac seed wel ea ees eee 165 
IP OM Os sae eee 164, 222-271, 864, 876, 883, 885, 896 
POMNO-DOM0e 3s. 2s ke ies 5 steers a. ut ee ae 227 
(Room Wit 5S ee ee a 896 
Poorman’s Vialley2oe ee ee eee 165 
Pope Creeks gest yak oe ee ca ee yo ae fee 218 
Pope Vials #2. Sy ee eas. oe ee eee 219, 273 
Porterville. se a8 Sa ee eee ea eee ae 479, 482 
Portol&expeditiqns= = 22 i ee dee 546 
POSS Pla te Baca te et ee bee ee 479 
Posgisa.. 4: se ee ae 4s. ee ee ee ~ 585 
Poshgishasds cc se ysb lk ee ee see ee ee 585 
Poso Creeks) 22226 ae ke a ee ee 610 
‘Boso Creek g70u pei-eeak 5 soe ese Cee pees 479 
Potaltoee Saws beg so a Se ee Ar ee 445 
PoOtitlikiée UN sl es Faas Sea ee ie ee 115 
POUOLSA 2 xe Be oes oe ee se ek 234 
POCOLtU Ge Saeed eee a a te re a ae 553 
PotterdV alleyesies es hal. tse ees 203, 229, 230 
POWSY = 4 ee eae oo a ee 896 
POWersSs Ste pis sa ae ese ey ey ee ee 1x, 478 
IPT RTOs CeO .. soak sas seks 2 fees eae ee 14 
Providence Mountains -_______.__-._- 594, 595, 760 
Pualnacatips kes ee eee ee 554 
UD Use ee ey ha een ys see a a 637 
Buddingi@reekat Sick Sees. ee eee 212 
ueblowde las, Can aOsee see n= ae ee 553 
Pueblo dewWSardingsaess 2-222 eee ees eee 553 
PUgeL SOU sates Jkt oe a ae ee 913 
Pua C1 eee eee ae A a in 356 
PulmMmok 3 Seca eee Se Be eee ee 356 
Pujunanistock 25 ess 5 sats ey ees ae 394 
eur ert he pao el en ee 203 
Pillakatincst ce et Re ee ee rere 394 
Pulekuk-werek —efse.§ o<t Soe wc bee 74 
PUMESL: fo ees bee 6 ee ee 345 
Push-Greck incest eens oe ewe ue eee 345 
SPUSDUMIZ SS. 5 2) tee ah _ oo capa To ee et One weer 394 
PUSIN-fiMNIG <.5.R hee oe Ore ee et ee 612 
Putah Creek2 22 22 os ee es 218, 219, 272, 353, 356 
Puta-lO2. ecto eet ee ek a ee 356 
Byramidv bake 3 2O0e. Bice 2a es Bok Co eek ee 584 
QUENTIN = ¥ie Sa 65 in Ree oe eek Meee 553 
Quannesta eux tesco seca eee een 553 
Quelquem eke sea eee ee 553 
Quemiaya Soke Teed ee etna eee ee 723, 798 
QUSNEMSIAS tents Vet aro ae wae ean ae 445 
Quicamas=—= Mec ln cee eee ee 796, 803 
Quis yUW asic. ee eee en 797 
QUITMAN. aot ee eae ees Cea eerie eae 553 
QUINCY 2a es es a ee eee Ue aa RS 397 
UA CRUTI Gf Bae ee es de ert ae 796 
CUURIUL TTT Coe ee ee ar ee RY a ce 610 
GUOralean <seseace seek Ae Mee ee ee ee 100 
RAGIN PRU eee eee eee ee 159 
Rakshiuatiaket ae eee Recension meee 119 
Rancheria. Creeksee+ eee 231, 232 
RancheriamValleyceens ee eee 237 
Raneho-devloshY-barras <2 see ee ee ee 621 
Rattlesnakeslan d#2-e2- = ae ee 232 
Ra yorksy ci) GI eo Jee eae te hg ee 100 


GENERAL INDEX 


Page 
Red. Blufiics..5oe es Resse ssa eae 345, 476 
Red; Gap Greeks 2... eevee) ea eee 34 
Red*Mountain.. Creek. 222 534255 =e 151 
Redditig. 2.22 4a ae ee ee ee 356, 360, 362 
Redding Rocks-._.4 4222s eee ~- eG 
Redlands §.2.4 5. ee eee 617 
Redwood Cany one 2225. 22 55 ee 230 
Redwood Creek____._-__- 10, 50, 61, 116, 123, 187, 141 
Redwood.V alley.-- 2.2.2 eee 202 
Redwoods.) 3..<- 22h see 243 ee 202 
Reedley 2cse.c0 J. ae ee 483 
Reitigio. £25283. Pee eee ee 553. 
‘SReho: tribe?’ ....22eisdss ask JU oe 273 
Re kwlesco. eee ci ye eee 10; 11,13 786 
16, 17, 18, 19, 51, 52, 60, 61, 70,72, 102, 116, 126 
Rekwoi-kss.- 5.526 eee Le ee 232 oa 
Regus l 2 tals 2 oes ee 116, 896 
Rewood, CreeK.s.23i 22s eee 117 
Rhettpbake. 23%. 522. age hoe ee 305, 318, 319 
RAN CONE Be ee ee 553, 556, 686, 687 
Rio.de los "LizoneSs.4 622. 782 
Rio de los Tulares).. 3432 See ee eee 476 
Riodellis. 4253.4 2. 2 te ee 113 
Ji cl) | ee One ee es me Pe 116 
Ritwan stock occ... <2244 de age 112 
Riverside.c.. 253-2 616 
Riyerside County. 2522. 594, 621 
Roberts. .=s6 2-00 ee 607 
Rock Creek 2 ft ek ae ee ee 337 
Rock porti..6.-t. 5 nee 145, 212 
Rockpile, Creck 323: Loo eee 233 
Rocky. Point os-.aee eee ee 2315 
ROSTIEtRIVver nee ee eee 122, 286, 287, 292, 318 
ROKtS02 8-02.40 Se Sy 2 a 138 
Roquechohist at)... aces ee te 138 
Round Valley________- 163, 164, 165, 168, 234, 270, 307 
Round Valley Reservation. __.__________- 154, 155, 
166, 167, 195, 203, 237, 308 
Rumsen... teen ee ee ee 463 
‘SRUNSeneS.” 3. wot Rete 545 
RUnSiens. 22. 2ee a eee 463 
Russian River... 222.2: Se eee 202, 213 
217, 218, 219, 222, 223, 226, 230, 233 
Russian River Valley__._.____- 225, 237, 240, 241, 243 
SLY: ie BO ee A ae Eee eee SE yey | 10, 16, 18, 25, 58, 73 
Salaitiensaes. oc. Sh eae ee 10,,11,,16, 18,70) 7aiete 
SAaDODSL sen cee re meee en el ‘S896 
Sacramento. Riverzos Jes =) alee eee 280, 282, 
284, 353, 354, 357, 359, 462, 476, 902 
Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley ____________- 170 
Sacramento Valley__....__--- 261, 270, 288, 310, 337, 
338, 349, 351, 358, 366, 367, 368, 376, 381, 392, 416, 446 
Safford, Wels o§.22. ee ee 502 
Sahaptin stockcc <aesceu: See ae ee 913 
Sabwurdi.. 52 cat Jase ose se 99 
ORT En re MMe EL CAT ey 143 
StaHelenae: 2-8. bet ee 218 
Saka yak-timnics..5...i ic. oe asso ee 445 
Saka yakumnie ee ob eee ee 444 
Sakla-n. ees 30 Ue See ae eee 466 
Saklan te205b 2 S508 ue ae 463 
Sala seme CoS Bo te ee ene ee 445 
SALAS cet et hn ee 544, 546-549, 876, 883, 885, 886 
Salinas’ River-c..- chet ee: ee ee 546 
Saline Valleyo.nesu+2 cle se ok Ae 590 


Salishan stock -1e 28-4 3 eee 913 





GENERAL INDEX 


Page 
in URC Gak Gaye TGs ee ee al eae ea a 113, 145 
MAIINOMURIVED! secu seek cls 98, 99, 100, 280, 283, 285 
Seeks ee «a. nn Of ere See ane ie 466 
“OUR LES Ee OE es ce 224, 236 
CLAD Saas | oS FS A ee ee eee ee 711 
PRUE Sey ee Be Se me AN Sen et 694, 706, 709 
Perma LOnIO Week. bene ok oo Se ala ed ais 
San Antonio Mission__-__...._--__- 370, 488, 546, 547 
Memeo nIGOnIO iver sec ste ke okt SS 547 
RPRTRPVET AT OTTO shoe = Soe er gl i oe 617 
Ban Dernercino Count yes... AL 594, 621 
San Bernardino’ Mountains..-...--L2-.222.-- 611 
Bai Oernaleino Range. 22.222 ee 615 
DAMES CMArGnOsy Aleve oes 2 ok Loe 616 
Ger leon yer UUtd.. <.2-ossck ~~ net ece 551 
Spinel Cid (Gh ae! er ra es 464 
ECV OUANO ME =o 5550 .e So cece ok coe 552 
pony (Ce sel ae Eee eee ee a ee 620 
San Giemente Island... 2.5.-.2--b2-_- 621, 622, 649 
Obes, a ee ee ees Speen ee valle ae. 
Stsuey [DUES aCe Oe Bees ee ee Se pe ee ce 723, 920 
Bone IErO We OUN Uy ss2 4+ os oe eee ee 720 
SU IOOLION OCs shee a eee Oe es ee 709 
See Dieguenos. 

Sek IS soon Ret) ee en ere een, 5 .e 552 
SDiiy UERSUT CVE) 0 See ey ee re eS Se 710 
MA MOlIanORNOSKs 182 2S gs ok tees 620 
CUTER LAS crave T ith 0 Peerless Meee ere ee 620 
SALPOCANCISCORDE Viecsecee. ast coe eee 275, 347, 

349, 353, 359, 411, 413, 462, 920, 921 
SAnPenalCiscO.IMiSSsiON <2 noe a 488 
MEME ICIsCOMmMOUNG.-+_~2-2.ss-akc~- =e 923, 924 
Ree otae ee eee ek ee. ee. eS 620, 621 
Sane Gaprel Mountains............---=-..-- 615 
Sibagh LORI Sey aC d CF SG a a a 618, 693 
mee elabOme CO Keo ote ee oe 694 
Sevd. POOLE Mie SB AO ep eee 484, 486 
Samaoaduin River. so 5-2 = 462, 475, 476, 478, 585 
San Joaquin Valley_.. 267, 349, 443, 475, 722, 933, 934 
Sei) OCU, o Feels eS ee ae 463, 464, 545, 719 
SAMMIOSCMNIISSION | of tee ore et. hee oce eee 370 
Seoul Aferpeay (ESSN UT BSI We les SS ee 463, 464 
SShSGa ULADI OER cote OND pao ee ep 554, 555 
nem StO DISDOE 0.002 fee. sees 8 488, 546, 551 
Soa, TAVIS TRO eS a ee 692 
Bagiane ney de Francia._.......2.-.--..--< 648 
HMM MIGEEOMLVCl yes oee ena hose ek ek 689 
DTU ALGO Sea er 923, 924, 929, 932 
MaeVAboOrROlueeee. = =) aoe asc eee 923, 924 
Sieh Pave. 2 ole ee eae 546, 547, 555 
Sybiris 1 REM Ey Vo ee ee I eee 552, 553 
eC OLAG ne eos te ee eee 633 
Sm COlEN OSS. wee 577, 633-635, 883 
SRpONO Gee (ete owe oo t8 es 636 
voronaY 12428 cated Bhai © ae ae eee cs ya ee oe 353, 463 
Seem LAS Pere Tee Se es ae a eee ee 710 
EAeReOTO ELALDOU. 022 22 soos soe fo ee te cee 555 
Hanae UVLOUnCs 92.222 2222 AL 923, 924, 929, 932 
SUE SEM 2 7a (0h ee Oe eae Se ery a eee 554, 555 
Mao Timoteo Canyon_... ...-..--...----.-- 615, 693 
PE SRE Died Soe ashe Cha 694 
EN Te eh cn cence ones ses 689, 706 
PITCH nen cee See Lh ee er ens 612 
SENATE 9 panty gi 2 gl sad ie Sa eee ee et 896 
nie Oe ee eee ee foes aceon et ance oe 483 


Page 

SANTALA Nithcese ce eee eb eda ge ceeecet 621 
DATIGH Aba Del 2 es ee bee ee 551, 558, 556 
Sepa ar OAT eel SIS a 2 | ee ee ae 490, 621, 935 
Santa Catalina Island _ _552, 554, 567, 620, 621, 629, 634 
NEL) cs A ene eee 463 
ethics COLTS) aL VOT’. ee ia tLe al See ee 613 
atte OruUgercc lene. eek 463, 552, 553, 554, 555, 629 
Santa [sabelec 225 Bik {yoke es Be 719 
Santer scr bakes 5. oS. s a ae ee 545, 546 
Sena UAT ORIG hon ee oh eae 5 ae ae 547 
Sante WlOomicne. tate ewe Poe eet Sa A ae 555 
PANU OSOM eee ne ee ae 233, 554, 555, 694 
SILC ROSA TOC KP etn Se Se a, eee 233 
Dba EeVOSRE A OOD) oe ees, ee ee 243 
ANCA NOT wee eee oe eS ee ee 5b 
SAT CLAG OME cee: Dean Sere Ee en le See eS 233 
Sapelik eweeer oe 22 ee ee 694 
SapIPMOT Se hee eee ooo eo eee Vu 
SASAIIIN 4 eoee oe Oe ee a ee pees 445 
SASOl se ee ee ee oe 8 cet» sae Se oe 125 
Saste. See Shasta. 

SAStCarre Shr Se ast ee ee 279, 280 
SaStie cee eee ee Cee Le ea foes Te 285 
DELICO Vee aoe eee ot eS ee eee ea ee 896 
SES AGE aN Weil aR) ASE Rn ne Ae Oper rt te” 397 
Sausalito Moung. = secsse- ees se 923, 924, 929, 932 
SaNCL DL Vel tetera es waa as eee ne eee 760 
SE OL seen ee eee Soe Se ree oe 345 
SO CON it Men eae mae PED Rew gests Se 8 445 
SCOUiE VOR Ko ete en ee ee ee ee 231 
SCOUT V Glee re ee eee 62, 287, 294 
ScOth)V aleve tis = oe ee ee ee 236, 286 
SCOLLSEN DUC ye epeeee ee th eee eee 319 
Seotisavalley ndiansy. 2.22.5 2. s-eeeee eee 357 
SPE VDICY SS ca) ig oll lp aati re, Oe ep PE ee = 233 
GeslGr RI MARADE 2x. oh cn ea etter enw evade 151 
Sle¥6 lai aa hee As ee as oe AS oy 8 ats 229, 230 
Sed anml-D0IN0. es aie ee ieee soc ane Ses 227 
SeGil atl Sta: wie «leery Pe ee ee os ae ee 229 
VEYA hy“ Oa Ss Read Aedes mh le tae ee me eS 230 
SOCO) Sete aw ere See. eee coats eee 74 
SRBOAS UK W UL ie Scns on soa = Soe hanae ne oeaete 99 
See Wil er ee sed on te Stee Se beers 100 
SRUACH DCU os Sogo. eat das sae a Anema 129 
SShicnit;yO-KaAlVars 220002. 25 eee teeee gee 151 
sori tees /elete/s Ci) eae ee ee eee a 151 
Rohigel k VGeKal Ve cee soa nae eee ee em 151 
Sein CV ALIGY retee an Soe te a acaneeeer one 100 
Sakis mine once oe ae oa eee ame ae 394 
SOA COT eee a ee ee eee eee ae 129 
SO Sig tea 62) (ied ed eel gm i RP < GR mee ps aU 125 
MERON CARs tok ge ae ecm npe aa —ae 11 
Senongading-tanedsite 2. .---. 4-2-5 -- 6s fiat 
hos ee ee eee ee 115, 116 
BACH Ale: ee -c p= ban cmc oee aera home 896 
ETAL BE po Shee Recipe lS rape his em ae Sieg Zeta t SS 896 
BET TOL. etd man ate hae ren 10, 11, 16, 18, 25, 51 
DOlTaNOL te he oe 577, 594, 595, 615-619, 786, 877, 883 
SonrailO OTOUP seme sens ee = eee tern ee 611 
SOS ae Ie nee Meee eee fa ete 896 
Ser CHIC HORAK Al Vide aoseee ae see = een 151 
Rate Ral Vd. sees on coos bono ee owen ton saa aeee 151 
Sepang ong-Kiyanale o-3- 52-622 conn oe 151 
Uae be oh as Slate tare eye a ee ee seny See Tr 145 
Sheypatetige I Oly es e8 coe cape tape eee eens rsa eo 230 
SB WOlL-SU Saat Geen eae e sso o Se sree ees 445 


990 


Page 
Shabakana Wee ek dean ite Si Ae ees 230 
Sha ber oleies eh eis 2ly seit Si eee 229, 232 
phoachanikauthe.s 2a ee Pee 231 
Shahena kote tet eee ee ee ee 145 
Shale ware: fee f e yy i ee ed 2 oe 553 
Shama lee ket tienes een ee tere ee SO 100 
Sai a eee eee ed ree ee See 233 
SHAMIM iste see ees 2 oe heel a ee 99 
Shamnam -f2<8 <-se= oe Se 2 ee eee 99, 283 
Shan alk shee bee ee eA vole 
Shanekaise. 21-21 hear ered 2 eR 231 
Sianeli FWOee We lio Tees wh Sle we 229, 230, 232 
Shanel-pomo -4.82 2 eek hee Bh ee 2 227 
Bhastatsai li wet 280, 285-304, 864, 876, 883, 896 
pHasta County 2 --Re 2s. ob ae oe ee 284 
Shasta Rivernes sins +56 os bee ees 287, 294 
Shasta Vialléy.s=weeen ee nee e ee 286, 293, 304, 369 
Shastaineeroup- see. 2 eee eee eee 279-284 
SiO DAS GAS 2 eee Wie ee a ea ee ee 357 
Shastika. See Shasta. : 
Shasty. See Shasta. 
SDSAUtLUSDING se eae ee ee ee oe eee 648 
DOI UY EIN oe ee ee eh ee ee 99 
Saw oes tee. Sie. Ce eee ie Eo 558, 554 
Shaw ahtdtlss on). dese eee eee eee eee 479 
Shawako wes: s<sancs oF s a ps SS 220, 233 
Sheep,-Creekic:-33532e stents sheets SS 602 
She hamming Aes FSS ss Ss. See a 484 
SHER COVESAS a: s2 5a eee 145, 212, 248 
SNC DG ASSs sesecces ssceglet Saas AOS 233 
DHOPULA ae cet ate a aoe Sa pene a eee 118 
Sherman dsland Sr os] ses =e aceaes sees an ee 443 
SerwO0G = cee et eat ane 166, 167, 210, 230, 261 
Sherwood Valley sess seas ee 212, 238 
Shibalni-pom0 tas ese 2 ee eee oe 230 
Shiegoterse sewn a ee te eee eee ger 232 
SHiOmer oe ae oe ar se een 228, 231, 236, 238 
Shikgich = 225. eer tr ae ar eee 589 
PHiKaAVi yarn {ees See seh ae Ae 589 
Shikidapauh-: a2 et eS eee 475, 479 
SHMimCGla es | 2c Pee Pe Set ee ee a ees 219, 220 
Shin ale see cee 2 eee ee oeecen eee ee one Sener 231 
Shinyatlchiss se ao ae eke ee 125 
S RIDEG De oes ce hte ee ae cae ee eee amie 212 
Ship aMn Owe ee ee eee ee 165 
Shipolset one wee ee sere ee Swe cee ee oe 212 
SM pPomiul ss sce sass 2 ee ee eee 202, 203 
BISCO Da oo cay Aree Oe ee ee ae 553, 554 
Shivawach fees ce ve oe ee re ee 595 
SULVWAtS EP alll tome es eee Ses oe ee eee oe ee 593 
Shiy oli seen. ees ia te eee ee ee ee 230 
51) OUR er = hee ee oe ee oe 648 
Shodakal ct 2 wee pact a ese ee ee ee OO een, 231, 238 
Shokadial_.-! as: ¥oscu se er eee teens 232, 235 
SOK Om set cen ee tie i ee Re a ee 482 
Shokumimiepit -sesseses. ose esos aoe 394 
SINCGSHON Gs. nae ao aetas & an aoe ee eee 589, 590 
Shoshonean family. -_-_-_-.---- 574-580, 885, 886, 913 
SHOSHOn ©OlM AN COG: ea eee eee eee 577, 589 
SOUS oe cea ete ete area eee ee ee ae 230 
SBHre? pone oss. 8 sees ate ee a ee ee ee ae 25 
SCOR OLO Es» ap a perce Oe cates eee 552 
Bias oc eee ees Siesta 621 
Shukshanchis. sc cweee eee ee eeem ee ewe 481 


GENERAL INDEX 


Page 
Shulaputi...2s.13222d2) -eeeobese sense eee 445 
Shumiig# =: Plo ood se yen 5 eee 10 
Shunhun imaldjist sass. 22. 2s see eee 345 
Shushtachi.-.-.4222t2e¢222 2252252 eee 553 
Shutamuls. 4 <522.2. ee eee 394 
Shutauyomanok..- -..4-=--— ee eee 232 
Shwulumssetcect «22s. ttle ee 11 
Siakummné!2cs22¢s tees = 252 2 eee 485 
D1Dast shes sdehs ob ohare ee ee 621 
Sierra Nevada:. 52.4223. -42. 2.2 ee 475, 477 
Sierra‘ alleys 222225222522. 0S eee -.” 570 
Siesta, Peak.2si. 2522. Sel 125 
Sihetal Daal:...+.2.2-- 222) eee 478 
Sikalum:-<2".24-. 425224455 ee See 589 
Sikingehwungmitahdmg2 2 = 222 seees ae 138 
Siksiké-NOse2) oot cee os ce ee 445 
Sikutsha=.2c2u- ieee el - 236 
Silangk 0.22: senses dese sete es 822 eee eee 145 
Silo-ng-Kkoyo::<: 2:2: ssc2- 23 3s eee 397 
Sulong-koy0s #22.-2-222422_ 2 2 eee 393 
SimTs sete eset oe ia 2 See ek 896 
Sims Ferry:-ceees: -. 2s) » oe 99 
Sinchichmopse4£s:s2222ic)22-=29252 ee 164 
Singawli-nu_v.- 408. 2 eee 445 
Singer Creeka escent eee 345 
Sinkyokoccs2s S23 eS eee 145 
Sink y 0ne¢s 29s4 3 eae 145-150, 864, 876, 883 
Sisitkano-ngase.- sas 20 * 2 ee eee 621 
Siskiyoudsesas-i_22’. 2. eee 895 
SiskiyoutCount ye ee ee eee ee 283 
Siso-chi.s_t2-s2 ct ee eee 445 
SIsquoG.2ett essen eee 897 
Sisuguina ste Ss.ueeess fos 3 615 
SISUMI=S s+ > Set aes tee! ee 394 
Sitltsitako-esss2iiS sos eee 145 
Siuhturlaivs rs srs Se eee 553 
SIUC S see Son ees Sens eee 553 
Sivel 4 SS ee Do ee ee ee 694 
Sivvinitars! <5 Sr oe ae 593 
Siwashve! 2 eS eee 308 
Siwim-pakan 22 as eee 394 
SIx- Dit MOndes $2 <2 eee ee 345 
Skonon. 2222202222 eee 552 
Sktikoum asf. a ee ee eee 897 
Sla-kalyal. S22 a eee dkagh 
Slate Creek 222 i ees eaee eeee 356 
SMG RLV OTess cae ee eee 52, 123, 124) 12527 
Smithsonian Institution 2 222---- 22 --s eee 1b 
Smoké Creekc: 22s 3 eee 584 
Snatyakneeee 5 oe ee ee eee 719 
Snow Canyon 22). eee 618 
So’=bida=mest at ee 2 eee 229 
Sokeakelt: 20 ose ee en 129 
DOKOW RUE i wee 232: 
Sokut Nten yi 22 ee ee 694 
SOLED itt Se ye oe ee ee SOs 394 
SoldiemB asin. | eee ee 143. 
Soledad hte) Se ee ee 463. 
SOMMISss< Woo: to cac ce pe een ee 897 
SOn4 se. ote ot note 164 
SONG As Seeee on eee gee 621 
SONnG-00 ice teen cae cee ee eee 356 
Sonkash: + sos os See ee eee 164 
Sonlasino’ms. 2 asi ee ene eee 165 
SONOMA owe ee wenscinm ante ee eee ae 897 


GENERAL INDEX 


Page 
Bbc Co OUTY Snide oo oe 144 
Pen leks 218 
OSL re a. eS 237, 274, 353 
RT nt ey i he Cog 445 
AS SE Eg eee ee aR PT he 445 
0 TT ERG RES Oe a ee eee eT 445 
1G ERs DEORE eet Sees ae OREE ee LT 553 
en Fr ee ek it! ay > Lae 897 
SS oS Shoes Aad ut ash 589 
0 ea a ae ee ae 233 
SS ee ce ee ee oe eS, 233, 897 
ee SS nd 445 
LS TSE 6 bc) a a ee ee 202, 203 
eouen Mork.of Wel River... ee 154 
South Fork of Trinity River__________ 144, 352, 354 
SMT SINTOG ss et ceded 593 
A EN Se a re ee eee ara 720, 723 
| Se a eaees oF 120 
COAST E STG 2 oS ha rene lar oe 318 
Pram reek eo oo dake 233, 284, 339, 352 
De SS or eek le cn 480 
SOL 10, 11, 16, 18, 33, 51, 59, 71 
Ls. a as eee So 10 
ete RT A od eee ee ML 62 
OL SG a 442, 476, 570 
Sep mee AIS ee eu ERO 443 
Brevens Piolow 26. cs cee ceen ncn ee a aes 345 
OTST EC re 286 
OO eT bn a oe es 234 
“a OF 7a 0 SS Se ne 356 
RTM 5 Fn sting GLEE rede 486 
pO NSPE. eo co eee wecenn 10, 52, 116 
Stony Creek___.___.__- (166, 167, 224, 232, 236, 352, 369 
pC SSG. Se ae ee ay 232 
per meen No tk eck we SS 10 
i 3 Cee oe, 2 ee oe roe ee 621 
NICER Ee es ee a, 621 
NAL ME eh oa ba i ae Re PY 711 
TS) a: 445 
Op 2 eet 3 sa ee 897 
LS on yo Rae 11 
RMR er i ee teeth ® 129 
WS SS A ed ei ae 356 
Soro is I > i eee | 897 
EO oa rr 353, 463 
Me Oe is, Be ch Sas Fe ps te ey yee os 188, 189 
MRE IM IT ER Seite 2 et ee 445 
Se CE es eg er ra 165, 166 
C8 OIG Fe OE Se ee 444 
RESEDA e dere fet bows eye. P| 482 
Pani AAnG Mo Jeeta) eee 161 
rere RCA Sec Sees eee tery tN 483 
DORR AE ten l Su eee ye 445 
Pert aK ye Sohn wae = es Set 270 
merpnurbank- Islands: .22i 2.22800 )2-0 232 
meapiiv Grek. 2st o22--.cshsc.c. co. 218, 219, 233, 237 
OLS Se ee 286 
URE PEEE Se fete sy ete oc le he 74 
MTN RGRO 2 osc Vee ee 484 
ee rc i 483 
anne errant ise a De 5 de Pee 444 
SAELD D2 NG Rn oe Aiea hea ape ee aad 545 
arrears ese) <2 ahh OE oe yee sy me 897 
ePIOPIMOPN HEY toe oe ee 584 


3625°—25}——-64 


Page 
BIISAT, Ct ee ee ee 391 
2 ee TE Sad ee me. 316, 392 
PUT OR Te es lt 391 
2 a ae ae ee we. Meee eee. Pi 897 
peetiebany J)> 6 gh ee SP ee 212 
PRR os Uk ek a ae 553 
aR nt a 445 
A ee Og oe Ne ET ek ea 554 
oS 81 a ae ee i NM BC nT 484 
Sycamore Creek__.____ ee te ae 585 
Stata Kwa ee nS et 115 
Dh. eee ba ee ee ee aL 
Co 8] a nace. o 115 
(iON Cui a7 hc eh a er rs | 481 
AUS etcerc: ey ie a al ee 897 
mon aa 2 tense os 2k oe Te 99 
SOC RE oie ie, ee ae es 484, 897 
Dieter 475, 476, 483, 484, 492 
ead Hige eee se Ts eee 484 
SPC Net) Sen 25d ea! ee Oe 394 
eee Ota £210 ao ee ee A se ee 125 
oS: Ce Ee yc oe oe a ee ay eee Fe 478 
ANG SU GOW Sere s<< ja) | ate sod Oe nn Moree OE UR 124 
TOs Pe iid a es bs do Seas 897 
EUS See ee a ST eM GAP gr, 897 
ALC Ac, eh ne Fort 617 
Mahtininm ne eee 928 tos ae el 491 
oe en ee eee ng a) eee ee 648 
INT: ko ee Ame Ree, ese mate 8! 394 
TET Teg 0 Ep POP ee ON ee ie One Oe 897 
Taikomol._ 150, 155, 182, 184, 186, 204, 206, 207, 216, 270 
SN) t: 5h Bey eens ee NEC - Set 394 
dT EE? a a ee re ee ee. a. we 394 
Pereloweltl le Acoust. ules 2. Soe 116 
TEESCLING: Soe G6 ae ee. eres oe 897 
MIRON 22 hc cose oe el a ee ok 445 
Takimitlding_______ 50, 102, 126, 129, 131, 132, 134, 135 
ANON A Os ES Ee SOT ES re Ake” 552 
la ae See a es eee 394 
POWER, see Sn oe ee eS 129 
RASA RO Wt 2 os Sie ee ae 129 
REGIS eee ole et on ae 117 
Mari noses Fe oc ah ees 274 
PI OIGS Ae ara oa | Rt ee 897 
ANN GhE eee ee i cee See a Prey aes 463 
PTD A ATG oe a 185 
ATUL VOT 0 8s tS se eel 617 
SET as iene ee a ee 444 
Manataptiaverawak Wes os ico. ce-cce nese ee 117% 
fA UTASNL AR LY rn ee a tae 480 
AWE Shoe ce Se Ry ee arm Oe ee ae ee? 145 
Abeer aioe Mee ae eee mote cea ee 394 
AN Ay elas ey PS ee ee eee alee 161, 165, 166 
pO ST CL a pe oe Oe rT ere er 145 
{VS NE Se ie er SE ee ee ee ee oe 711 
glo Certs: C2, De ewe eee ean oe eee a vee 648 
gE RS GTO) 25 a ae ee a ee ne eee 129 
PRCT 2 OWS BeOS AT adc yee eee 897 
Py BUSS So ots ee ee hg ir Comoe 552 
ARCO TR ELIOT geek Cen Oe meee 552 
JOLT CUS ROU conan) (D5 ee eine aie? 129 
BEE ae ee Se oer ae pee es 393, 398 
gf WET are SPN SS Se ee nee ae ee 345 
SWAT TOET CL JA Ra NOY Re ae Se ore aA 99 
1g ae Es Re ee ee ny ee ae 124, 125 


992 


Page 
TPAUALN, Sc see Se eter wee sae ee as Sea ee 125 
PAUGIN 238 py oes No eR ee aerate oe 232, 235 
Mia tesadingwees. she okt Soe ae oe 2S ees ll 
Watini oe Saks reas 2 Sassen a obese SR 124 
Tatintin ys som ses ee ee aa a 125 
Matishozkaya koeseo cea hee ee coe ae ee 151 
pp at la to) ee ea ee ae 124 
AGU Beck oe ee ee ee oe ee eee ee 897 
SPOR Y wks coecdigeecen Cee ac ae aca nee + eee 145 
WAU CUIMNeS . ee eee a eee ee 445 
ANN bhyig Cab oe arial Sp mail SMR MRI FOE Le 8 a 719 
SRA VOSK ANE C522. WEA led alt cee nae 759 
ADA WalSak tio soe 2 Sk eee a ses Seen a ee 355 
Maywalimni2 Ani leteeete: . oo as 485 
IDA VALAIS coco ele ere ieee eee eee 596 
Pa vaninerel ice coo e de ee ee 356 
(Da VIO SWING 0 ia Sneece eke cere eee eee ee 398 
EP CHOKO VET ee sien Sen eee te eae eee 274 
FRENOLO VON es ee eae at dae 486 
Mechahot? 24.0 cesta sacle ee ee eee 710 
WeCUY3..3.< cesta ee ee 897 
Merwe elee eek h aout eet eee 115, 116 
Sehachaple. 2. ee ae ee Se ree 602, 897 
Tehachapi Moeuntalnseceas.- eee == eee 601, 611 
Menachsa Piseassia-e—-e ee eee eeeee 475, 574, 602 
WéehachaplPeak.- 22242. eee ae ee 612 
Mehamia se ce Sa eer errr et 897 
(Tehama County leenseesoae eee eee 353 
Teh pites. 3. sot eoc ek dee eee 897 
TREJON sowohl ge behets ie eens oe 518, 602 
Wejonu@reekt sot 22 Seeds es ee EE 611, 612 
MejonmuGdignss.. ee aes Lee eee eee 612 
the] ON -PAaSSiec- cetera cone ee ee _ 612 
EPejon s¢Ranchoces seal’ sacs aes ee eee 612 
Tejon Jveservation 2...) 20a. ane 612 
(Rejonehos. cece ek: aeeee ee ee aera ae eens 482 
Pejungase. aise Pele oT ea EN eee on ee 897 
Tekenan-tSo0-N0ma ---<--_ ee se eee ee 219 
WOkta 22. enews Seen eee ee eee 10 
Telam. 2 ede tetestes ce eee Cee ee ee 482 
Moelame. 2... sete sae ee eee ee 491 
"RelamM cet ene Pee eee ae Le eee 482, 491 
Mela-ng-k’ Wm = ae ee eee ee eee 398 
“MOlOSC-NOs2 2. he Shee ee eee ee ee 445 
eCelommni 23 ees ee ee ee ae 482 
Pella... ete eee eee Se ee ees 445 
‘Pemalwahish-rcckt Lee eek eee eee eee 694 
Temecula ae ee ee ee ee 897 
SRE Nee. sae te: eee ae eee eee Se 801 
“Keni Mile: River: 28 s2s22: = Se ees eee 212, 213 
SPONGY s08 wae olor PE ree ene ee ee er 897 
“PENNA See fee ea eee 552 
SEG DUSC UG Geren ee se eee eee eee eee 897 
‘POGUE DISS 2 eet Se renee Sr ee nee ee ee 897 
'Terwertce 22 oa eee ee aes ihe a PEE eee 10, 73 
DerwerrCAm pase 2 2 oe eae we om ee tees Barnes ae 11 
SP OS Wy acer oe en ee ree eS aetna re 137 
‘Tea h poste See Fe ae ae ers aa eee 115 
FR EWADLESIN AS tein & ke (eee se ence rene Cees 145 
"Beall Gs Meee = es Ae abi aie ys Sinee Sa hae eee 308, 319 
Herma ltess = tears Ley oe Pon eet Site ee 706 
‘Thomas @reckGeenes are tr sate ae eee oe 166, 176, 356 
‘Thompson Grecks-0n sears tee tee eee 100 
ThreeiGabinse wens sereese see io) one ee 117 
‘Phun ers Mae Sewer crh es Meee Se Se aa 207, 216 
ELLE Skok a. SUSE Ie Eee eae 100 


GENERAL INDEX 


Page 

Pientienc.we soo eee 356 
Timbalakees:_22 02.2. ee edo oes 274 
Timber, COVO-s2 2. oe od eee ee 234 
Timpashauwagotsits -- 200220 See 595 
ASDACUBIC.~ 22. ptc.8 cee CLL Ree ee ae 897 
TINCT SN 5b Soe he Pe ee eee 897 
(Pinkinin 2": 7232. ese ee eee 482 
Timi liv eee ee eS ee ee 482 
Tinyam-kwacha-kwacha-.--.-.__..-_-..5--= 5 801 
Pipotoy assess so ea ee 445 
(Pishechii 8 t t OSe kiec ue eae ee 475, 480 
Tishechtiehi. {24 2 2. J Aas 475 
Tishlinik. 2. ous ce ee ee 552 
Tishrawa_22_.-2. Lt ee ee 100 
Tishtangatan’-): 22asds 2 ee eee 129, 897 
Wissaack {.. 6 ek es oe 897 
Miwa) soso ee ee 164, 234 
lelding...-. <>. Se ae es ee 130, 131 
Memelewetl. 2.222._._.3 4 2 eee 8, 10 
Tlemalding: 242.3 eo il 
APlitsusme=: oo 225222. 2 ee eee 124 
Wkelikera® J. A: We Ge. © oe ee 74 
Miocheke.- se. eA at 138 
Mochime 22222 5 eee 138 
TVokamewe sw Lee ee ee 130 
Tlokuchitding-.= 3s. 52... i 
THIsme se ee de ls de 124 
SPMerin. 232. 0 6 ee ee oe 10 
Tocaloma,.2.0 2252.55.22 2 oe 897 
Tecan os 4.2 owes ee eee 553 
Wodannang-kiyahang._ 6 22. 2 se eee 151 
Mahohsigss 2 a 2 ee eer 

Toholo. se _ CH AOe tet moe 484 
Tomnichs..6 ote 2 ee es 480 
Pokamal: owt... S30 pee Se ee 648 
Mokelomigimit). 29) 255-0 sae eee ee 115 
Pokin' ss 546+ + one = Ge ee ee er 552 
‘Wokyah-kiyabang:--..2.2- 2), eee 151 
Lolakwe i223 cose eck es eee 125 
Bolen £ SOR wo Ta ee 356 
Tolenas:c =. 32 eee eee 897 
TROLOK We cs 2: tea ea | es 124, 125, 126 
Tolokwe-wonekwl . ..-<-22e22c<24-)- sea ee 124 
"Loloma site, Pie lpi a 582 
LOLONV A tee Caen eee ele ee 123-127, 864, 876, 883 
Toltichi. 2.8.5) te 2h see ea 481 
Tomales#f 2) 205 se 2 a 897 
Tomales .Bay2t. 2b 2.22 _ bees o noe ae 273 
Tomichae ts.5 2) 2. te os Be 394 
Tomki,Greekits. ©. 2. ves ©. fs 2) eee 202, 203 
Tondinunding’ 222 26. eee 138 
Tonimbutuk > 23-.5:- 32.) 6 ee 394 
Tontoz2e veidesou la fsL eee ee 709 
TNOOW 9-2-2 ou wtbacs oo es ee eee 897 
Topa:-Topa.io ios 6... toe eo 897 
Topaidi-selese 0.55) ome 5 356 
TopamMal, & - 22. ce ee ee 648 
Mopanga lo. ew oe ee 897 
Topanga Creeku. 22-2 2 eee 621 
Topi pabite. 2.9 e2ee oc. eee 615 
TPOTT OS, ROSOr WatlOD 2 22 sae) 6: oa 706, 707 
Potltsdsding 7. 2. .o eee a oe ee 129 
TOGOee! 32 hens sakes eee 394 
Toto-Ma. 20.2 6 Se SL ee Chee 394 
DOV E22 meee date Dh ee ee e 694 
Towinchebas St eS ieee 585 





; 
j 
a 


- 


GENERAL INDEX 


Page 

6 bs ES SAS a eS 7S aes” 10, 15, 61 
PoE TIONG civabewe eke Ae uff 8, 114, 116 
OS ky ae ee re, ele mee Ce 356 
Co Le 2 Ee rts]. a a eer a 357 
PRG ARE WOE hth hc al 6, 10, 15, 51, 70, 
71, 109, 116, 123, 129, 145, 349, 352 

EIN a Reed oth Oak Sees Bee 547 
pata eerie s Seek ok tual naam nhl 897 
ere RU WOES she ce cele conc oct dest lee ne 568 
MTOR E ne ci cedem nn Boose Le 10, 14, 116 
Pep OA ee Pee ee coe e TS 230 
CUTS SSE ee ee a ee ee a 394 
PRIMERA Os SPP. cS ot ini ee 394 
PROP VRUPAGIM te 2e snes tee 2k 394 
PeRID WN Soe Actress s-sc cet eel 230 
Pena aieD S os ere Seni ecnth ung 2b 99 
EMRE. Sacyes 7d shears awesen bs 2a 356 
SS ee ee ee 394 
LUSS a toprct EE a a Oe eae Se ae 116 
od gh ae 2 SN Ee ee eee Rl 70 
Brea W Op aera to SE SMS SE et 8 10 
WHI We ge Se ee oe SS 75 
RPMOEMIINOE N25. peo kde J onecenesce tee iuigyal 
Ch Ee os a er ae 8, 10 
eam on aining ore 129, 131 
Proy OR ODONUU We ee a 70 
ULSAN CSS 2s oe ee ee ee 547 
Gt biti see ares He SET Aes Cae 482 
PESTA ChE) ee yh Sie Sate Pa eee “ee 138 
CLS at SS eee 116 
NALS «1 Sh a a a a ne ea Ee 231 
SS ORCA Arn ern ee 8S po ee 99 
EPELW GU A 5 eee UE 75 
LO CSTE DS Oe ee ee 481 
Pera wie atia so Se 14 
CO UAE Sl Oe ee a ee rr 229 
TOS oc C0 i a SE Sle eee or = Os meee 109 
US ECU Sop sc a yea rr rr 612 
CVSS ae 2 ee, ot Se ee ee en 2 394 
A Sivonil eeotene nt 8 br VN Soe a 482 
Steer mis WO toe oe 394 
MERAY eo ek ak 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 52, 61, 116 
‘Pubatulabalo-+ 2. 482, 577, 605-610, 864, 877, 883 
UP uijedpatck 22"). 22 Uae Re eee era ee a 553 
OE alt Te aati et gl Re RE 618 
BCIn nn CAT es eens ee ee, 618 
CHU epee Man lpne os Se i ee 789 
“TT UTI ee Sok a or sp a ea 553 
ALOE pa ba 8 Se are cl ene aac RE 478 
oo Mia 5 Ep la y. ReRiialie S08 pea ae A 478 
UNE HUE Dae bt Ss SS i al a a ee Cea Me ST 307 
LEG U8 seats So ec cre see le =k MER Se 99 
Sia kit Meee er ee ee oe ee 553, 554 
Choe SGU EL Tebe, aete Nits oo. ee: Nala a eae Oey ees RE 444 
MERICULUMG PSI ete te See a Reet eB IC 445 
AS vnag hitherto aed sal abe Ye ee el ee 476 
CUCL A Sa dB) oe aa gee aa oe RR ah coe oem 478 
UE Layee eG) at) 2 pani Ae a a ee 445 
Tulare Lake_...../-_--- 323, 474, 475, 476, 483, 490, 607 
2G it SES PERS FOE 476, 488 
AN vil OLE! tie: 0, ha ee ys: ewe tie ae ae a 145 
BUS Ley Derek cy See ne ee Spr i eee 318, 319 
Serricee vn eee wees ee ee ee 480, 482 
eee ver Reservation — 2-20-25. 479 
SOT Grae ee ee eo eS Se See eed 272 
0 a a es eee ee eee Ss 232 











993 


Page 
Pye VES A ated ee ie 345 
PER ee ek Oe 709 
TOR Pen Sc sen rel eee 607 
Lg Cl et ee a ee eee oe ERS SED A < 445 
iT ils oO AES ca eer enh e 897 
LN rT ae ay ka SRE CLE LAD ee oa 3 274 
PEP ULTT1 Gr eee ae ec, | TS eS annals 394 
PICGLEITI Cogan ee ee Se ERE Ao eR aed 100 
PICRIITL CY ate eek Pe hs Ou Ss ee 607 
Wali pisepaw stitial isk ea 595 
SEINE GO TTOIBIEAEL A Ge Geo a pace ee eee ee 617 
RECT S a ae), TT eee Peel ok HUE SRS 445 
Topchiwingkis-hyndines 0 ee 11 
ANIC IT WIR 1 eee eee tae ey oe 11 
PORCHWHICE YOUNG ogee sok os ese ee 11 
Supciwmits ching 3-4 4. ae 11 
ane bAChem es ey eee en a ee 483, 491 
ECCT OSE Cae oe eae ae Bek et hn 479 
PantK- Chie et. Sia poy lei oe ed 445 
sRvoiiupalar 2: ethene aber Beg a eae 483 
SE MIGUITRINAE. age 1a eek. th eu oy Oo Sete 897 
PRGMIINNG Haven os b2 oe ee tee ee ay 442, 476 
papal Vinioe 25.0 i a. oo ee 617 
LPIviD = ee wee 8, 10, 11, 16, 18, 19, 25, 59, 60, 61 
RT Kin, Meee pt Pe I a kk 618 
ESP UNTIRAL DIG gies ao er Oo ok re be eae 232 
pRuatukswi tired te ex Ae Le eo 648 
pSuivase knits ue! oy ae Le eee ins 2 Py 621 
(Puiy ierti-tia xc, Feat oie Seek pinoy 445 
STS ZAM TE @ NE eae cs es ee 584 
fewer yaninesice Wises eee ee ee 594, 595, 616, 618 
PISS LG TLS ira ie Pe ey Sas Sela. fet et ar a ee 443 
TERESA SiON ON ees = ou ga a, Aig ly a ot 145 
Welt yin eeten.jo4 7 ee os ee be ees 479 
AU KG Wik La een Cee mee SE ht, Oe ee emery & W)c 2 484 
MOTT ey tha el dee OFS 2 oo oh Be 483 
(WIN GIASIAS: noire inept 3 C= hens NE 2 ee 491 
Wika chim1io!In 21 & epee dn et Se eae 165 
LOM 25 001550). A ee 5 eR ee See ee ein: Sem Sos. Fi 
TOR ST Ih eh i eh gS gal 212 
WR tae Bg Gen ge I Se 231, 897 
ita heVyalleiyee ae eee Se ae 200 2a0; 200 
ONC OLUTO) ieee aie eke Wa eee To 163, 166 
KERN a0 Nk et es ee Ee eee 229 
RU SULIT TD ge is Se ae a nn ee 203 
DORESUITL CLT epee 2 Ret ot vy 2) Sipe] A ae 479 
Wilsinolne? mies oet Ce i ee ene 165 
WH AAUO Sie cet ah oi an SS ie ee eee td 356 
URL eater ep oo OE el ed Am 897 
RELIST AG te he 6 Bee Fe 3 yor nee I e _ 897 
hilaztoe eee ee Ae See ee Le 356 
MMI NO WacIVers ose eos eS meee 90 
NOE eA eee A Oe on on En ee Ee eee 286 
WUC? eee ees et Da > 5s a ee 444 
TMU CHET S- ces ie 8 ets oe ee) oe ee 444 
Way ould yy) eT Re en a ee eer see 897 
LW ursy Ls, 2) Oe SRN Se eden Ree aha Se coe RNS 621 
Ein Sov griae ears alates are ae as Sa BE Wee he es 621 
[Stal evil cage eee Oe ee eee eee Ie bee ee 100 
Mniversity:of-Callformia | 2-2 - - eae Ix, 411 
NinG [yew eee) er Se Bes 5s os Se 552 
WER OOTY C TGA! So ate wees. 7 soe eee 233 
Wa Oise a kOe ets tn herd ee 224, 231 
NESTE week te ae Eee 445, 448 
EP a a I par ae eng Cee techs Saree se 145, 212, 897 
De saNational Museum. -.- 35.2 emacs Ix. 


994 GENERAL INDEX 





Page Page 
WSSINTS: Tie Se Ree Cee Sees ak oe ae 100%) « WieltiSpustess- s+ 2322 ace oe eee 7, 10, 11, 14; 
LB Sy orga ehets Wien ROE ley co Suk ere eee 394 25, 34, 38, 42, 50, 51, 52, 57, 58, 72, 102, 116 
Wite-Chemehuevicumeees ssn) ee ee it~) uWieldon. 3. saoU ie ae ee eee 607 
USE UAG a Se ea ce eee ae 168/166 1; Wemuree:. 2 Jno. cake eee 711 
Whto-Aztekanwtamilly seuss eee 3 te ee OVO.) WiSHE TOO 258 oo eS ee 553 
Oia bu i bbeween Ueeee UENO Wen oe ate CMV eE Nene ory Ts 286) |. VWVenote Bet se 2 ek ee Fo ee ee 621 
ES Cer) pera an ie Sine Re ERMA, Per eae 1G) |. Wettspit ant oo cere Mee Se 74 
WR WG eae as el ee ee es bee 163,0164;234: | Wiesliui 2 238 Sed © |. ae 484 
OL CNO2 11 ke Ne i ee reg a am 163°" |UWesnak 9.6 ode 394 
Wiel OCitOS. < ayel.o aot det omen te eee ee “ly |) West'Berkeleyjmound 22222220 -) es 923, 924, 932, 933 
Wan Dusen Oreck 2 o-oo ea oes $23 .| Woestern(M 0n0 2. 2a... .sce2ccee eee See 580 
Van Dusen Fork___-_____- re tee ae ae L42e 43145 ul SWiestport= 2. = 20. a Se 212, 213 
Vancouver Island: 22.2 2o) See eee 23 Wietlkwatlss. 7.2322 10, 11, 16, 17, 18, 52, 60, 61, 71 
Wan yiMetae se eee eee 577, 690, '602.614-615,883)) || Wetlowasse2 2). 2 2 2 ee 75 
VanyumerSerrano.- 22-2. a ee ee B95” || ao Wietlwaus..1\2. 2022-3282 ae 53 
Wauphn te tei2 Sn oe. a eee eared GOe| aWietsets és. 2 Pe sk ee oe ee 70 
WiGITGM ROI. 4. eee eer Ee ee ae Hose HOO |) AWICUSILSIKO 22 2522 25 2 es fe ee 99 
IMICLORVINCH A. Oe ye ea eee on oe ee 6022015" “i Wertson so ce 2 Ss ee 115 
VSI ee Oe ee ee ee se ee ASS! |) WeWAYOSe220 22: oe. i eee 483 
WiSsiLacionunOund.s ease tena eee 9299932) | “Wewutnowhtl22. = eee 694 
AVVWa] OCNAW sss ceh 2s he ey eee ee Gllg~ |! Wey ietes == 0 <a ee 112 
[WiaHHSEl Set ne ee oe Ue 1ORO5 |. \Wieyotsei.. 3s es ee eee 12 
Wachadmshwashtusiis a ee ee 319) 4) Wihilkiite 22 ee ee eee 141, 883 
IW ACHSTO=n wee wee eee Se eee 466: | iWihiskey;Flatuo. 1 - bee eee 607 
EVVESCL GLK oh eae ee ae eee 584.1 Wihttey Buttes. _.J. 5. 2 = ots See 249 
WiahSekwinqe sees eee ea 8, LOM 4 aL 725884 | “White River... 28552222 ee 479, 482 
IWViAIEOKCE ee Se 2 et co igen SOF e|) “Wihite Water.2 htt 2222 694 
Wahtoke Creeks i2¢2 526.54 oe eee A83's|. Wihite’S 502" > 3-0 3 ee er 621 
BV VAAL Call) OSes nus Soe ne ee 356. | Wihitewater Canyon...) 1 ae 618 
SVWieille Kelton ey Sea tent en Meri 1L5IELS4; S76ES83) | SWianekat.s. ee 2 oe eee ee 596 
Wraltarshul wie ete ee tat eee ene 483°) Wichuman nas22-5 | * eae ee ee 339 
MVCN GD ies.» a Oe ON NT OR Neha ON cee Tes tL 484 8 Wika oe 3 2 le Wg 715 
ASW iaiey naeaee nal Cee OE wa ik. Sones eels 90 Ly pe 142° | Wikchamni.2 es. oe so eee 480 
IWinka-cheelvet tet. 0220 a ee ceeeee A4Bie Wikyolt7. 2 tes S82’ Se ae oe 648 
RVWrakasinan. SGOC kg 2a ies sees eee 913-| Wilakalew to.) ou 2 3 7 eee 689 
ASICS ee) (eyeeeenoueaee aes ak RE Eg ET ie cote hae act te AS16484 =) Wilaksel 25 28-32) Se ee 356 
Wiaksachi Aer Se 8) ie 2 ee ee ee 586. ecWilics 23 So oe. Sone | oe So Se 394 
Wik kts eS eek eee ee eee 618. | <Wilikosi. <.-2. 8. 4b ae ee 218 
ANU @UNeUN a Asy au leeatln eee ese aoe ees ka. G18.) Walit@. 2 ua ee 2 445 
Vel Wallen bree ee eae op a COZ. | 2 Wallamettez 2.2) ve oe S25 Se See ee 913 
BV 024 Aas SRO RMR ar RS aie ere ee Mee 595, 709 | Willamette Valley_..........<.22.-25 cee 90 
WVGIROGUB SSL Got eecehexcnwccsee ese nee 602 4. Williams Vialéyet et 2 2 ee 164, 165 
Wield sotew nck aces ten eheek eaent css. eee eee 484) “Williamson! River: U2 23...) ee 318 
CWralntttS@ se jes hor Sis oes ee 233 ‘Willits ss oi ire SN eae oe ee 166, 176, 212, 230 
Wialse kaw: cGetcce sett ae etn bi. | WillowiCreek..-. (2 a ee 319 
LWAIneriw all cesedGs eens woe oe so eee ee WY | QWilok sic) ee ee ae 233 
IWih Othe ons Soca meee ote en See ae a een 486 Wilson iCreék2. 2.2 oo. 10, 116 
WE DUDUDA VAIN 22a. eee eee OS 1 WiisongJ ack... eed et 868 
WiapDO ame on aa eke ee ee 217=221,'87638834 | eWarmia? pees 2 ee 555 
We DUI ee nee ee ee eee O04) GWamilchi Geet Ss eee 483 
Wiaratikee oS ecb soo soso eas ee eee ae es BSA Wini=miemior. ope 2 Ae ae ee 356 
Warnueprings Creek 2.32220... eee ee 233 | (Winnemucea’s Bands... ee 584 
MVVerreniC reek 2 2 es a eee Le ee 22) le IWHIxt ee ee ee ee 351-391, 876, 883, 885 
WVASC IN Scene ee ct See cate A454) JWanins Bully =. 3 ee ee ee 897 
pWishk:a Hae. Sos Se ey ie ee ree 648. sp Whishoskde — 0 eset ee eee 112 
WiashOsssteeelestecene ee eae 568=5/3,,.864, 877.080 4) WaShOtpInIIN ge --- ese e 398 
AWE Vii Ae lS 5 RS aaa tN 648 OF OWitkd 822 ee eee 115 
SWEAT OIITIG AD Pee Liste wpe eee to eee ee VEEEI25 | Witsigoe © <2 ee eee 99 
WWATSA YORI CITIES ts xo oetorie ans Rieter pe er See Ue Wit eKO 111) 0 11h ee ete ee ne 161, 165, 166 
Wraueuilewatl nn: oe 92 Re Sie ee ge 129.) BWA Wily Uk 4 te ee 602 
W alka Was waren cineca arise er alcewtea oe SSO 7 AVY com thd d mints ngs be earns a earee our ge oe 
Wecharith Anges. 23 eee eae ee GPa eV OWES 2 i bee eee ee 112-120, 864, 876, 883 
Wechilitatis-s2se Se ees ee a eS ASS «| “Wiyoudistrict=.) = 2. oe sen ty 
RWiCGY Oba scan Pe eee ee eh a 897) ||| *‘Wiobonuch 222-2). 32? aa eee eee 585 
AW elitlto ey hey ep eae e eel ee ee ee Add | “Wiogititt-t a. 222). 5 eee ee 478 


‘Weitchpec 2252 eet eae ee WLIGAT257 S077 WO Kel 2 k2 Ole an ee eee a eee 8, 10, 11, 16, 18 


GENERAL INDEX 


Page 
Wohbkero--_.-. Bet a Near oet s EEE 8 10, 16, 18, 19, 32, 51 
WON DORUINON S82 - fe cwe oo ccaancnneaee es 73, 74, 119 
MMO UEL ot 00 i oe a 10, 14, 16, 18; 19. 31, 51 
Wy GMUCRE NY DIROTO spo. 2. te ee ce 59 
INVES 0 Mey ope able. Biel 4 poe Se a 484 
AOSD eS cle 5 Bes Sn A pe ee 482 
OMELET, S002) Fhe ah es te 445 
WeagHaSE OT - Os oe oe eo ee ee 607 
MU ATS C8 NG Re et a ae Ge el eee 394 
AOC TS | Qs. SPs Le ec a a fa Re a 689 
Vinnie I eer ese es 8 Se Se sed 5 445 
VASP ET leerene eee ee ee! So ee 482 
WIG) GL. 09 ene Se A a eae a a 394 
COLT eee eee ee te 339 
WU ye FU CI 2 So Be 2 he a ee Poel eee 99 
VME SOU GTS las oo eT ES a Sl 648 
VAN CHS ICTY C1 ieee te ES ee a 233 
WHEN ED ICD, ches 2 elt yen ie ee ee 375, 583, 868 
VON HE ip ira poe al a 5 ap 483 
WAVES Of0 He See Sie) SS ie eae Na a 483 
Vitec) emer eee ees wn GE do 474, 482, 483 
VVC ATL GUN = cacao a a SR SS ee ee 491 
WS ETS GOB 6001 ee a my ep a 480 
VIG A KGWieeee oe orn Oe te en in 115 
WVRIVOULADA-VOs: 228A. 1 Sac ee 55245 612 
AN SAL oe SS I pn a ee 445 
SRSTE) BYE M ECG TNE Ppa I PRS a 553 
NGSNeS ea) 2. oiga es at Bee pe a eee aan ere 553 
Reine ieee ee A 545 
QD UTT SG aga, aie a See a en 491 
MGB On 5 et a a a 553 
iC Een See ee ee new be 553 
SCS ODES Gaels, ee oe ee a 485 
DORA GR Oa: - i Se a ee 553 
TSUN 232.) 200, S 2s ee ee 553 
Nepean eke seks 554 
See e sie se ee eee, See 485, 486 
CUNT OME sie 2 ast et ee 485 
AY CTU AIES b ne Ne el a a 485 
SCE SIG REO 0) 6 a ep 115 
SCBTDUG set a ee rr er 595 
NO REGTe TORO T ee Ne AS ee 123, 148, 145 
SPOUTS GORI, pe era, Se pa Pe 607 
Ssh. ee a ee 339, 341-346 
a eee See Bo a een = 710 
SOQWISTR STWR aS le ee ae 394 
WithiGnis al ype ee ee eos. ool eo ee 897 
Se Sra Ghat Pe eee ee ee ere 394 
SEDATE Sad ee Sa al ee ee ee 618 
ee NES oP Lay 9 ONS ie i eae eee ae ae 545 
SECT ps ates 2 ES a a ape 222, 336-341, 876, 883 
CUD Re SES) ar re a 545 
WUE NICO INOS a eee eee SOL eee 445 
OSM Se ee ee 129 
etic ancien nee ee oo eee 479, 492 
SCOTTI WEEE es ee 475, 478, 482, 491, 492 
“YS DIEU IS ig LS i aL ee ee ee 394 
SVE t eee ta ee oo 479 
OE TS | EE ee Sener see 709, 786 
tetany et cee eS 445 
OT san SS ee a ea 588 
TET AT hg le en Eley CL 356, 897 
ies kee ees ee ee eS Os Pee 203 
“Ne DE a us le aE See Rr me op ee eee 345 


Page 

COL WES Vill a ee acs Pen Pe eee 134 
Riise iae(- ade Se ae ee eS oe 394 
PP MNGMGO WINE CRI. oaks tc ha wee te 134, 183 
Wintikenoriisoting ost. 2d caecenbee 138 
SALT CAS ISULAL En he ee 134 
PRPIS CAAT) ee ste hee ek Sane eee, eee 345 
RYMISI DING CAT poe ee tec ee ee ae ee 138 
YALWISTI esas eee oe es ee hd dee Fa 481 
‘ODUUIIE Reece ee. Be tat STROH Se ee 231 
Wael pee ee ok Leen ee St ee ss ee 398 
OU BUA DL Aare ee Pee ee eek pee, Re he 356 
WEY Gy] Ries cee oy Spee Sl ee See POL ee 394 
Wie aR els Sten 5 Men oe eR oe a Spee oak Be ee 16, 18 
DYSON eB 232 
LL OKGIA- POM] Ogee a. se ee ae 2 te eee ees 235 
PACE syh ia. Me pipes, NOM ae eee Gy eye ef 481 
VIO KOGmtrss can eRe de Seg pe oe 474, 480 
OKOM Sea eee ewe OP. ee eee ee 897 
Y OKO eee e. ee ee. 258 ee ee 480, 491 
SOKOL ING Tre serene ee ee ek cee ae 394 
PYViOK ONIN GUISE aot tenet a See an be ees cm 789 
MWiOKULS = eee ee ee 474-543, 595, 864, 876, 883, 885 
BY OLD OS See ee ee me re ee te Ie eee ee 274 
SY 0105-52822. eae en eee te ae ae eee 897 
YOM Ita a ee re ee ee eee 444 
'Y ONCAIIUM reso ee ae es 125 
CONTOCKEtiS ee cee eee ee ee 124 
MiODtUICKCLe cae 2. ee ee ee eo eee 125 
ViOrk Villee sees pease aeaeneie enn ee a eee 232 
SYiOSCIITIEGIS Sc eee ee eee, 897 
FY -OCEAINOLO see ee ne oe ee ee oe eee 393 
SY OUT G Val lees Se ee ee ee 218 
BY TOI eae ke oe ee ee pee 357, 897 
DG of be, Ae Ce aie Sas 2 ely: Rise Pin rg SA Oh eh oe 897 
UDA EV Olen ecm res ee eee Le 393, 476, 902 
SYCIL CAL Dee eee no Sei sei eke eee ag 617, 897 
AY UCAS bs ee re ee ee ae Oc Soe em 307 
olnanake Oe soe a 6254 ee ee, 5 cee ees 99 
BYALA Wik eG ee ee ie, ee se eee 618 
YoUnaAViRtarls. eee seeenne ere. Oe 618 
Delile tee oe ees ee ae 159-201, 864, 876, 883, 885 

See Coast Yuki. 

patikcian fama yee see te eee eee ee ee 159-160, 886 
YAEL Kohli eee Steeler tA Se CN re oe See ee 394 
Waki waskal ss Sse ee eee 164 
RYT] 1 Ge Sete ae fe ee Eee ee 445 
SY ULLO LN tee ee eee ee ee ee ee eee 445 
WELT ie Ee capt al OP ake 5 Wo, Ae A La Pe 345 
NAUMG GL 2 > 2 = Ry rea) ee Bee Raat ee tee a ire Seed 710 
YALL TTD re eee ec ee coe ee ee 394, 
594, 709, 742, 744, 781-795, 877, 883, 885, 897 

WIM ANS LOCK eae oe ee on Se eee 913 
Vebiceleohh = eT SORA A ee eee 444 
RVOELU A Ome see ae ee Eee oe oe ieee Soe 491 
GUN PAK STO Kee eee oes See ee ee ee 445 
CYAUL TIT een ae nee eo ee ee 394 
SVU Ee rt ee eR es a Se I 394 
RYT LEO Rowen ee eee erey ees yw hk 1-97, 864, 876, 883 
RYULGUN Tl et eee ee eee ee 100 
SS SRIERETT [ito ein tte te a a Nee ae te eee 100 
VATU RCI =e Ae ee Oe aS ee ee Se 553 
LEGO Be ee Ne ae ene oo ee ee eee 554 
PANO CAD dee oe ees een os eee ae = 803 


O 





-_ 


Se he ee ee 









ae ee o a eS 
Hee Oh BA hf OK, 
















































jm ¥ : ii 
, » teed: f ees 
t Pas. oe a <- 
"es a - * se 
) Fr » oS" ae f Kio pile . 
: - 2 ‘ 
5 
Bey ; Lies ¥ 
h ete! = 
o r | ro al 7 Os o 
wr ’ a v + ~ < a 
\ ae § (fannie te ot pea * 
Dk aed ee, ys oe . < J 
r. v x" ul bh 7 
hs o, oe af - 
\ 
rh onl °F 4 “ 
. bye > = : ys 
; a aad 4 r "- + mee Ane © veGer® * 
ya: Se my ‘ie ar > . ‘ 
wt gs wi Fe m ~ a“ 3 ue ce J i ; 
ps ‘ “2 E f ~ + : rh ek ete oaks 
, yal Hg Moup a a ; ; ’ 
nee m + or ee ae 
: ‘ yori 5B wea 
; Uce Aye 
te ee gee le see 
L f ak ot i: 
2 + 
* iden ee 
fe 
5 
; , 
1 
. 
. 
Say 
' 
' 
y+ 








A 
Sd Arr Se et 





acioecaiesi- aetna kammeca ee 


E51 .U58 v.78 
Handbook of the Indians of ea inst 


| 


Princeton Theological Semi inary 


IVIL 


1-1012 00135 9977 








